NEMRR Series

Round Five

August 24-25

New Hampshire Motor Speedway

Loudon, New Hampshire

Round Five of the 2024 NorthEast Motorcycle Road Racing (NEMRR) Series had nearly everything you could ask for in a race weekend.  Three days of activity under near prefect weather conditions, some great competition with some new faces making their way to the top of the podium, and a moving memorial lap held for an iconic rider who continues to make an impact on the lives of others long after his passing. 

It’s often said of NEMRR that riders come for the racing, but stay for the people and relationships they make while they are here.  The club is extremely proud of the atmosphere that this diverse group of riders creates at Loudon each weekend, and that family atmosphere was on full display all weekend long. 

On Sunday morning hundreds of riders from across the region gathered at Souhegan Valley Motorsports to kick off the annual Scott Mullin Memorial Ride, which runs from the Milford, NH dealer to New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The ride memorializes a life-long motorcycle enthusiast and racer who lived an exemplary life both on and off the racetrack. All proceeds from the event benefit the Scott Mullin Memorial Scholarship Fund, which offers financial assistance to students enrolled in the Powersports program at Manchester Community College. The moving spectacle of hundreds of riders covered nearly the entire 1.6-mile circuit and was led by a truck and trailer carrying the Kawasaki ZX-10R that Scott enjoyed racing so much.

The racing action featured both a pair of old veterans who went undefeated over the weekend and a bevy of fresh faces on top of the podium in several classes.  The winningest rider of the weekend was veteran Brett Guyer who went five-for-five across a variety of Lightweight and Twins classes.  Brett has been developing a Kramer 890 in 2024 and managed to get the bike all the way down into the 1:14 range by the end of the weekend. 

The other “old guy” who had a perfect record at Round Five was Penguin Racing School’s Eric Wood, who started developing a Ducati Panigale V2 after the Loudon Classic.  Wood went four-for-four across a variety of Heavyweight and Unlimited classes and was the only rider who found his way into the 1:11 range over the weekend.

Other standouts were Amateur Nik Paganis, who made big strides on his Kawasaki ZX-6R and dropped his times into the 1:16’s on the way to his first victory in the Amateur Middleweight GP Dash for Cash.  The Kawasaki rider ended the first lap in third place, but was consistently the fastest rider on the track as he ran down the fast-starting Nino
Jordan and Charles Keighley, who rounded out the podium in the feature Amateur race of the weekend. Paganis has put in consistent effort this season and dropped nearly six seconds a lap since the start of the season. He now has his eyes set on the possibility of winning a national championship at the Daytona CCS races in October.

The other first-time winner of the weekend was rising star Jacob Crossman. Crossman has been sampling MotoAmerica races over the past two seasons, first in the Twins Cup classes and more recently in the Supersport ranks. That national-level experience paid dividends this weekend as he tracked down NEMRR front runners Paul Duval and Ian Beam for his first ever win in the Seacoast Sport Cycle Dash for Cash. The Dunlop-shod Yamaha R6 of Crossman started in third behind the fellow Yamaha rider Duval and the lightning-fast Triumph 675 of Beam. The pair of Yamahas clearly had the advantage on the back side of the course, but Beam was getting killer drives onto the two longest straights at NHMS, and the crowd on hand was on the edge of their seats to see if one of the Yamaha riders was going to be able to make a pass stick.

Crossman picked off Duval on lap two, but the veteran stayed right on the back wheel of his rival as the two closed in on Beam. On Lap Nine Crossman made a big move on the outside of Turn 11 and with clear track ahead of him he immediately pulled out a gap.  Two laps later, Duval made his move on Beam, but when he came around at the stripe for Lap 11 Crossman had already pulled out a two-second lead. Crossman made special note to thank his parents for all of their efforts in supporting his racing career and looked forward to riding his R6 at the final MotoAmerica round at NJMP.

The final round of the 2024 NEMRR season will be held at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on September 21-22, 2024.  Information is available www.NEMRR.com