I was the one on the green Kawasaki bike and i saw what actually happened. what happened to mike was inexperience. mikes bike was setup alot better than the other guys bike for this track.
The other guy basically came over to me and said he's been pacing me all-day. He told me my pace was pretty good for a stock 600. We basically agreed to go out together to thru down some hot laps. We spoke briefly about his crash earlier in the day but i never gave it much thought after that. When it was our turn to go up he was waiting for me at the track entrance, which i told him to do if i wasn’t there before him
I didn’t even see mike when i was entering the track.
As soon as i got on the track i started to increase the pace rapidly. I was amazed that after lap 3 i was still in front i was waiting the entire time for him to pass me down one of the straights especially when he was on a thousand.
I kept on increasing the pase little by little. Finally on lap 5 i think the guy passed me but only because i missed a shift going down the front straight which made me loose my drive other wise than that i would have been out front.
Once the guy got by me i almost ran into the back of him in turn 1 because he had low corner speed which again made me loose more drive out of turn 1, after that mike got by me and the guy ran it wide going into turn 2 carrying way too much speed or he just out braked him self. I tried to go on the inside but he came over and blocked me and again i lost some more drive.
At this point it was him against mike and what i saw was the line which mike took going thru the chicane is a little different from the line i took/take.Mike ran his bike over the turtle and the other guy followed him over it as well.
What happened was the suspension setup that mike had was softer which abled mikes bike to handle the bump well which in turn kept his chassy settled and compliant,
The other guys suspension was setup harsh, so when he went over the turtle his bike/back tire bounced in the air and by that time he had to hit the brakes and he endowed into the back of mike and not to mention he was carrying a lot of speed.
I can't really blame the guy that hit mike he just didn’t know what mike knew about bike setup he was trying to follow a faster guy but what he didn’t know is going fast requires you to know how to set your bike up so you can go fast and this is what happened to Mike. you had an inexperience rider trying to beat an experience rider.
I feel bad for both guys but i hope mike comes back which i think he will. it may not be next season but i think he will be back plus his decision was not only based on him alone he also has a family as well and i am pretty sure they played a part in him making this decision.
