Before I jump right in to WERA race recap 2 for the 2025 Inherited Chaos Tour, a few notes.
- I will publish the podcast on the blog as they’re released, but I missed writing about the weekends.
- I’m writing blogs from my point of view. Annie’s opinions may vary.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – before we go…
Annie and I had quite a weekend’s worth of activity for this race. We picked up the rental truck Thursday night in Buford and loaded up the bikes. Friday morning we spoke at the Ball Ground Business Club, including bringing the bikes into the venue. What a great time that was! It was the first time we shared a stage to talk about racing, and I think it went remarkably. Annie is a great speaker, she tore the house down.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – getting there is half the fun
We then went home, loaded up, and hit the road.
I’m not going to go into detail, but it seemed like something didn’t want us to go. No major issues, just lots of minor bullshit that kept happening that we had to deal with. But we managed to load everything and hit the road. (Okay, not quite everything.)
I forgot to mention that I’m still in a sling and can’t do any heavy lifting. Annie and I essentially switched jobs for the weekend. I make sandwiches and went through light stuff while she loaded all the bikes and heavy gear. This role switch comes into play later.
We did our usual and recorded a podcast on the way, which is always fun. One of the minor issues was that Annie forgot to bring the lav mics. She ordered a new set Thursday night for overnight delivery from Amazon.
In spite of the various minor challenges, we got to Tally and set up our paddock. As we were setting up, Frank Harmon came by and told us that registration was open. We registered Annie for the weekend. Tech inspection also opened up, so we got the bike tech’ed, too.
After that was dinner and bed, with an early alarm so Annie could make it to group 2 practice, which I thought was at 8AM.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – Saturday practice – reading the schedule helps
I had set my alarm for 6:30AM. I wanted to get up, get coffee, and replace Annie’s front tire before practice. We pulled the wheel off Friday night. I just had to schlep it down to Stickboy for him to throw a tire on it.
As I was making breakfast, someone dropped by and told me that first practice didn’t start until 8:30AM. We could have slept in a little more. Eh, such is life. I awoke before my alarm anyway, so no big deal, but Annie generally liked to sleep in a bit longer.
It soon became clear I wasn’t as good at my new role in the team as I could have been. The stove ran out of propane in the middle of cooking Annie’s breakfast. She had to go next door and use their griddle to finish her eggs. Whoops.
I expressed to Annie that I wanted her to run all available practice sessions. This was the first time she’d be back on a bike since she crashed here in February in turn 1, and she agreed.
Practice was pretty uneventful. Annie ran a little slow. We expected that coming back to Tally and not having been on the bike for almost two months.
Dad’s evil plan – an aside
We came into this weekend with Annie slightly in the dark about a couple things. You see, it was the weekend before her birthday, and we were celebrating her birthday there at the track.
Birthday plan part 1 was during the rider’s meeting. I had asked Mark Merical from RaceLine Ministry if he could mention Annie’s birthday during his usual rider’s meeting announcements, which he did in spectacular fashion, even getting the entire paddock to sing to her! She was thoroughly surprised and embarrassed by this.
After that, her mom brought a huge tasty sheet cake (chocolate on top, yellow on bottom, lemon/raspberry compote in the middle!) on which a racetrack had been drawn. We put some toy motorcycles racing on there. Annie’s mom had one laying down on the side of the track representing Annie’s crash from the prior month. We had enough cake for the entire paddock, and pretty much everyone came by and had a slice.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – Saturday Mini race
First race of the afternoon was the Mini race. The grid was HUGE, with 23 bikes on track. The Mini class has just become so popular, and rightly so – it’s a blast!
Annie got a poor start, and suffered from that start for the rest of the race. She came back in pretty peeved that Amy Mullins had just walked right past her on the back straight, and she had come in 5th in her class. She was also miffed that the Ohvale 190s are in her class as well, and there were two of them in the race. We found out later that they were running 1:15 lap times – good enough for 3rd place in F Superstock Novice. She wanted to protest them, but read the rules first and discovered they are class legal for Formula Mini!
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – Saturday F Superstock race
We had a long wait between the Mini race and the F Superstock (FSS) race. Mini was race 2 (after the Rider’s School mock race) and FSS was race 12. We ate some cake, watched some racing, and generally hung out. Oh, and I swapped fork oil and did a brake job on Kyle Liv’s bike.
Real talk: I was a little worried about this one. Annie had been running about 4 seconds off her prior pace in practice, which was understandable but a concern. I knew she’d pick up a second or more in the race situation, but even that wasn’t going to be competitive.
I should not have been afrid. Annie got off a pretty good start, and ran steady 1:18s, which while not a super competitive lap time, meant that she was running fast enough to be safe and annoy a few people, which was really all we could ask for.
After that, Annie and her mom ran to Walmart for propane, and I hung out in the paddock. We had dinner, made a fire in the Solo stove, roasted some marshmallows, and hung out with a few people. Then it was bed.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – Sunday race – a good time had by all
Since Sunday was a National Series day and the Ninja 300 doesn’t really have a class in which it’s competitive for Nationals, the only race we were running was the Mini race. We both slept in a little since there wasn’t anything we needed to do in the morning. Annie skipped first practice, but went out for second. I cleaned up the paddock, which looked like it had been attacked by drunk monkeys with all the people in and out of there all day, and started packing for when she got off the track.
The Sunday Mini race was probably the most fun race of the weekend! Annie got over the fact that the Ohvale’s were out there and just ignored them. She and about 5 other racers were just dicing it up the whole race. Annie passed a couple people and made it stick. She beat her closest rival (sorry Kyle!) by .066 seconds!
After the race, she pulled into our pit and was immediately surrounded by a half-dozen other racers on their bikes talking about how much fun they had and bench racing. She had a ball, and it was a great way to end the weekend.
2025 Inherited Chaos Tour WERA Race Recap 2 – aftermath
After the FSS race, Annie mentioned to me that she’d be willing to skip the Roebling Road round after Cycle Jam if we could get her a track day before, since she feels she needs more time on the Ninja. She was gifted the Saturday before Cycle Jam for a track day with Evolve GT at Polecat Training Center(PTC) in Lynchburg, TN for her birthday. If we can pull together enough sponsorship to cover both Cycle Jam and the 2nd day at PTC, we’re hoping she’ll do the full weekend there.
After that it’s Cycle Jam at Road Atlanta! See you there!
