Crash spoils final AMA weekend for Young Fogi Racing Development Team THORNBURY, Ont. – Thornbury, Ont. motorcycle road racer Ben Young had a trying finish to the AMA Pro Road Racing season at New Jersey Motorsport Park in Millville, N.J. last weekend. An unlucky crash during qualifying left the Fogi Racing Development Team rider with a suspected fractured shoulder, although he bravely elected to compete in the final two SuperSport races of the season aboard his Yamaha YZF-R6. Young went down in the second of the SuperSport qualifying sessions after running over debris from another riders crash and losing traction just seven laps into the session. In addition to injuring his shoulder Young was left 28th on the starting grid for the two races. The opening 19-lap contest was held just a few hours after Youngs fall on Saturday and the demanding 12-turn, 2.2-mile track took its toll, but the Yamaha rider persevered for a 25th place finish. On Sunday Young was feeling less encumbered by his injury and in the opening stages of the race he made the sort of charge from the back of the grid that has distinguished his season. He was up to 20th spot after only four laps but then his R6 developed a clutch problem that forced him out of the race after five laps. This has been my toughest weekend of the season, admitted Young, who wound up 14th in the final SuperSport East point standings. I so wanted to finish my rookie AMA season in the top 10. The team has worked so hard throughout the season but weve been dogged with something at each event. With all the bad luck and the steep learning curve of racing in the AMA Championships, I think we will be better prepared for the 2012 season and in a position to really make an impact. I cant thank all my sponsors enough for their support. Lean Angle, Motul, Arai, EBC Brakes, K&N, TechSpec Gripsters, MICS (Medical Information Carrier System), Turn2 Sportbike School, Arlen Ness, Vortex, Goodridge, AirTrix Paint Store, BCL Motorsports, Renthal, Infinet Designs, GP Tech, The Awning Company, Scot-Build Developments and Armour Bodies have all played a big role in giving me the opportunity to compete this season. Young and the Fogi Racing Development Team will be out at the final round of the RACE SuperSeries at Shannonville Motorsport Park September 23-25. This will mark the first time Young has raced a 600cc motorcycle in Canada. More, from a press release issued by Dainese: Dainese and AGV wrap up the 2011 Pro AMA Season in Championship form at the New Jersey Motorsports Dainese and AGV were on hand for the final Pro AMA event of the season at the famous New Jersey Motorsports Park. Dainese/AGV rider James Rispoli clinched the AMA Supersport East Championship as well as the overall Supersport Championship. Dainese rider David Gaviria secured the West Coast Championship Dainese rider Blake Young debuted the 1st ever air bag suit in Pro AMA racing history. The D-air system helped Blake to a first place finish on Sunday’s event, only a few points shy of the over all championship. Blake had a disappointing finish on Saturday. “The Dainese D-air suit gave me the confidence I needed to hang it out on Sunday and capture the win” said Blake. Dainese/AGV would like to thank all of our riders: Michael Jordan Motorsports Ben Bostrom, Rockstar Makita Suzuki Blake Young, M4 Suzuki Elena Myers, Steve Rapp, M4 Suzuki Martin Cardenas, ANT Racing James Rispoli, M4 Suzuki Chris Ulrich, David Gaviria, Thomas Puerta and Erik Buell Racing Geoff May for an amazing season. More, from a press release issued by Muench Motorrad Technik GmbH: New Super-MUENCH dominates TTXGP race MUENCH driver Himmelmann once again victorious in Karlskoga (Sweden) “If we cannot think of something it does not look that promising for us,” stated MUENCH driver Matthias Himmelmann shortly before entering the fourth TTXGP EU Championship race in Karlskoga, Sweden. The team decided to change the chassis frame settings and successfully completed the warm-up. With an improved lap time of 1.12 minutes the team was not only one second faster than before but was finally able to calmly approach the final race at 12.30 pm. For the final race both Zongshen team drivers HoChi Fung and Yu Tang, the Swedish homebound matador and jet pilot Peter Linden with his Berix Honda CBR 600 as well as Qualifying third place and local Mikael Nilson on his Mavizon joined the queue behind Himmelmann. David Hallet (Team Agni) was not able to race because of an unfortunate crash during the Qualifying that caused his e-bike to be heavily damaged. At almost summerlike temperatures of 22°C race started at 12.30 pm sharp. By that time no one knew that yet another premiere for MUENCH Racing Team was about to happen. Shortly after the starting line MUENCH driver Himmelmann and HoChi Fung raced alongside. Just before entering the first curve Himmelmann put all his talent and experience to a good use, delayed the braking and passed the Chinese. The two were closely followed by Tang, Nilson and Linden on his Berix Honda. Furthermore and with a time of 1:12,8 Himmelmann not only achieved the fastest lap time during lap three but set another time record for e-bike racing on asphalt. For the final laps the top 5 rankings remained the same and MUENCH Racing Team once again got to celebrate yet another great success the team’s first start to finish victory! “During the remainder of the race I was not expecting the lap times to be that good. Even though I reduced the power supply and only wanted to keep the distance I achieved lap times around 1:13. The MUENCH TTE-2 clicked like clockwork! With his preparation and the adjustments he made Thomas Schuricht, our Head of Development, really achieved an excellence,” said Himmelmann after the race. Now, Fans can be really looking forward to the last race in LeMans on September 23th. A race, that will not only decide the TTXGP EU Championship but will also nominate the FIM e-Power World Championship’s participants. Additionally all racing fans get to watch another highlight- the fight for the legendary 24 hour Motorbike World Championship crown. Considering the TTXGP EURO Championship standings Himmelmann leads the field with 75 points followed by HoChi Fung (China, Zongshen, 56 points), Alessandro Brannetti (Italy, eCRP Racing, 45 points) and David Halle (UK, Agni, 40 points). Looking at the FIM e-Power Championship standings team MUENCH also places first with 55 points. Team eCRP (36 points) and team LNG Racing(16 points) currently rank second and third. More, from a Royal Distributing/MBP Superbike Team: 2nd Place for Stufko, Heartbreaking DNF for Leon. Montreal, Quebec. September 7, 2011. Riding his Royal Distributing / MBP Ducati 848, fitted with an 1198 engine, Tony Stufko finished second in the Amateur Superbike class at round 5 of the RACE Superseries. The event race took place on September 4 at Shannonville’s Long Track configuration. Teammate, Michael Leon suffered a heartbreaking mechanical failure to his Ducati 1198S Superbike, on the opening lap of the Pro Superbike feature. Tony had some work to do after beginning the opening lap of the Amateur Superbike race in 4th position. Race leader Kris Garvie had pulled out a 5 second lead by the time Tony moved up to second place. Tony put his head down and began to slowly reel in the leader. He ran laps in the “1:48″’s and “1:47″s and in the process set the fastest lap of the race. His best, a time of 1:47.603 seconds was also a personal best for Tony on the long track. The final finishing order was Garvie riding a Kawasaki 600 in 1st, Stufko on the Ducati in 2nd, and Adam Murray in 3rd, riding a Yamaha 600. All three riders were on Dunlop tires. Tony has moved into second in the Amateur Superbike point standings and after the race commented “I owe so much to the tireless work of Guy from MBP. His efforts both trackside and in the shop on both bikes have literally salvaged my season.” The custom made front drive chain sprocket of Michael’s Ducati Superbike failed on the opening lap of Sunday’s Pro Superbike Final. Fortunately, no other damage occurred and Michael did not crash as a result of the damage. The race was won by Jodi Christie with Sean Huffman second and Elie Daccache third. The DNF was especially disappointing for the team since Michael was definitely a contender for the win this weekend. Michael had won Saturday’s Pro Superbike heat race after an exciting battle with Christie who was riding a Honda CBR 1000. “I was really looking forward to racing for the win today, and I’m sad for the whole team. In the last two rounds, we have finally begun to turn some fast lap times and started to explore the potential of the bike and the Dunlop tires. It’s a shame. I can’t wait to get back out there for another shot at a win in Superbike.” commented Michael. The next event for the team will also be the last of the season. Come out to support the Royal Distributing / MBP team and the RACE Superseries at the season finale on September 23rd, 24th and 25th at Shannnonvile on the Pro Track configuration. Michael Leon is supported by Royal Distributing, Martin Brickwood Performance, Dunlop, Pro 6 Cycle, Elka Suspension, Accelerated Technologies, Double Dog Moto, Nexo Sports, Rev-Amp Electrical Equipment, EBC Brakes, Woodcraft, Armour Bodies, Eurocorsa, MRA Windscreeens, Speedymoto, J Precision, AV&V, LG Restorations, CVR, George Seeger, Dave Cody and Quebec Coating. Tony Stufko is supported by Royal Distributing, Martin Brickwood Performance, Dunlop, Pro 6 Cycle, Windmill Motorsports, Valley Sales and Equipment, Monette Sports / Montreal Ducati, Ottawa Yamaha, Rev-Amp Electrical Equipment, EBC Brakes, Armour Bodies and , LG Restorations. More, from a press release issued by Monster Energy: Monster Energy Interview with 2011 AMA Pro Road Racing Superbike Champion Josh Hayes CORONA, Calif. (September 7, 2011) Monster Energy Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes won his second consecutive AMA Pro Road Racing Superbike Championship on the final lap of the final race of the season this past weekend. Hayes showed up for the season finale at New Jersey Motorsports Park trailing Suzuki-rider Blake Young by just five points. Hayes handily won Saturday’s opening race, his third win of the season, to set up a final-race showdown for the title. Hayes had been there before. His mantelpiece holds four number one plates: 2003 Supertock, 2006 and 2007 Formula Xtreme, in addition to the Superbike title from on year ago. That experience would prove invaluable on Sunday. Still, well into the final lap, in the final race of the season, Young was in position to steal the title away. Then, a critical riding error by Suzuki-rider Ben Bostrom elevated Hayes a spot to guarantee the championship. Not content with third, Hayes made a final run past Suzuki-mounted Roger Hayden, and proceeded to pull alongside Young, only to come up short by .055 seconds. “I feel like a wet rag that’s been rung out,” Hayes said. “That race took two years off my racing life.” When the points were tallied up, Hayes total of 263 eclipsed the tally of 258 for Young, with 14 of those points coming as bonuses. Hayes earned an extra point for each of his seven pole positions, and for leading the most laps in seven of 13 races. Monster Energy caught up Hayes as he was driving with his wife, fellow road racer Melissa Paris, to Atlantic City. The 36-year-old Mississippi native wasn’t heading to the East Coast gambling Mecca to lay bets, he was on his way to the post-season banquet to celebrate his second consecutive AMA Pro Road Racing Superbike title with the rest of the Monster Energy Graves Yamaha team. First, he had to find the hotel, then Melissa had to find a dress, and finally, he could walk into the ballroom as the best of the best. ME: This wasn’t your first time racing for a championship, which much have been a big help. JH: Absolutely. There were a lot of things that worked in my favor. I have been in this position a bunch of times, and I’ve been successful in this position a bunch of times. Blake hasn’t been in a championship run before, and we were coming to a track (where) I had won every race we had raced here, while he hadn’t been on the podium. I have a job already for next year, so I wasn’t racing for a job. There were a lot of things that were all right for me to have no pressure and just be able to go out, and ride my best, and not worry about it. Even one other thing was it may sound kind of silly but I had already won the AMA Superbike Championship. If I didn’t win it this year, I got another shot at it next year, and I’ve won it before, so I know I can. My name’s in the record books as an AMA Superbike Champion. It’s not like, man, if I don’t win it, I might never get that opportunity. I’ve done it. I made it. And if I got a second one that was great. If I didn’t, yeah, it stinks, because that’s what we work real hard for, but I get to come back next year and try again. At Mid-Ohio, Blake complained about your riding and you made the point that the pressure might be getting to him because he hadn’t been in the lead until then. I didn’t see much of Blake at Laguna. After that, we get to this position and I knew what my position was. I’ve been through it before. He hasn’t. I’m pretty sure that was a long six weeks at home for him. I was pretty sure that was a long six weeks of thinking about how things could go down, were going to go down, might go down, or might not go down. And I was, quite honestly, really relaxed. I felt good about everything. I just wanted to make sure I showed up here feeling good. I knew if I just went out there and went through the motions of what I do every single weekend, quite honestly it was Blake’s championship to win or lose. It was either he was going to step up and take it. Or, if he floundered a little bit, sorry, but it was going to be mine, because I was going to go through the same motions that I do every weekend. And that’s exactly how it played out. He had a bad Saturday. The championship was won on Saturday. On the last lap of the season, when you were in fourth place in turn five, and there were nine turns to go, and you were aware that you couldn’t finish fourth, what was the plan? I was going to try to make something happen. I knew something was going to go down in turn six. Ben (Bostrom) was showing that he was desperate to go up there. No one was going to leave him room, but he was going to take something anyway. And those guys, between Roger (Hayden) wanting to win real bad, and Ben wanting to win real bad, and Blake (Young) basically in the position of desperation to win it’s the only choice he really had. Something exciting was going go down in turn six with everybody being that close, so I was going to put myself in the position to try to take advantage on the exit, or if they gave me the opportunity on the entrance, to put myself up a spot. Then, I still had turns seven and eight, and I felt pretty confident that I could make the move in turn eight on any of those guys. So I felt confident I could make a move in there, and if I could just get myself through there smoothly and get to the run to the front straight, I felt pretty good. I wasn’t sure I could beat anybody to the line from behind them, so I wanted to try to make it happen beforehand if I could. When Blake Young let off the brake in turn five and turned into Roger Lee Hayden’s path, he basically set in motion the incident that let you move up to third, and ultimately take the title. It’s the way Blake’s ridden all year. It’s kind of the style of Blake. You get in there, you show him a wheel, and he basically crowds you. He puts us all in danger doing it. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all professionals, so we recognize the signs and we go about doing what we have to as quickly as possible. And as soon as Blake saw Roger was there, Blake’s idea of how to fix that is, ‘OK, let’s get off the brake lever, point the thing at the entrance and chop across his front wheel. He has two choices. He’s either going to take me down, or he’s going to back off and I’m going to get through.’ When Roger saw the position he was in, he’s going in just trying to keep it upright on the brakes, and ends up just kind of crossing Blake’s back wheel, because he’s in trouble. He’s got Ben outside of him looking at him and so they end up both running wide. Like I said, it was the excitement I expected in turn six, but it happened in turn five. It all started when Blake stepped it out and botched his drive coming out of four pretty bad. And so he got a bad run up the hill and gave Roger an opportunity to get up there. So when Ben Bostrom ran off the track on the exit of turn five, that put you in third. Did you think he had come off the track behind you? I didn’t even know he had run off the track. I thought he had just run wide, and I had the opportunity to sneak past him. So, I thought he was still right on my tail all the way throughout the rest of the last lap. I just didn’t know where anybody was. As far as I knew I had a line of guys waiting to jump on me and keep shoving me backward. If I’m not moving forward, I’m going to be in trouble, so I just did my very best to attack Roger and put myself in a better position, where if somebody did beat me to the line, hopefully it was one, not two, and I just still had a good shot at third in the championship. That made it difficult to pass Blake coming out of the last corner… Once he’s up on the top of the tire, his bike just keeps accelerating. I had the run of a lifetime at him coming to start-finish on that last lap. It was the first time I was far enough back of him that I didn’t have to check out of the throttle going through the last turn, and I still couldn’t do anything with him. It’s the story of my life. How does this one compare to the 2010 title? This one felt quite a bit different on a personal level. The way everything played out with the season, not being sure what the last race was going to be, and then, Virginia (International Raceway) getting taken out of the mix at the last second. With all of these things happening like that plus my family and my little brother getting married my family couldn’t make the plans ahead of time to come to the race, so this is the first time they haven’t been here when I won a championship. Melissa’s family didn’t get make it because of other things they had going on. At the time to plan all this stuff, we still weren’t sure this was going to be the last race. Last year, all my crew had their family there. This year, there was so many other things going on. When was the last time I won and there wasn’t even t-shirts at the podium ceremony? Not that they weren’t thinking about it, the feel has been kind of an interesting feel. But, I can tell you when the race was over, it was just an incredible instant amount of relief, a big exhale that we were (finally) able to pull it off. Props to Blake, he rode a fantastic season and he was the racer, I think, this year. Unfortunately, they do pay points with qualifying and leading the most laps in the race. I tried to make sure that I was a force to be reckoned in every single session that we went on the track, and I was always somewhere close to the front, and my bad days just weren’t as bad as his. You didn’t win as many races this championship season as you have in the past. For one, Blake just stepped up his game and actually raced really well. It’s hard to take anything away from the fact that the kid just rode well. He was aggressive. He put himself in the right place. He rode the races the right way. He used his machine’s advantages well against me. And the way that the (Yamaha) R1 works, it was very difficult to race against him. Something that we’re going to have to improve for next year, or else we’re going to be talking about this same thing all over again, about why I didn’t win more races. Because, quite honestly, I don’t know what it is, but the acceleration of his bike, it’s just really, really difficult to deal with. If I have some clean track I can go really fast. I mean, that’s why we were on pole for all but one race this year, and we were (still) close on that one. That’s why we were leading races, leading sessions, leading laps, all those things. But, whenever you throw him in the mix, he kind of stops my momentum and rhythm of being able to roll around the race track, and that’s when we see the race-long battles. How do you think next year is going to be different than this year? Right now, it’s going to be interesting to see how all the rides fall into place and who I’m racing against next year, first and foremost. I think that we have a game plan that works pretty good as far as the team goes, and we’re going to continue doing the things that have been successful for us. One thing I’m lucky about is that Yamaha is in it for the long haul, and they continually try to improve the machine for me. I may be an old dog that’s been around for a while, but I still have some ideas for some new tricks that I can come out better next year. I’m going to work at that, try to come out and improve next year, and make it harder for those guys.