2014 CCS Round #1 – Carolina Motorsports Park

What a great weekend of racing. I’ve never been to CMP before but after going there I cannot wait to head back. The track is loads of fun. Insanely hard braking points, fun corners, fast sections. All around great. It was also fairly easy to learn. I was able to just dip into the 1:43s. The battles all weekend were fantastic. Grid sizes were big and always someone to fight with.

There was one downturn to the weekend which was the Team Challenege race Will and I had been looking forward to all off season. They extended the race 1 hour to a 3 hour event. I talked to Will and we added Tommy Wilson to our team. Will had a sprint right before the start of the endurance so him and Tommy agreed that Will would go last. I started the race and for the first 10 laps kept some of those fast Ducati’s in my sight. After 10 laps the bike started to die on power. Lap 20 I came in and Tommy hop on and was off. Tommy picked up where I had left off doing 1:45’s which is a very good consistent pace. We did not fuel during the rider change and that came back to bite us. 1 lap before Tommy was going to come in the bike died on him in turn 1. Out of gas. Which wouldn’t have been a major issue if the bike hadn’t been on the infield. CCS would not retrieve the bike so we had to forfeit the race before Will even got to swing a leg over my SV. There was a chance that the bike may not have made the entire length of the race anyhow as the motor was very tired. I examined the motor over the next week only to find out that the compression was extremely low, 60psi lower than what it should have been and rear cylinder head had very bad loss.

I still had 2 more sprints after the endurance race and was just about to pack up when Russell Masecar offered me his SV to race. I’m glad he offered and I’m glad i took him up on it. It was a great learning experience to ride a completely different set up then my own. Not only did I gain that knowledge but also gained points in Thunderbike and Lightweight SBK.

Saturday – Thunderbike 6th
Saturday – Lightweight Superbike 12th
Saturday – Ultralight Superbike 8th
Sunday – Thunderbike 4th
Sunday – Lightweight Superbike 9th
Sunday – Ultralight Superbike 7th

Video from the Ultra-light SBK race from Sunday morning. What you don’t see in the video is the freight trainer of racers behind.

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