From Celtic Racing
Photo by Brian J. Nelson
The Celtic Racing Orient Express team partnered with young Canadian star Brett McCormick last weekend at Auto Club Speedway for Round 2 of the AMA Pro Racing American Superbike Championship.
Though no stranger to Superbike competition or the indomitable 2009 Suzuki GSX-R1000 it was essential for McCormick to maximize all practice sessions on the unfamiliar track to ensure competitive pace come Saturday and Sunday's 21-lap feature races.
The New York-based team's strategy would utilize Friday's practice and qualifying sessions getting McCormick comfortable on the Celtic Racing LeoVince-powered GSX-R and allowing McCormick to learn the 21-turn 2.36-mile track. McCormick put in 27 laps during Practice 1,
posting a best time of 1:28.867, good for 17th place while testing a bevy of settings on the Celtic machine. The team continued to test various setup configurations during Qualifying 1 late Friday afternoon, with McCormick dropping 1.5 seconds (1:27.275) and posting the 14th fastest time during the 13-lap session.
The Celtic Racing team looked forward to Saturday morning's Qualifying 2 to set the final grid positions and better their fourth row starting position. Unfortunately for the team, however, fierce Santa Ana winds pummeled the Speedway Saturday morning with gusts up to 60mph forcing AMA Pro Racing to suspend Qualifying 2 due to unsafe race conditions.
Race 1 was pushed back further into the afternoon to give the blustering winds a chance to die down and the riders were given a short 10-minute warm-up session immediately prior to the race to familiarize themselves with track conditions.
With only a few short laps to test new settings the team headed into Race 1 unsure of how the latest configuration of the GSX-R1000 would play out over the course of the race. As the race progressed McCormick soon found the gamble in set up wasn't paying off as the Canadian rider struggled with the Suzuki over the length of the race. Showing incredible determination however McCormick dropped another 0.2 secs. off his previous best lap to set a time of 1:27.088 and moved up two positions during the race to finish just outside the top 10 in 12th place.
Armed with valuable data accrued during Race 1 the Celtic Racing Orient Express team went to work Saturday night to improve the Armour Bodies-clad Suzuki. With a short warmup Sunday morning to try out the latest changes McCormick entered Race 2 feeling much more comfortable on both the track and the Celtic bike.
Race 2 took place beneath beautiful Californian skies and McCormick was immediately challenging inside the top 10 in a battle with AMA veterans Ben Bostrom and Chris Ulrich, a battle that would extend throughout the entire contest. At race's end the Fontana rookie would find himself in seventh position. Even more impressively McCormick's best lap time during the race (1:25.427) was less than a second off the best lap of either race (Blake Young – 1:24.428).
“That was certainly a wild weekend,” McCormick said. “We knew coming in that it would take a bit of time to get everything going since it was a new track and my first race with the Celtic team. We were bummed to lose out on Saturday's practice but AMA made the right call since it was pretty bad out there with the wind. Anyhow we were off on setup during Race 1 and that made for a long race.
"I knew we could go faster in Race 2 and after some changes Sunday morning we did just that. It felt real good to finally get down to some lap times I knew we were capable of. I had a good battle with Ben and Chris and to come out with my best AMA Superbike finish at the line is just icing on the cake.
"A big thanks to the Celtic Racing team for all the hard work and the opportunity to race hard this weekend. I can't wait to get back on the race track.”
McCormick now sits in 10th place overall in the 2010 American Superbike standings with 37 points.
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