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TTXGP Race 1

6th May 2012

TTXGP PRESS OFFICE

TTXGP North America 2012 season opener started in Sonoma's glorious sunshine. This is the first year we will have an eSuperstock award for the fastest production bike on the TTXGP class grid and it will be interesting to see how the production bikes fair in a race with prototype machines.

The tension for the production bikes started just before the race when Jennifer Lauritzen came off her bike in her supermoto event and was rushed to hospital accompanied by team mate and husband Jason Lauritzen. Zero quickly drafted in Ernst Montague (619) and Kyle Schumacher (7) as replacement riders with only minutes to spare before the first race of the weekend.

The bikes lined up in a three by three formation lead by Barnes, Hunt and Szwarc. Followed by Kluge,Schumacher and Montague.
The race got off to a jack rabbit start with the two yellow bannanas setting an impressive pace from the get go. Lightning have obviously been working on reducing weight and improving handling all winter and it seemed the hard work was paying off. They were followed by experienced Zero riders, Kluge and Szwarc.
Software problems had plagued the Lightning team all morning and the gremlins had obviously not been entirely removed as Lightning's Tim Hunt came to a stop at turn 7 where he sat for a while as he rebo
oted his bike… He did get it going but with less than 50% of the laps completed, his race was over without points toward the championship.

The race pace with set by Barnes putting in a blistering performance; setting an unofficial lap record 1.51.548 (manual recorded) in lap 6. Transponder reading issues meant the leading bike's time had to be manually recorded:-

Pos	Nos.	Name	Team	Laps	Diff	Total Time	Best lap
1	80	Michael Barnes	Lightning	8		15:46.948	1:51.548
2	5	Martin Szwarc	Martin Szwarc	8	2:10.726	17:57.675	2:11.428
3	96	Kenyon Kluge	K Squared	7	1 lap	16:16.636	2:13.022
4	7	Kyle Schumacher	Ritz Racing	7	1 lap	16:30.108	2:19.537
5	619	Ernest Montague	Ritz Racing	7	1 lap	17:05.143	2:23.605
6	89	Tim Hunt	Lightning	2	6 laps	Retired