SECOND AT SUMMIT

Mark Faulkner, Doug Royce, Brandon Salyer, Nathan Seethaler

Round 1 of the N2/Wera National Endurance Series would take us to Summit Point Motorsports Park in the beautiful rolling hills of West Virginia. There was some speculation in the weeks leading up to the race on if it would go ahead. The recent events of Covid-19 had many events canceled. Particularly, the postponement of Pittsburgh which was moved from May to later in the season in September. Regardless, the team was itching to get racing and Summit Point provided a great venue.

The team arrived Thursday night in preparation for Friday practice. The morning provided great weather conditions for the first half of the day and the riders spent most of it learning yet another new track. None of them having turned a wheel on the circuit previously they quickly found out it had a bit of everything. Long fast straights, quick sweeping corners, tight twisty sections, and very hard braking. The track was technical and setup was difficult. Then the rain came early afternoon canceling the remaining practice time causing two of the riders to miss their seat time on the endurance machine.

Saturday morning would bring qualifying at 9:20am and as Royce left pit lane to take the first lap he quickly found himself folding the front into turn 1. The bike sustained very minor damage but was in need of repair. Luckily the rider walked away unharmed. Unfortunately the team missed the remaining time in qualifying meaning they had to start the race dead last on the grid. It was at this time everything during the weekend seemed to be working against them but nonetheless they pushed forward to race time.

The green flag flew at 1:00pm with Faulkner taking the first stint. He would make quick work of making his way through the grid, setting the teams fastest lap of the race on lap 17, and then take over second place in class before coming in. He pit on lap 56, handing the bike off to Royce who at this point in the weekend had completely zero laps on the bike and had one crash. He maintained the pace Faulkner had set earlier to keep the team in second place but didn’t seem to make up much ground on the leader. Come lap 111 the team would perform a tire change when Salyer took the reins. Who again, also had completed zero laps on the bike at this point in the weekend. With hopes of a win surely slipping away this late in the race, Salyer laid down some very solid laps to maintain the team’s position. With a late stop, Faulkner would again climb aboard to bring the bike home in 2nd place in class and 6th overall.

With all the setbacks on the weekend the team came through when it counted and is less than 6 points behind Mi Scusi SDK heading into Round 2. Make sure to join us at the fast and flowing Roebling Road Raceway near Savannah, GA. on July 18th.

Click the link for the team results here:WERA results.