06/14/2022
2022 N2/WERA National Endurance Series Race Report, Round 1 CMP
The opening round of the 2022 endurance season took place this past weekend, June 10-12 at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC. Its been a long off-season of preparations, and we were excited to debut the new-to-us 2017 Yamaha YZF-R6 we will be using this year for endurance.
The weekend started off with excellent conditions for Friday practice. The team split sessions on the new endurance bike with two of the other team machines in the process of getting rebuilds done. Most components on the new endurance machine had been tested earlier in the year, but we did have some upgrades to the front brake system to test out in practice, which went well and allowed us to make the final decisions on the race set up. We had one hiccup Friday evening when we found our water pump was starting to fail. HUGE shoutout to Tea Music for loaning us the replacement directly from her personal r6 to allow us to get through the race.
Saturday weather conditions the humidity went up, but luckily the wet weather held off which was a huge relief after the race long drenching last year. Qualifying on Saturday morning put us on the 4th row overall, as the 2nd place middleweight machine.
The first 4-hour race of the year kicked off at 1pm and Sloan West led off our team on the 1st stint. Sloan traded the top couple middleweight positions over the 1st hour. At the end of his sting, we held the lead in class until our first pit stop. Unfortunately, a couple factors forced our first pit stop to go slower than planned and we lost more position than we should have. We were still well up in the order as Scott Covington took off for the second stint.
At the halfway point in the race, Scott still held 4th position in class, and in strong position to claim back a podium spot. Our second stop for fuel and a rear tire went smoother. Thomas McQuigg set off on the third stint hoping to hold steady and make up time as others pitted. Our luck finally reached its low point when the red flag came out in the 4th hour. We unfortunately crossed the start/finish line just seconds after the red flag appeared. This meant that our competitors merely seconds in front of us moments before then automatically gained a full lap on us, eliminating any podium contention. Worse yet, two mechanical issues appeared, first with the front axle, and then the exhaust system, costing us further time.
Despite a pile up of small issues, we were able to finish within 2 laps of the class winner. We held on to 6th in class out of 13 middleweight entries, and 11th overall out of 34. It wasn't exactly the result we were looking for, but its a solid start to the year with lessons learned we can build on going forward. And as usual we won in the cheesecake department, and there wasn't a close second anywhere to be found. =D
Huge thank you to our support team giving us some strong tools to be competitive this year. Please think of these folks when you need something.
N2 Track Days for giving us the chance to hone our skills and give back by passing it along to those newer to the sport.
Trading Paint for the giving us the best looking bikes on the grid.
Karns Performance for the rock solid tune and additional support.
BobbleHeadMoto for some great support in getting the new ride set up.
FTECU for the slick electronics toolkit we are lucky to have.
Vesrah brake pads for the best stopping power you can put on your bike.
Woodcraft for the great hard parts we make ample use of.
Pirelli for keeping us glued to the track no matter how hard we twist the throttle.
Thank you again to Tea for the huge save on the water pump. Thank you also to Ron Oyler for hanging out with us for the weekend last minute and taking on fueling duties.
Thank you to our amazing Crew Chief Melissa Emory who keeps us organized and looking for ways around any obstacle.
Thank you to Chris Kubricky for helping us with some of the set-up this off-season and keeping us encouraged. We miss him a ton as he devotes time this season to other callings.
Thank you so much to Tim Wilson for the amazing dump can and other mechanical wizardry.
Looking forward to Round 2 next month at Roebling. Nothing says endurance racing like a Savannah summer..... see you there!
Thank you to 4theRiders http://4theriders.com for the on track action shots.
