News and EventsLaguna Seca Race Report... Race Fans Take Notice.
As many of you know, we have been racing the Superduke since last October in AFM (a very competitive club racing circuit here in California) and like any racing effort we have had our ups and downs. The program started off with a bang, had a few setbacks, but we really got back on track and started turning some pretty fast times in the 3 months and that got us thinking about entering the bike at Laguna Seca. What better race for us to test the Superduke's potential and see whether out "home crowd" would respond to our efforts? We called the AMA and asked what was needed for us to run at Laguna and Kurt Nicoll of KTM was instrumental in helping us get the bike homologated with the AMA in time for this race. So this is how the last week played out! Tuesday, last week, the AMA sent out a press release announcing that the Superduke would run at Laguna and the phones started ringing! You can see the press release here. 
Wednesday, we packed up the race bike and motor homes so that we could leave bright and early on Thursday for Laguna Seca. Thursday came and we set up our Pit at the Track. Right away we had some of the top teams in Daytona Sportbike stopping by our pits to size up the new Superduke. Then the Moto GP guys started dropping by. Both Sete's and Mika's crews stopped by at the end of the day and looked over the bike. They even had interpreters with them and asked a bunch of questions. When the tech guys are interested in what you are running you are on to something! Little did we know this was just the beginning. 
Friday's practice went well, no setbacks and we got steadily faster. Things seemed like they were working and again the attention to the bike was phenomenal. All day long there was a steady flow of 10-20 people at our pits asking questions and taking pictures. Many of them knew KTM only as a "Dirt" brand and were thrilled to see us running. This is when the butterflies start to settle in! Saturday was qualifying and we were steadily getting faster. We felt confident we could make the grid and by the end of the day we found ourselves at 32 out of 44. Not bad. WE QUALIFIED! All that was left was for us to run the race on Sunday. Then we got back to our pits. The crowd had grown. It was a steady 20-40 people for the next few hours. Again more questions: What is it?... How are you doing so well?... I didn't know KTM made a Sportbike!... You guys look great out there!... It is so different from everything else! We ran out of business cards! 
Sunday started calmly enough. We had a warm up in the morning where we got a little faster. We were running 1:34's pretty consistently. This gave us the potential to run about mid pack for the race. Who know?, with a few breaks we could finish in the money! Then came the long wait for our race at 3:30 pm. We spent the time going over tactics and strategy making sure we all understood the rules to the "flying start" and procedures for when we were on the pit wall. Those were a long four hours, you just try and stay focused and not let the anticipation and nerves get to you. The AMA Daytona Sportbike class is VERY competitive class. Teams are cutthroat when it comes to position on the track and we knew the teams around us would not cut us any slack. Most of them are veterans. 
There was a little drama right before the start as we had trouble finding our tire stickers. Without those you can't race. All of us in Daytona Sportbike have to run the same tires and the way that they control that is to issue you stickers that you must apply to the tire when you use one. The stickers have coded numbers on them and they use these number to keep everyone honest. Anyway our stickers showed up just in time and we went to our spot on the grid. The flying start went off without a hitch but then there was a 4 bike crash in the corkscrew and we all had to come back to the pits while they cleaned up the mess. We got a good jump on the restart and settled in, laps kept ticking away and GoGo was having a real battle with Sahar Zvik on the SRK Suzuki. He pushed us wide and out into the dirt in turn 3 and GoGo did a great job keeping the bike upright. I guess those wide MX style bars helped! A few laps later Eric made a pass on him in turn 4 but we couldn't make it stick. The race went on and we were holding our own and then it happened. Eric snuck inside Sahar in turn 11 and had the line but at the last second, after he saw Eric making the pass, Sahar dove for the apex and his rear wheel hit the Superduke's forks! Down went Eric. I was on the signal wall at the time and watched the whole thing. My heart sank, it was not a gentle low side crash. Then Eric did what all great racers do, he got back on the bike and went back out. We had lost a couple of positions but we were going to finish the race. After a quick stop in the pits so that AMA tech could check the bike Eric went out an turned his fastest lap of the weekend getting into 1:33's! The results say we finished 28 out of 44 entrants. What it doesn't say is how hard everyone worked. I am so proud of everyone on this team. We raced competitively without a lot of the racing components that are common in this class. Heck, we don't even have an electronic quick shift. There are a lot of things we can do to make the bike faster. But the most important thing we did this weekend is was to make a positive impression for KTM as a sportbike with the fans that matter the most. Race fans. "Ready to Race" (KTM's slogan) meant something this weekend and the fans knew it. Looking forward to the next round! Michael Meissner |
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