Defending MotoAmerica Supersport Champion Richie Escalante escaped a fiery crash during the damp Supersport session five Wednesday morning at the MotoAmerica/Dunlop pre-season test at Circuit of The Americas (COTA), but the situation was even stranger than that.
Escalante was the second rider to go out on track, but when he came across the start/finish line the name Jorge Ehrenstein popped up on the scoring monitors.
Escalante’s HONOS Racing teammate Ehrenstein crashed his Yamaha YZF-R6 on Tuesday afternoon due shifting issues, according to his team.
Today, Ehrenstein asked Escalante to ride his Yamaha in the morning’s damp Supersport session five to see if Escalante experienced the same shifting issues.
“Then I have a stupid crash,” said Escalante, who was using rain tires, “and the bike caught on fire.”
Escalante, who normally rides a Kawasaki ZX-6R, said he was not injured in the crash.
Sean Dylan Kelly was the only other rider to go out in the session, and he did so primarily to check on some fueling and electronic calibration issues he experienced with his M4 ECSTAR Suzuki GSX-R600 on Tuesday, according to his crew chief Jeremy Toye.
Kelly also used rain tires.
