David Hope

MEMPHIS, Saturday: The Vroom Racing team may be frustrated with the Buell’s performance this weekend at the O’Reilly Mid-South Nationals at Memphis Motorsports Park but rider, David Hope is optimistic that the team will work together and soon be making a positive statement

Hope had a consistent bike in Friday qualifying, first running 7.185 at 181.67 mph and finishing the day with a 7.180 at 184.32 mph. In today’s first qualifying session, he had a mechanical problem and had to abort the run. And in the last session, the Buell’s consistency returned, as Hope ran a 7.162 at 181.11 mph. And even though the bike showed this consistency, it wasn’t enough for Hope to get in the show.

“I started out this weekend thinking we had a bracket bike,” said Hope, “we ran a couple 18’s. However, we’re trying to make tuning changes and things aren’t going as we’re expecting them to go. It doesn’t seem to be responding, but I leave the mechanical side up to the guys. I believe in them. And I believe when it does come around we’re going to be out there and we’re going to make a statement. And in the meantime, we’re going to stick together and keep our heads up. That’s most important. This weekend was a little frustrating. We did have some mechanical problems. In the third qualifying round, we lost a chain and we weren’t able to make the lap. We had a real strong leave off the starting line, but we had a little too much torque coming out of the Buell, I guess, and it did break the chain.

“Things didn’t work our way this weekend,” explained Hope. “However, we’re still trying and that’s what counts. You have to be out here and you have to put forth the effort, and we’re doing that. We finished the weekend up with a little frustration, however we’re trying to keep our heads straight and most importantly, keep our chins up. Because there’s more races to come and we know we can get out of it if we continue to move forward.”

The team had performance problems with the beautiful Buell last week in Dallas, but were hopeful that they fixed the problem and would have more success this week. But again the bike wasn’t responding to the changes they were making.

“This is the second week in a row that it appears we’re still having the same problem and it really is frustrating,” said team owner, John Hammock. “But we have a few weeks off, so we’ll take it back to the shop and completely tear it apart and see if we can figure something out. And we’ll be ready for our next race and anxious to see how things work out.”