Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By David Swarts

Jeff Wood and Brian Stokes each won a race during a disorganized CCS/Formula USA event Friday at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. On the plus side, the weather was perfect, in the high 70s with no humidity, unheard of for August in Alabama.

GSX-R600-mounted Wood came from behind to win the shortened-from-25-minutes, nine-lap GTU race by 2.3 seconds in his debut as an Arclight Suzuki rider.

“I had been talking to Chuck (Warren, Arclight Suzuki Team Co-owner) all year,” said Wood. “I recently had an engine failure, and all the parts were on back order. I was talking to him about getting an engine, and we thought it might just be better to try a whole bike. It’s much faster than my bike.”

Wood said he will still carry original headline sponsor Bettencourts as a personal sponsor.

“Jeff’s been riding the wheels off his bikes all year,” Warren told Roadracingworld.com. “He called me and said making this race was in jeopardy. And to be honest, he’s the closest Suzuki (rider) to winning the (F-USA Sportbike) Championship, so we decided to help him.”

Behind Wood, Championsonline.com’s Michael Barnes finished second on his Yamaha YZF-R6, just ahead of Wood’s teammate Scott Harwell. Scott Greenwood led at one point but finished fourth on his Argo Cycles Yamaha, ahead of Trey Yonce and a rapidly gaining Chris Ulrich, who started on the last row of the first wave, row 10, due to a lack of CCS points.

Butler Machinery’s Robert Jensen was leading and pulling away on the third lap of the GTU race when he pitted. After the race, Jensen said he was testing tires for Michelin in preparation for Sunday’s F-USA National races.

Vesrah Suzuki’s Brian Stokes ran away with the six-lap Heavyweight Superstock sprint, winning over Corona Extra Suzuki’s Ben Attard, Wood, Harwell, Greenwood and Ulrich, who started on row seven.

Attard and Wood rode GSX-R600s.

The overriding theme of the day, however, was disorganization, which led to only six of the eight scheduled races being run and only four of the races running to their scheduled distance.

The weekend was fouled up from the beginning, with professional racers arriving for Thursday promoter practice to be told that the practice day being run by Cornerspeed and the racetrack was full and that no more riders could enter. Friday practice was made more complicated by the inclusion of Learning Curves school sessions on track, between practice sessions, and the fact that Learning Curves sessions were given operational priority.

“We fell behind early and were never able to catch up,” said CCS/F-USA boss Kevin Elliot.

In addition to the normal, unforeseen race-day delays caused by crashes and track clean-ups, the day was put behind schedule from the start by more racers (over 400) than the expected 250-275 showing up for the event, causing a shortage of electronic scoring transponders and scoring problems throughout the day as transponders were swapped from racer to racer.

As of 7:30 p.m. local time, official results were only available for two races.

The troubled day culminated with the Formula USA Team Challenge endurance race, which was scheduled for 250 kilometers, or 67 laps, but lasted all of 45 minutes and 30 laps.

Elliot said delays in the schedule and the track’s 5:00 p.m. curfew forced him to shorten the Team Challenge race to 60 minutes, but race teams complained that they were not informed the race was shortened until after it had started and their race strategies had been put in play.

“We didn’t get to go after it (the race) the way we wanted to,” said Himmelsbach Racing’s Michael Himmelsbach, who was slated to ride the third and anchor leg for his Championship-contending team but didn’t get to ride at all. “This is the second time they made the decision to shorten this race without letting us know.

“I haven’t heard from one person who heard them announce that the race was shortened until after it was started.”

Race director Phil Sberna said it was announced over the public address system that the Team Challenge race was shortened before the race actually started, but he admitted that he did not realize the P.A. system was inaudible on pit lane, where most of the Team Challenge participants were at the time of the announcement.

“That was our mistake,” said Sberna.

Elliott and Sberna held round-table meetings with disgruntled racers at the end of the day.

Unofficially, Celtic Racing’s Des Conboy and Simon Turner took the overall and GTU class wins in the Team Challenge race on a Pirelli-shod Yamaha YZF-R6.

Conboy said his team did not hear the announcement that the race was shortened, but “we had it covered. We had a yellow (hard-compound Pirelli) on the rear, and I was riding conservative. I wanted to give Simon enough tire to finish. Barring any problem, we would’ve had it.”

Celtic Racing also took the overall Team Challenge race win at the previous round of the series, at Virginia International Raceway (VIR).

The Team Challenge race at Barber was further shortened by a red flag with less than 15 minutes remaining in the race.

The CCS sprint races that did not run Friday will be run Saturday.


Update: Baker Race Gear was awarded the overall Team Challenge race win in revised results issued Saturday monring at Barber Motorsports Park. Look for complete race results from Friday in a later post.