Professional riders who have ridden the newly-resurfaced track at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course report that the track is extremely slippery when wet and possibly too dangerous to race on in the rain. “We raced endurance here a couple of years ago, and we ran in the rain,” James Kerker, an AMA Superbike regular, told Roadracingworld.com after riding the Mid-Ohio track in the wet during the AMA Grand Championships last weekend. “We could easily run 1:45s in the rain and had plenty of grip, no real change in the surface at all, similar to what Road Atlanta is in the rain. But since they repaved it, pretty much everywhere, even off the sealer [Street Bond], is really slippery. You can’t get on the throttle at all. We were running basically 2:00-flat lap times versus 1:45s. There’s no traction anywhere.” “It was real unpredictable,” said Lester Racing/ESP’s Ben Thompson after making a wet lap of Mid-Ohio during the AMA Grand Championships. “It’s hard to tell what’s really slick and what’s not. There’s no avoiding any of the [Street Bond] spots there, and there’s a lot of walls that are really close to those really slick spots. I think it’s much too dangerous. It’s definitely the most dangerous of any track I’ve been around in the wet, and I’ve ridden some really bad tracks. Like Autobahn, that’s solid sealer through every turn, but there’s no walls.” “It’s very slippy,” said Gary Mason after riding Mid-Ohio in the wet Thursday. Mason rides for Corona Suzuki in the AMA but has spent most of his racing career in the British Superbike Championship. “If you go on the racing line where the cars go, both wheels just move offline about a foot. It’s very difficult to get a balance of how hard you can push. If you push hard into a turn and go to power out, then you go onto something [surface] different and you’ve got no grip. “We’ve got tracks this slippy in England. Donington Park, because of the new resurfacing, was as slippy as anything. So many people crashed at the British Superbike round this year it was horrendous. It’s possible [to race in the rain at Mid-Ohio], but obviously you have issues with certain walls, don’t you?” “This place is terrible in the wet,” said Jeremy McWilliams, after riding on a cold, wet track Thursday morning. “The sealer [Street Bond] seems to be the worst part. The level of traction on the sealer is so much different than any other part of the surface.”