‘Wonder why the hell I’m doing this’: Making sense of crashing at 190 mph
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ELKHART LAKE – PJ Jacobsen lost a piece of bone in the tip of his left index finger this season.
That’s the one next to his nub of a pinky. The one nearly torn off when he was 11.
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Bobby Fong has a torn rotator cuff.
Fortunately he makes his living racing motorcycles, not throwing a baseball. And fortunately it hurts him more getting out of bed than when he’s crouching at speed.
Sean Dylan Kelly has a chip fracture in his right middle finger.
He’s not supposed to put pressure on the finger, yet he can squeeze the brake lever with only his index finger enough to slow his BMW from 190 mph in time to make a turn.
That was your podium for the second Superbike race of MotoAmerica weekend May 31 at Road America. So naturally the conversation turned to the sorts of ailments that afflict two-wheeled speed demons.
“You have no choice, really, to go out there, whether you’re hurt or whatever, and there’s always gonna be somebody just chomping at the bit to get your seat,” said Fong, the Yamaha rider who left Road America with a pair of third-place trophies. “We can’t call in sick. It is a very stressful job, for sure.
“Sometimes I wonder why the hell I’m doing this. But leaving the track knowing that you had a good result is the best feeling in the world.”
Kelly enjoyed the best weekend of the three, adding his first win of the season and second overall in the premier Superbike class to a runner-up finish a day earlier.
Jacobsen crossed the line 0.381 seconds behind Kelly after placing fourth a day earlier. The runner-up was the best Superbike finish for the Ducati team owned by IndyCar racer Graham Rahal.
Cameron Petersen, who won the first Superbike race of the weekend Saturday, finished fifth in the second go-round. Cameron Beaubier, the all-time Superbike wins leader at the 4-mile track, might have been a contender but crashed while leading Saturday, suffered a dislocated shoulder and was not medically cleared for Sunday.
“You should donate me your bone,” Jacobsen said in a fitting exchange with Kelly.
“There is a piece that’s kind of dangling, so maybe we could,” Kelly responded. “Money talks, you know.”
The realization of Kelly’s temporary handicap made Fong’s eyes pop. In this group, that’s saying something.
“The way things are going, I might not have no fingers left,” Jacobsen said, mostly joking.
“I’ve just got to grow this confidence and the injury, put that aside and just keep working through all that stuff. We race motorcycles, we’re all strong here, and we're all in the same mindset of doing these same things.”
The things they do might make sense in the context of racing in general and motorcycle racing specifically. Step back, though, and look through the lens of a layman or spend too much time thinking, and the entire endeavor seems bonkers.
While one goal is to not get hurt, another – the main goal – is to emerge from handlebar-to-handlebar and nose-to-tail battles reaching speeds of 190 mph at a track like Road America. That’s about as fast as Indy cars and IMSA prototypes go, but on two wheels and with leathers for protection rather than carbon fiber.
But speed is relative, riders often begin picking up the pace when they’re preschoolers and the trust they have in themselves and those around them helps mitigate the risk to the point the reward makes it worthwhile.
“You’re all out here to do the same job and that means that everyone's smart and we're all going the same speed,” Kelly said. “When you pass somebody [who’s just] sitting there at 180, obviously that’s pretty scary, but when you’re next to another guy that's also going 180, 190, then you don’t really notice.
“When the front tucks at 180, you pucker up a little bit for sure, or if something happens or if you were expecting to feel really good and then you go out and you try something and then it turns out that you’re in some more pain than you expected, that doesn’t help.
“But in terms of speed, we’re all out there going the same speed and doing for the same job and I think we’re all pretty smart.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Motorcycle riders at Road America explain crashing, racing hurt