Round 6 |MotoAmerica Superbikes at New Jersey | SEP 11-13

And he's just SO likable man. He's a great guy.

 

The whole team is.

 

It was much worse than that.

Bad femur break, which is what caused the crash when his knee caught the curbing.....which you can see in the crash vid as his right leg was moving in a lot of directions it shouldn't.

https://mailchi.mp/8122908adca3/bradley-ward-injured-at-new-jersey-motorsports-park

 

Rewatched the race. Ouch.

 

Yeah that explains the choppa. Femur breaks are awful but cant get even worse if it interferes with the femoral artery.

 

....not only that, but the break itself can cause significant internal bleeding. Quick search reveals that a complete femur fracture (but not compound) can result in 1-1.5 liters of blood loss.

 

I specifically requested a ground transport but they made me take a chopper when I broke my femur. It's about a 10-15 minute ride to Cooper in a bird vs 45+ on the ground.

 

Ah, makes sense now. When they mentioned he was airlifted, I thought it was odd.

 

So is it time to start petitioning for a Rocco rule?
110% of the the fastest qualifier or 108% of the second fastest qualifier. It would have actually made a 0.077 second difference in Twins.

 

No.

I'm not giving up quite yet, but the class is losing it's luster a little bit. M4 is throwing alot of resources at the Twins Cup Championship, and Rocco and Kaleb are very, very fast. It's pushing the whole field to build riskier, faster engines, use more tires, etc. Last year, a good rider on a good SuperSport SV could qualify and compete mid pack. This year, everyone has built motors. I used to think it was ridiculous that we got 8 tires for a one race weekend, but the top teams are using ALL of them.

Madama announced this weekend he's done for the year, he's been through 3 engines this season.
Parrish has not been to the last few rounds, not sure what his plans are for the rest of the season. He's pushed very hard to keep up with the kids. Breaking engines and crashing sucks.
Robem / RBOM has mentioned they are selling the SV's at the end of the season.
I personally know several guys at the bottom 1/3 of the time charts that are not going anymore. The bar is very high.

25.9 is good enough for a top 10 in SuperSport

 

Sounds like Stock 1000 is now the "budget" class, ironically.

 

Its interesting to see how they are using this class as a stepping stone for the young kids who arnt old enough to compete in 600's and too good for the 400's, as well as the others who use it because it costs less than the 600s. Sorry to hear a lot of the og's are not able to continue on.

 

M4 can't complete in the superbike class, so they have to go after something.

 

The TWINS class was fun to watch last year!

 

All Madamas engine issue $$$ must be cutting into the fuel tab on the new RV.

 

As it should be. It's Pro Racing.

 

Yes and not really trying to be disrespectful to anyone trying to make the show but there are a LOT of dudes that aren’t running at the front of club races and are going “Pro” racing and realistically that’s cheapening the racing.
Showing up and hoping to just qualify is not doing the series any favors other than collecting entry fees and tire $$$

 

I got Verderico.

 

I agree with this. If you aren't top of the box in club races, stay local and hone your craft. If you're second, you're still chasing someone. If you're running away from WERA experts and aren't being pushed, seek a venue where you can grow and find someone to chase. The twins class was indeed fun to watch the last two years, but now real pros showed up with really trick bikes and budgets and showed the early years were in essence club guys in a pro series.
And I mean zero disrespect to any of the competitors by that at all. I rooted for Parrish and was happy he won the intial title. He'll have maiden twins cup champion title forever. I know he's on here and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd bet the Suzuki contingency money was a major part of funding his program and the combination of not winning that cash and the higher cost of competing against bigger budget teams is why he's been off the grid for several rounds. He's fast as hell too. If he's struggling, that says a lot about how high guys like Rocco have raised the bar.

 

For some reason on the MotoAm+ site I cannot find Superbike Race 1. It's pissing me off... WTF?!?