DAYTONA BEACH, FL, DEC 6: It happened so quickly that Michael Barnes didn’t have time to react.
Deep into Saturday night’s second test session under the lights at Daytona International Speedway, a sudden mechanical failure sent the Richie Morris Racing/Geico Motorsports Buell rider to the ground after exiting the dogleg. Barnes slid down the track and into the air fence on the outside of the second horseshoe.
The 40-year-old veteran survived the ordeal unscathed, but it put an end to his night after just 21 total laps and nine at speed. More damaging was that it denied him and the team the chance to continue the progress he’d made since the team made its debut on Friday morning.
“We were just trying a few different things and I’m really trying to figure it out, but I’m thinking it was just a new clutch setting we were trying and it did something weird to me, just as I was coming out (of the dogleg) and just started to grab my first downshift and it did something that I absolutely did not expect,” he said. Barnes crashed at “a buck-plus. Just coming out of fourth, so I don’t know if it hit a false neutral and went to click back in, but it did something unexpected and it was a new clutch setting we were trying. That’s how we find out.”
Up until then Barnes was chipping away. The 1125R ranked ninth of 11 in top speed, but only 1 mph out of fifth.
“Good speed and we got a lot of miles,” Barnes, seen in the above photo from yesterday’s morning session, said. “These bikes were both at another test and so reliability, I’m very confident. It’s so early on in our program that we’ve got nowhere to go but up, so I’m real confident about it.”
Getting the Buell to go around corners is the more difficult task. Barnes said the team was “real close to dialing it in. I feel so much better chassis-wise than what we ran at Moto-ST and I got to try a whole gamut of things the last couple of days. Whereas, when I’m doing endurance with another rider, you’re usually like, it’s fine, and just ride it to its limit. And the competition in Moto-ST isn’t what this is. A little bit different game.”
There isn’t a single magical fix, Barnes said, just a gradual process of finding a balance and “I kind of dictate a different suspension setting than Shawn (Higbee) or Jeremy (McWilliams). But I just tried Jeremy’s shock and loved it. We’re just figuring out stuff and making big leaps right now, so optimistic.”
Barnes was introduced as the team’s rider during a Friday morning press conference. The team isn’t a factory effort, but it does have factory support. And team owner Richie Morris said Geico Motorsports had made a three-year commitment. Unlike last year, when Barnes rode for ten different teams in five different series, this season will offer stability he hasn’t had since injuring himself during the 2007 season while riding for M4 EMGO Suzuki.
“This last year has been my toughest,” he said of having to constantly scrambling to find work.
“I’m really looking forward to this year, because a lot of things seem to be coming together,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to work with Buell for quite some time, from when I was riding the Buells five, six years ago doing the Lightning series and then I did some Formula Xtreme stuff. And I’ve really been wanting to sink my teeth into somewhere.”
Given a breadth of experience unmatched by anyone in the championship, Barnes believes he can “bring a lot to the team. I’ve been on them a lot. And I communicate well with the engineers and we seem to make progress every time we get on them. And the fact that we’re going to get something consolidated for the whole year, it’s exciting. It’s nice to have a job again, especially these days.”
