Roadrace Southwest, a CCS affiliate, went into the weekend on the tight and technical west track at Firebird International Raceway in Chandler, Arizona and Mark Ledesma once again proved he was King of Firebird. The turnout was excellent with large grids and a guest round for the joint RRSW/SMRI Vintage racing series. A newly added Supermotard class drew more of the dirt-orientated crowd who ultimately spent much time dicing it up with the SVs of the Lightweight classes. The premier race of the afternoon was the Roadrace Southwest Expert Unlimited GP with a purse of $2000 and a large turnout that has promoter Jack Frost considering some changes. “If we keep getting larger grids for this race, we may be upgrading the purse to $3000 or more. The reason is to hopefully drag some faster guys from nearby regions and make our region more competitive.” The competition was already hot this weekend though with some true local heavy hitters on the grid. RRSW #1 plate holder Ivan Garza was looking good all afternoon on his Evan Steel-built Suzuki GSX-R1000. He had some real good battles all day with former ASMA Champion Mike Shreve and his YZF-R6 and Rory Palmer’s Euro Motorsports Triumph 675. The highly anticipated race, which had been talked about for weeks on a local forum, came under an overcast sky with virtually no wind. The first lap had Garza in the lead with Ledesma following very closely and doing scary looking power slides coming out of the keyhole. Shreve was in third battling hard with the disadvantage of being on the only 600 in the top five. A three-rider battle for fifth between Dale Keiffer, Davie Stone and Palmer was overshadowed by the dramatics at the front. Garza set a new lap record of 57.580 earlier in the day but was more concerned with Ledesma on his tail who was studying the lines of the 2006 Champion Garza. It came down to a mistake in turn one by the Champ which let Ledesma and his North Valley Honda Superbike skim into the lead–Garza simply got into one too hot and ran wide. That mistake also allowed Shreve to get by. Shreve who has really picked up his game attributed his newfound tenacity to two things- training with Doug Chandler for hours and his switch to Dunlops that seem to suit his loose style better. He was showering the track with sparks as he ground titanium bits from his machine while chasing Ledesma. Since Firebird West is a tight course with short straight, Ledesma had to get the best drives he could to keep at bay young Shreve, who had the highest mid-corner speed. Ledesma later admitted that if Shreve had passed him he probably would not have gotten around him again. Ledesma used lapped traffic to his advantage at the end to put Shreve down a second and take the win with Garza in third. On the podium, Shreve commented on trying to pass Ledesma. “I would build up corner speed and look for a way around and all I could see is the entire side of Mark’s bike as he powered out of the turns!” The lap record set by Garza was not topped during the premier race, but Shreve did come within 0.2-second of it on his Middleweight machine! Full results and lap times, as well as the 2007 schedule, is available at www.roadracesw.com so get yourself entered today for next month’s speed fest at Firebird East!