By Kurt Whittington With ambient temperatures in the mid 50s and winds constant at over 30 mph Sunday, the fourth round of the 2007 WSMC series at Willow Springs Raceway was run under extreme weather conditions. “If you like an adrenaline rush, this is the way to do it,” commented HRC test rider Jeff Tigert regarding the wind during the Toyota Cup Formula One race. Tigert finished second in the race to Lee Cycle’s Jeremy Toye who said he had more “moments” due to the wind during the F1 race and his 600 class races than he’d like to recall. “That was a lot of work out there with the wind. It was pushing the whole time,” Toye said. “Once all the cones started blowing onto the track, I started thinking yeah, this can’t be happening. That was a whole new element – having to pick a new line with the wind blowing so hard, but also had to pick new lines to dodge the cones. I thought what’s next, is the sky falling?” On his GSX-R 1000 running 16.5 Dunlop slicks, Toye led every lap of the 12-lap race. In the early goings he was followed by Advanced Kawasaki’s Robbie Dowie, however Dowie crashed in turn one on lap five. While trying to fight the wind and dodge a cone that had blown onto the track, Dowie hit the inside curbing in turn one at his apex and low-sided. After a bit of a slow start, Tigert, on his Jett Performance-prepped CBR1000RR, caught up to Toye a little past the halfway point in the race. Tigert stayed on Toye’s rear tire for several laps and showed Toye a wheel a couple of times, but never made a pass for the lead. With about two laps to go, however, Tigert felt his rear 16.5 Dunlop slick really going off and he decided it was better to drop back and finish second then risk crashing out in the wind and not finishing at all. “I kind of had to work my tire a little harder than I wanted to to catch [Toye] and I could tell that he was being really smooth with his tire when I got up to him. When the grip started going down and I realized that we had a big gap behind us, so I just followed him into the finish,” Tigert said. Coming out on top of a close, race-long battle with Chris Duran and Jack Pfeifer, Sport Tire Services sponsored Jeff Stern finished third. Stern said that his Rusty Schaeffer-tuned GSX-R1000 running on 16.5-Dunlop slicks seemed to handle better than Pfeifer’s bike in the wind, but Stern still had to make a hard pass on Pfeifer to take over third place. “His bike has a little better straight line speed than ours and I figured if I got him in turn eight he’d go back by me on the front straight,” Stern explained and said that he had to try to make his pass in the slower section of the track and try to gap Pfeifer before they got back to the high-speed section. Stern made his move entering turn two on the sixth lap. “[Pfeifer] checked up a couple of times getting into turn two, so I just rolled in [on the outside] and chopped his front wheel off,” said the WSMC veteran. Pfeifer finished fourth and Duran rounded out the top five. More, from a press release issued by Kenny Kopecky: WSMC Round 4 – April 14-15, 2007 Willow Springs International Raceway Rosamond, CA Moto Forza Ducati supported roadracer Kenny Kopecky won a pair of races at Willow Springs Sunday, taking the holeshot in both Formula Twins Heavyweight and BOTT Heavyweight from his second row grid positions, and leading both races to their conclusion. The victories bring the San Diego racers’ WSMC sprint race record in 2007 to 8 wins in 8 starts in the past month, with his next planned race appearance at the Streets of Willow race on May 6th. The wind conditions were “miserable” as described by Kenny throughout the weekend, and after skipping the entire Saturday practice day Kenny rode the clubs’ opening Saturday Solo series race, a 20-lap 50 mile event. Running on the same set of Dunlop tires used in two race wins at the March WSMC meet, Kenny took a quick but brief lead as Robbie Dowie warmed up slowly and toyed with Kenny for several laps. With an admitted “complete lack of training” Kopecky could not continue his typical sprint race pace after 25 miles, and was demoted to third by Mitchell Wissner. Kenny gamely hung as close as he could for the remaining 10 laps, finishing 2.1 seconds behind 2nd place after 50 miles. After the race Kenny stated “…with the high winds and a bit too much arm pump I was cooked! It was fun to have Robbie mess with me for a few laps, and I was reasonably pleased as those were my first laps on our Ducati 999R-05 in four weeks. Robbie didn’t really go much faster as he went ahead to win, and after I slowed just hanging onto Mitch was a huge chore. They both rode really well in the wind, and we’re sure to have some more fun racing together at the upcoming Solo meets!” For the sprint racing on Sunday, Kopecky again skipped the practice sessions and had mounted fresh Dunlop race slicks. He added “The races were extremely difficult with these changing wind conditions! Our first race early in the day was completly different than the second win late in the afternoon, and it was truly a day to just get through and look forward to some harder, faster riding at a future event. My family and I would also like to extend our sincerest best wishes and our prayers are with those who fell and were injured over the weekend”. Kopecky, who turned 48 on Saturday at the track (and is celebrating his 25th year as a competitor in roadracing at Willow Springs) isn’t competing for series awards at the main course any longer after his dominating 2005 WSMC Championship season. However, he has decided to attempt a few more WSMC Class Championship title runs! “Yep, we had so much fun over at that first WSMC Streets of Willow race two weeks ago! We’ll be back for their remaining Streets races with our Moto Forza Husqvarna SMR Single, and we’ll see if we can bring a couple more class titles back to the shop for the guys!” The next WSMC Streets of Willow race is May 5-6, 2007 and the next WSMC main track event is May 18-20, 2007.