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Silence falls upon Portland International Raceway as Round 2 of the TTXGP North American Championship kicks off ** now with video updates
23rd June 2012
TTXGP press office
Practice and qualifying sessions at Portland International Raceway took place under English weather conditions. The morning started out a mixture of wet and dry with the heavens opening up just before the first practise of the day.
Three teams braved the wet conditions for P1. New rider Troy Siahan for motorcycle.com summed it perfectly.
“The morning was a bit sketchy. New bike, new track and lots of rain made me really nervous this morning. “ The racer was joined by bike designer and TTXGP regular, Kenyon Kluge, and new road racer Matt Kent for Virginia Tech Bolt racing team. The three bikes performed well as the pilot’s familiarised themselves with the track.
Having spent the day at the track at a free practise session on Friday, Brammo’s Steve Atlas chose to sit it out. As the home track of the remaining racers, each took the decision to stay dry.
The afternoon session was a totally different picture both with the weather and on the track. A total of 9 bikes got ready to go out for the qualifying session with the much-anticipated return from the Isle of Man of MotoCzysz.
Ray Crepeau, General Manager for MotoCzsyz, was working on the bikes post the qualifying session; the bikes were only delivered yesterday evening and were out racing today with very little set up time. “Practice went well today especially with a brand new rider Christopher Ancien. We should see a gain of 3-4 seconds in each bike tomorrow once we have a little more set up time. We are looking forward to racing tomorrow.” Michael Czsyz and Christopher Ancian comfortably scored a pole and second place position on tomorrow’s grid.
Defending TTXGP North American Champion Steve Atlas was happy with his qualifying session stating, “I was 2 seconds faster than yesterday, and got my fastest time in the last lap so know I have plenty of battery to do more tomorrow”
Fourth place Matt Kent was a little more hungry for better performance times; “it went well but we still have some more testing to do tomorrow morning with some different parameters we want to try-out to get back up to where we were this April… “
Special shout out goes to Ely Schless; veteran EV racer who was out here today racing on his 25th wedding anniversary. “I had to be out here racing in my home state, and it was a lot of fun, I was out there pushing myself like I was actually racing this afternoon, it was a lot of fun; love it here”
Kenyon Kluge of K Squared racing team and Zero Motorcycles was happy as expected with all four of the Zero bikes out there racing today. Not only did he and Troy Siahaan take place in both of the TTXGP sessions they also entered into the Ninja 250 cup on their Zero’s! “Qualifying was really good fun, at one point we were drafting each other and having a good time racing amongst our selves. Working like that together like we did we all achieved faster times than we could have expected if we had just gone out there and raced on our own. In fact both Siahann and I were up 20 seconds on our practice lap time so it was a good result and more importantly a lot of fun. The Ninja cup was just a but of fun to see if we could keep up with the gas bikes. We did pretty well through all the corners but they had us on the straights. We raced each other thought going back and forth and had fantastic time all the while learning the course for tomorrows race.”
Troy Siahann echoed this sentiment. “Ninja 250 cup race was a lot fun especially as I think I beat Kenyon! I was learning a new bike; what it could do as well as the best lines on the track to take getting better and faster with each lap. Myself, Chris Page and Kenyon had a 3-way scrap during the qualifying session and it was hilarious. I honestly think electric bike racing has already gained at lot of traction, [eSuperstock] is definitely a viable racing category and its going to be the way of the future.”
We’ll catch up with Chris Ancien from Motoczysz, Chris Page and Don Headrick from OMRRA Racing tomorrow.
Tune into http://www.portlandlive.com/ at 2:05 tomorrow afternoon to catch the race as it happens from PIRs security camera feed!
| Pilot | Team | Number | Fastest Laptime | Position |
| Christopher Ancien | MotoCzysz | 12 | 1:15.839 | 1 |
| Michael Czysz | MotoCzysz | 11 | 1:15.958 | 2 |
| Steve Atlas | Team Icon Brammo | 1 | 1:18.949 | 3 |
| Matt Kent | Virginia Tec Bolt | 72 | 1:34.494 | 4 |
| Ely Schless | ProtoMoto | 18 | 1:37.441 | 5 |
| Chris Page | OMRRA Racing | 9 | 1:40.593 | 6 |
| Don Headrick | OMRRA Racing | 69 | 1:40.783 | 7 |
| Troy Siahaan | Motorcycle.com | 111 | 1:141.040 | 8 |
| Kenyan kluge | K Sqaured Racing | 96 | 1:41.100 | 9 |
For more information contact our Press Office
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