RRSW/CCS INAGURAL RACE IS THE SEASON ENDER! Road Race Southwest, a Championship Cup Series affiliate, held its first racing event after picking up the pieces of a broken series from the desert floor and the racers came out in droves to support their efforts this past weekend at Firebird International Raceway’s West Course. It was a double point’s finale that almost wasn’t says RRSW President and race director Randy Stem. “Clear Channel had canceled the last race of the season and was going to close the door on all of our racers, so we decided to pick up the last race as well as the region.” With the sudden departure of Clear Channel Motorsports the purse for the Unlimited GP also went so Tom Krause, a RRSW board member contributed $500.00 form his own pocket. David Stone from AllStoneallthetime.com also tossed in $100.00 to winners in both expert and amateur Unlimited GP races. Well, anytime you throw cash on the table the level of racing goes up exponentially and this day was no different. The Expert Unlimited Grand Prix class championship was headed by Hunter Shingler from Tucson who had accumulated the points all season by being consistently near the top of the heap and his goal was to top the podium and clinch the championship together. His work was cut out for him as AMA Superbike privateer Scott Jensen brought out his very powerful GPR Suzuki 1000 to work on the tight track that should favor the milder power output of the middleweight machines. Kane Lasky was also making a pre/semi/sure he will- retirement weekend and the young gun Tristan Shoenwald reappeared to show up what he learned after a season running with the AMA. Right off the start Jensen jumped into the lead and wrangled his big Suzook into a 2 second lead over Lasky, Hunter and Tristan who were all fighting for second. On lap three Jensen’s motor made a ‘pop’ crossing the start/finish line which must have been the cork holding all the smoke in causing immediate race retirement for Scott. Lasky took the gifted lead and capitalized pulling a quick to be insurmountable gap on the “Young Ones” Hunter and Tristan. Hunter did everything right for the next few laps showing heaps of composure while fending off everything Tristan could try. On the last lap heading into the keyhole Hunter made a small mistake and within a microsecond, Tristan took advantage only to have Hunter dive back by in a spot where no one had passed all weekend two turns later to hold on for second. Kane won easily and announced his plans were to take on a group of racers and help them better their race craft for 2006. Hunter was able to clinch his championship in the class and showed that he is a young star on the rise. Tristan expressed his pure joy of racing for fun again and vowed to be back next year. The overall points were finally decided this weekend too with Kane Lasky taking third even after missing a few weekends, Ted Rich pulling ironman duty to grab second and Bryan Land winning almost everything he entered to take the number one plate. Land is a very impressive racer and came around very quickly considering he was racing out of the back of his truck without a canopy to start the season! Nick Terrell was the Amateur Class overall champion. Also, newly appointed Racers Representative for RRSW, Rick Stratton claimed his 100 career win with a Formula 40 win. Road Race Southwest would like to thank all racers, crews and fans for a great start/end to 2005 and are looking forward to 2006. For more the 2006 schedule, all results, points, times, information and a rider forum go to www.roadracesw.com