DANGEROUS

THE PASSIONS OF FERNANDEZ & WEST

This just isn’t right. Since when were women allowed to compete heads up against men as pro motorcycle road racers? And what’s up with a married couple racing against each other? And, for sure, baggers weren’t created to be race bikes. All of this is just wrong, I tell you. Also, people wonder, what’s in those racing bagger’s bags anyway?

Those bikes are silly fast.

That is the type of doubting confusion that married couple Patricia Fernandez-West, and Cory West hear far too often. As far as they’re concerned, they’re just living life. Fully. To the max. As fast as possible. Both race in two Pro Racing classes: MotoAmerica’s Mission King of the Baggers and Mission Foods Super Hooligan. This year they race Harley-Davidsons and in keeping it in the family, they both ride for Team Saddlemen.

When Patricia and Cory are not racing, they relax by riding motorcycles on the street, off-road, and leading adventure tours for Froggy’s Moto Tours through the picturesque and fun-to-ride Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas. Cory created Froggy’s in 2016 and he also takes time off from his ambitious schedule to instruct riders at Colin Edwards Texas Tornado Boot Camp.

Patricia and Cory met at the racetrack. They aren’t just fast, though, they’re also a very cute couple. Cory is the faster of the two, being a Pro Race champion contender many times in many classes, but don’t believe for a second that there aren’t a bunch of guys finishing well behind Patricia. Outside of the MotoAmerica program she’s also won races, capping that off with a championship in the Bagger Racing League.

Patricia is a racer through and through. She told us, “When I first started racing, I wanted to be a real racer. I was fortunate and hooked up with Jason Pridmore early in my career. Everyone at the time asked me if I was there to race motorcycles or there to chase boys? I didn’t care about boys, I cared about motorcycles, and being competitive.

“We’re both very competitive and there are only two times when Cory didn’t have a mechanical or crash when I beat him— and I do keep track of these things—one time he was joking saying he’d give me the turn, so I cussed him out. I told him, don’t you ever treat me differently than you would a man in front of you. If you’re going to stuff me, you stuff me. I don’t want you to take it easy on me. That’s not the type of girl I am.”

While Cory came from a racing family, Patricia came from a family that told her she could get a motorcycle only after she moved out of the house. So, she did, taking out a loan when she went to college to buy a Suzuki GS550F with a banana seat. “I thought I was Steve McQueen. I remember taking it up to my parent’s house and my father said that was the only time I had ever disappointed him in my life because when I rode up, I wasn’t on a Harley.”

Patricia found her way to the racetrack when friends started doing track days. She looked up what that was and decided it was for her. So, she saved money, eBayed a suit, boots, and helmet. Her first track day was—as she’ll never forget—April 10, 2010 at the Summit Point Shenandoah track. “From the first moment I did it, I was addicted. It was just an amazing sensation to go fast, or what I thought was fast in the beginner group.”

Cory grew up around motorcycles and is a fourth-generation motorcyclist. His great uncle Leroy Winters is in the AMA Hall of Fame for being a pioneer in the off-road lightweight two-stroke era. His father, Denton West, raced in the Battle of the Twins and in AMA Superbikes back in the days of handlebars and number plates, racing a Kawasaki KZ1000 in the early 1980s. Cory started riding when he was four-years-old, but it wasn’t until his early teens that he took racing seriously. “When I was 13, I started riding again and started racing when I was 14. I got my pro card when I was 16 and have been racing ever since.”

Cory has been competing in Pro Road Racing for over 15 years, finishing second in the Daytona 200 in 2011, taking the checkered flag .029 seconds behind the race winner.

On top of the risk of racing mentioned so far, these two take risks that even normal road racers are unwilling to take. Cory has raced up Pikes Peak, while Patricia has raced at the Ulster Grand Prix six times, and Northwest 200, both run in Northern Ireland on public roads that feature bumps, jumps, curbs, trees, stone walls, and… But, as Patricia points out, it doesn’t have any bottomless cliffs because Pikes Peak has hogged all of those.

Cory competed in the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in 2019, finishing tenth overall, fifth in class on an electric bike, earning the production electric bike lap record. For those who don’t know, Pikes Peak is a hill-climb time trial with one person attacking the mountain at a time. “So, I’m not battling bar to bar with somebody trying to overtake people up the mountain. I’m there by myself, just me and the mountain and my motorcycle.”

Cory shared that before his run, he went up the mountain about five times in his head. After doing that a couple times he put a stopwatch to it and went through all 156 corners in his head then hit stop. So, he was thinking he’d have a pretty good time in his actual run.

“Any kind of racing like that comes down to how much preparation you put into it. You must do your homework. It’s the only way you’re going to feel comfortable about the situation you put yourself in. At Pikes Peak you never get to link the whole mountain as one until it’s time to race. You practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, have Saturday off, and then Sunday is the race. Sunday morning you don’t even get a warm up, it’s just, ‘Hey, it’s your turn’, and it’s for all the marbles. It was fun. I would totally do it again.”

Patricia has been competing overseas in road races since 2014, racing in the Ulster Grand Prix six times, the Race of Legends twice, and the Northwest 200 twice. She earned the title of World’s Fastest Female Road Racer when she set the female lap record in the Ulster Grand Prix, which is said to be the fastest of all road races. “I’ve tried some really amazing things over there and it’s terrifying and amazing. I’m grateful for my accomplishments. It’s just a totally different kind of crazy.”

Pikes Peak and the Ulster Grand Prix are not like closedcourse road racing because the risks are far greater. Asked about their shared ultra-high-risk racing experiences, Patricia said, “This is an argument between us that will never end. There will be no winner.

“Cory still doesn’t accept that I do it. I understand that. It’s a complicated situation. I was a racer before he met me, I was racing before we started dating, and I think he respects that. This is what I want to do. I know as a racer he respects it. But as a husband, he hates me doing those races on roads because it is so dangerous. He’d like me to stay home and be safer, but he’s respectful of me and my decisions. He understands.”

Then there’s the flip side of how Patricia feels when Cory takes great risks. “To be fair, I understand too. When Cory raced

Pikes Peak I went as his racer girlfriend to support him. It was terrifying because when I’m a racer I’m in control. But to let your loved one go and not see them for hours until they come back after…forever, it’s tough. It’s not like when you’re on a circuit. On a circuit you have segments and lap times, and you see them and they’re never more than two miles away. Roads are a totally different story and with the weather and everything that can happen. So, when I went to Pikes Peak I freaked out.

“We have respect for each other, so we don’t say anything negative or freak out until it’s all done. We don’t want to mess up each other’s mindset. But when it was all done I explained to him how scared I was and he said, ‘That’s how I feel when you race overseas.’ It was enlightening. But at the same time, I have so much love and passion for it, I can’t give it up. I feel like that would make me sad.”

About Patricia doing the road races overseas, Cory told us, “It’s a stressful deal. It’s usually a stressful couple of weeks while she’s gone. It’s crazy. I tell her, the speeds are not nearly as fast at Pikes Peak. What’s better, hitting a telephone pole with hay bales in front of it while going 190 mph, or falling off a cliff at 60 mph? I mean, pick your poison. I only hit a top speed of 124 mph at Pikes Peak.”

And Patricia responds, “But you fall off the side of a cliff if something happens. To be fair, we’ve had this argument. Pikes Peak is set up for cars, not motorcycles. So, there would be more safety measures if it were a motorcycle event. At the Ulster GP and the Northwest 200, yes, the top speeds are significantly higher. But they are motorcycle-only events. All the safety is set up for motorcycles. So, I feel like…we argue…this is one thing we always argue about.”

What we have here is a conflict of passions. It’s a magnificent conflict to suffer.

Not only are the closed courses Patricia and Cory race at in the MotoAmerica series safer than street races, at those circuits they’ve solved their stress issues about each other being a racer by being in the same races with each other. When racing, there is no time to think or worry about anything else in the world, which is a significant attraction of racing for every racer. Nothing else exists when racing, outside of where you are headed with the motorcycle and trying to pass that annoying rider in front of you. It’s a nearly egoless activity. These two hadn’t planned this, but they heartily embrace it.

Even so, last year at the Laguna Seca round Cory fell and Patricia came by afterwards seeing his bike lying off track. She had to turn to try to see if he was up, even though she was racing. After she saw he was up she says she thought, “Sweet, I earned one more spot. We do love each other, we do truly support each other. We’ve been able to share one podium together the time I got first and he got second, but he was still very proud of me.

“It would be way more stressful if we were in separate races. If I was in a different class and Cory raced before or after me, I’d want to check on his races. So, it would be like double duty. I’d not just be a racer, I’d also be a wife. We have a very heavy relationship, so we do check on each other, before and after. We get dressed at the same time; we talk to each other, what are your thoughts, just have fun, we kind of go through just being a racer and a partner at the same time. Yes, it makes it easier to race in the same races.”

Cory agrees about how well it works when they’re both on the track because they can’t think about each other. But still, if there’s a red flag his first instinct is wondering where Patricia is. “Last year she had a big get off in qualifying at Road Atlanta. I see the red flag and as I’m going into turn one, I scan the track all the way around, wondering where’s Patricia? Looking down at the last corner and I see she has crashed. God it is so tough. But racing in separate classes would just be twice as much stress.”

For full disclosure, Patricia was in a relationship with racer Dane Westby prior to Cory. Westby was killed in a street bike accident, no fault of his own, causing Patricia to lose her partner and Cory to lose a good friend. So, they are not blind to the real risks of what they do.

Patricia admits she was struggling with a lot of emotional issues after Westby passed away. She shared that Cory was patient and understanding and never pushed her. “It was a process for both of us, both being in the paddock, and it was crazy. Some people were really happy and some said some negative things that were extremely hurtful. It was a really hard process. Even when we did really start dating there were a lot of obstacles we had to overcome to be together. Today I couldn’t imagine anything better happening for me. There are so many benefits to being a racer and understanding another racer. I believe the support system we have for each other is why we’ve been successful together.

“Another benefit of me being here racing with Cory is to make sure no other women are trying to talk to my husband.”

Patricia has convinced Cory to do the Northwest 200 this year. She has, as she put it, brought him to the dark side. Cory will be doing the race in the twins class, learning the track before deciding if he wants the risk of higher speeds. Stay tuned.

As you might have guessed from reading this tale, Patricia describes herself as hot headed, strong willed, a talker, and a potty mouth. “If I’m going to do something I’m going to do it. A lot of men can’t handle that, Cory is calm, cool, patient and kind.

He calms me down and knows when to tell me to put my crazy away, or when to unleash my crazy. He’s a balance to my personality. Some days he gets sick of me, but every other day he loves me. He’s the Yin to my Yang, he’s the chips to my salsa.”

You can follow the adventures of these two on Instagram @lady_racer926, @corywest13, @froggy_moto. For a fun touring adventure check out froggymoto.com. The MotoAmerica calendar, results, and such can be found at motoamerica.com. HB