Carolina Motorsports Park Kershaw, South Carolina Michelin Team Challenge Series Sanctioned by ASRA Round 2 The second round of the 2010 Michelin Team Challenge Series came to Carolina Motorsports Park and as expected, the teams searching for the championship put on a spectacular show for the crowd. The defending National Champion Chester Auto Team took their new BMW S1000RR and led 43 of the 45 lap event. Originally scheduled for 65 laps, a crash by Dennis Espinoza on the Trebour Precision 40 Suzuki caused a red flag and brought the 2-hour time limit into play. The Chester Auto Team only gave up the Overall lead only when they pulled off the track for their mandatory green flag pit stop but quickly regained the advantage to cruise to the win by 23.716 seconds. The battle for the Overall win was also the battle for GTO class supremacy as Chester Auto took on perennial front runners Mid-Cities Motorsports with Calvin Martinez aboard a Kawasaki and the Suzuki of Ivan Milan Racing. Milan Racing, with Ivan Milan doing the riding chores, stayed hooked up with Mid-Cities even to the point where both teams pitted together on lap 33. With a quicker stop, Milan was able to sneak past Martinez into second place and hold on to the end, finishing in the runner-up spot by 1.2 seconds over third place Mid-Cities. It was Chester Auto’s second Overall win at CMP and solidly moved them into first place for the championship. The RnR Cycle teams showed the GTU class their strength with a solid 1-2 finish. By taking the win in their first event of the season the RnR Racing Yamaha ridden by Jonathan Elias and Jason Gibbens may have won the battle but it was the second place team of Rachel Sasse and Krishna Pribaldi on the RnR Cycle Repsol Kawasaki that took the lead in the war. RnR Repsol moved up to a comfortable 21 point lead in the class with six rounds remaining. Unfortunately for the CC Racing entry of Nicholas Cicci, they failed to make the required pit stop before the checkered flag and they were penalized a lap, moving them from third to fifth in the class. Taking advantage of the miscue, Premier Racing with team captain Daniel Dougherty and Adam Horton aboard, moved into the final podium position on their Yamaha 600. While the field in GTL was small, the racing was fierce between the two teams as Born Cross Eyed Racing, with Jay Smith and 2009 Solo Champion Ray Hofman aboard, faced off with defending National Champion Grease Monkey Racing. The two teams finished nose to tail after 44 laps of competition with less than a second between them. The culmination of the race long fight was when on lap 43, it was the Buell of Born Crossed Eyed came across the stripe first, but as happens in to the best of teams, it was the Grease Monkey Racing Suzuki who was able to edge out the hard-charging Buell on the final lap for the win. This was the second victory of the season for Grease Monkey Racing and it looks like teammates Eric Helmbach and Alex Shaw are in a good position to repeat as GTL Champions for 2010. The next race for the Michelin Team Challenge Series sanctioned by ASRA is May 23 at Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit Illinois. For more information, including complete results and points standings, check out the ASRA website at www.ASRARACING.com