Random notes, comments, statistics, musings, and bits of trivia from MotoAmerica’s Superbikes at Barber event at Barber Motorsports Park:
Rain In Biblical Proportions
MotoAmerica races in the rain. It’s one of the pillars of our championship, and we only hold our events at tracks where we are confident that we can maintain an acceptable level of safety for our riders when they compete in the rain. Lightning, however, is a firm “no go,” and we had some of it in the vicinity of Barber Motorsports Park on Sunday. It delayed our program slightly, caused us to compress some things on the schedule, and yet, we were able to complete almost the full Sunday schedule of races, with the exception of the Royal Enfield Build. Train. Race. program, which had to postpone their second race of the weekend and add it to the schedule for our round at Ridge Motorsports Park on June 27 through 29. Thank you to everyone involved with BTR, particularly the 12 ladies who race-prepped their Continental GT 650 motorcycles, trained to compete aboard them, and, of course, wanted to line up again on Sunday for their encore race of the weekend.
And how about that “biblical rain” that fell, appropriately on Sunday at Barber, which is located right at the shiny buckle of the Bible Belt, and where they have an inflatable church to underscore that fact? There was talk that some older gentleman was preparing to build an ark not far from the race course and among all the interesting statuary at Barber. I’d heard that he found lots of tall pine trees in the vicinity, but there wasn’t enough gopher wood to even construct a dinghy.
Doing The Ton…And More
Josh Hayes once told me that the 16-turn, 2.38-mile road course at Barber Motorsports Park is an ideal layout, but it’s like they stuck it onto a copier and reduced it to about 75%. That’s not a bad thing, mind you. It makes for some awesome racing, and the technical nature of the course really tested the talents of our riders.
Barber is not a high-speed circuit, but then, that depends on your point of view. If you think 158.0 miles per hour on a fire-breathing Superbike is fast, and I definitely do, then Josh Herrin‘s fifth lap of the 16 he completed aboard his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati Panigale V4 R during Friday morning Practice 1 was fast. In fact, it was the fastest trap speed recorded over the entire weekend.
Here are the highest trap speeds achieved in the other four race classes this past weekend at Barber, and the riders and bikes that achieved those velocities:
144.5 miles per hours, PJ Jacobsen, Rahal Ducati Moto w/EXPEL Panigale V2, Motovation Supersport Qualifying 2, Lap 14 of 16
130.7 miles per hour, Alessandro Di Mario, Robem Engineering Aprilia RS 660, SC-Project Twins Cup Race 1, Lap 10 of 14
116.0 miles per hour, Sam Drane, Estenson Racing Yamaha Krämer APX-350 MA, Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul Race 1, Lap 5 of 11
103.0 miles per hour, Kira Knebel, Royal Enfield Continental GT 650, Build. Train. Race. Qualifying 2, Lap 6 of 10
50 Ways To Lead The Others
BPR Racing Yamaha Supersport rider Josh Hayes was born on April 4, 1975. That means that, this past Friday, April 4, the “Mississippi Madman” turned 50 years old. He had a celebration with his team, as well as his wife Melissa Paris‘s MP13 Racing team and several other friends throughout the paddock. On Saturday night, he participated in a Q&A session at the MotoAmerica Volunteers Dinner held during every race weekend, and he was presented with yet another cake. When you turn 50, for some lucky people like Hayes, your birthday starts to resemble Mardi Gras with the prolonged celebrations. Well, after two birthday get-togethers, Hayes had another celebration in the prodigious rain on Sunday.
Aboard his signature number-four BPR Racing Yamaha YZF-R9, Joshua Kurt Hayes, the newly minted Quinquagenarian, marked his half-century on this planet by winning Sunday’s rain-sodden Motovation Supersport race two. And, he did so against a talented field that included defending class champion and multi-time Superbike race winner Mathew Scholtz and Supersport Championship runner-up, Superbike race winner, and former FIM Superbike and Supersport World Championships contender PJ Jacobsen. In other words, Hayes’s win was not an indictment on the talent level in MotoAmerica Supersport, but rather, it was a bold testament to the talent level of four-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Josh Hayes. The victory extended his AMA all-time race wins record to 89 just a day after Cameron Beaubier‘s Superbike race one victory resulted in his 87th all-time race win. So, the net result is that Beaubier remains two wins behind his former Yamaha teammate Hayes.
From Wreckers To Checkers
Did you see Koch Racing team rider Sean Ungvarsky’s incredible podium finish in SC-Project Twins Cup race one despite his Yamaha YZF-R7 “looking a little second-hand” as MotoAmerica Live+ commentator Michael Hill would say? Ungvarsky was among the multitude of riders who crashed their bikes in the wet race conditions on Sunday but, somehow, the always-smiling Arizonan remounted his heavily damaged Yamaha and raced it across the finish line. He celebrated his podium-finishing result and gave an exceedingly heartfelt and inspiring celebratory speech afterwards.
Unfortunately, it was determined that, due to Ungvarsky crashing and then, a red-flag race stoppage that occurred not long afterwards and resulted in the race being made final, Ungvarsky was moved back from third to seventh in the results, handing the third-place finish to a very happy Levi Badie, who races for Karns/TST Industries.
According to MotoAmerica VP of Operations and FIM Official Niccole Lewis, “Per our Official Rulebook, if someone has crashed before a red flag and has not experienced a disadvantage, we will add a disadvantage based on the amount of time it took him to continue. Essentially, we are trying to make it so that the results would be the same as if the race wasn’t stopped.”
Undaunted by the literal setback, Ungvarsky never lost his enthusiasm, and he even made a point to walk over to Badie and congratulate him on his podium result. On a personal note, I’m proud to share a name with Mr. Ungvarsky because that dude is topnotch.
Cutting To The Quick
Weather conditions at Barber Motorsports Park, especially on Sunday, weren’t very conducive to breaking lap records, but Saturday was decent, and Strack Racing Yamaha‘s Mathew Scholtz took advantage of it. In the morning’s Motovation Supersport Qualifying 2, on his 17th and final lap during the session, Scholtz set a new track record of 1:25.464 in MotoAmerica’s middleweight class. Then, in the afternoon, Scholtz set a new race lap record of 1:26.089 on lap 12 of the 14-lap race one.
It was the first-ever race weekend at Barber Motorsports Park for the Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul riders, so no records were broken because no records existed. However, class benchmarks were established by
Warhorse Ducati/American Racing‘s Alessandro Di Mario, with his eighth and final lap in Qualifying 1 recorded at 1:34.524 as the class lap record and his second of 11 laps in Talent Cup race one setting the race lap record at 1:34.969.
Race It Like a Rented Motorcycle
Bad Boys Racing‘s Avery Dreher is competing in this year’s SC-Project Twins Cup Championship, but he technically doesn’t have a motorcycle to call his own. At Daytona in March, Dreher raced a rented Yamaha YZF-R7 and tallied a pair of fifth-place finishes in the two races on the High Banks.
For this past weekend’s Barber Motorsports Park round, Dreher’s sponsor CJ Czaia rented the Team Hammer-built Suzuki GSX-8R that was raced last year by Rossi Moor. On Saturday, Dreher put himself on top of the box when he chased down and overtook race leader Alessandro Di Mario to claim the victory in race one. It remains to be seen if Dreher will continue to race the rented bike for his family’s Bad Boys Racing team, or if Team Hammer might formally bring him into the Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team based on his success with their motorcycle. Stay tuned.
The Artist Formerly Known As
A big topic of conversation at Barber Motorsports Park this past weekend was that long-time MotoAmerica racer Bryce Prince is now going by his actual surname, which is “Kornbau.” The Bakersfield, California, racer and motorcycle dealership owner actually mentioned a year ago at Barber that Kornbau is his surname, but it took until his BPR Racing team announcement for him to officially declare that he is now Bryce Kornbau.
By the way, in German, “Kornbau” means “grain production,” so you could say that Bryce Prince has finally decided to “go with the grain.”
We’re lucky because Bryce “The Artist Formerly Known As” Prince could have been like His Purple Badness Prince Rogers Nelson and gone with some weird, unpronounceable symbol instead of a cool Teutonic tag like “Kornbau.”
This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
