Millville NJ – And we aren’t talking about the weather! Despite the intense heat and humidity in Southern New Jersey this past weekend, the NJMP SportBike Championship Cup Series (CCS) racers were the true cause of the burning track. Eric Stump, a 16 year-old racer, who proudly claims Berlin, New Jersey as his home set a new lap record at the 1.9 mile Lightning course. To start off a successful day of racing on Sunday, June 27, Stump blazed ahead and was able to post a lap time of 1:05.775 in the 12 lap Pirelli Diablo Challenge. Later in the day, he was able to TOP this fantastic record with a lap time of 1:05.754! This sets a new overall bike track record with last year’s record being 1:06.469. Eric continued to show a dominant racing attitude throughout the day, succeeding in taking a podium position home in every race he entered, including a phenomenal showing of starting out dead last on the grid, to come home and take a first place finish in a drag race from the final corner to the checkered flag. Eric, however, was not the only showing of incredibly fast racing talent. Peter Meringolo, an amateur rider, made a great showing by keeping up with expert rider, Eric Helmbach in the last race of the day on Saturday. Helmbach took 1st overall in the end of the Thunderbike race, and Peter, who took 2nd overall, was still the 1st place amateur competitor in that race. Our Lightweight Superbike competitors also made a good showing this weekend. Expert rider Mark Evry took first place overall, after being left in second place at the start of the race by fellow expert rider, Joe Cotterino, Evry was able to take the lead and run. He led most of the race on his Ducati 1000, leaving Cotterino to take 2nd expert position (3rd overall on a Suzuki SV650, and Meringolo again took 2nd overall, also on a Ducati 1000, and 1st in the amateur standings. In the final race of the weekend, Unlimited Superbike, Timothy Bemisderfer proved his expert skills. After leading more than half the race, and giving himself a significant lead cushion, he went on a “motocross excursion,” but was able to not only save himself from a hurtful crash, he continued back onto the course and maintained his 1st place position to take the checkered flag in the race. We’re looking forward to seeing some of these racers battling it out again on July 23-25 when CCS returns to NJMP on the Thunderbolt course for the ASRA North East Cyclefest. It’ll be a big weekend, with even bigger talent than we have seen here at Lightning this past weekend. Sunday’s racing finished without a red flag and no serious injuries. The Atlantic road racing division of CCS thanked NJMP for an outstanding effort as the track and its staff are coming up to full speed on managing these exciting motorcycle road racing events.