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Brammo returns with a new Rapp to beat lightspeed. It's showtime.

5th May 2012

Anthony Olway

Today has been another event filled day with a morning practice and afternoon qualifier including a return to the track by Brammo with a new rider and a lightning power wheelie ...

The morning practice

The lightning bikes of Tim Hunt (89) and Michael Barnes (80) were on top form for the Saturday Morning Practice session. Tim Hunt Set virtually consistent times of 1:58, still learning his way round the unfamiliar circuit.
Michael Barnes clearly was that he was the fastest judging but the way he was riding. Having missed out on practice on Friday, he was making up for it with a time recorded by his team of 1:47, just 10 seconds off the AMA Pro Superbike 1000 pace, and beating his own record in the Harley XR1200 series.

Martin, Jason and Kenyon were 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd fastest respectively for the esuperstock Award all within 2 seconds of each other, with Jennifer not far behind. Consistent times were set for all four Zero S bikes, with the fastest laps earlier in the session, and tailing off slightly towards the end as the temperature of the air cooled motors raised. All four bikes completed a full session, of up to 11 laps, proving that they have enough energy in the batteries to last the full race distance.

Qualifying

Martin Szwarc shaved a full 3 seconds off of his practice time, at 2:10.342, which makes him the favourite production bike going into tomorrow race. That’s over three seconds faster than Jason and Kenyon, who also both improved their times by a second. Jennifer Improved slightly.

Brammo returned to the circuit in the afternoon, having fixed their bike after Steve Atlas had had a big highside under acceleration on the exit of turn 7. ‘Steve-O’Atlas was still recovering from six fracured vertebrae and recovery time is expected to be six week. so Brammo drafted in AMA Pro Superbike Rider Steve Rapp to step in and take the repaired empulse RR out for Qualifying. This was not the first time on a electric for Rapp who rode the Mission ‘R’ in spectacular fashion at to within 10 seconds of Moto GP pole, at Laguna Seca last year. From the outset it was clear that ‘Steve-R’ was not holding back, and he was not far behind the 2 Lightning bikes. The Brammo machine had advantage of speed into and through the corners, but the Lightning bikes used their immense torque to pull away on the exits and along the short straights.

However at the fastest part of the circuit braking down to the double apex tight turn 7, Steve fell down heavily on the left of the bike. Luckily Steve was able to walk away, but suffered a broken wrist and is out of the TTXGP races. Brammos beautiful bike now battered on both sides from the 2 heavy crashes was brought back by recovery trucks and it was clear that Brian Wismann and his crews weekend was over.
Michael Barnes was only marginally slower than practice this morning, with 1:47,553 Lap.

Both Tim Hunt and Michael Barnes were power wheeling the Lightning Superbikes over the hill, and also accelerating out of the final turn onto the start finish straight.

Tim Hunt improved dramatically over the morning practice session, taking 4 seconds out of his lap time, to bring him in at 1:54.730. Tomorrow will be an interesting battle…

Qualifying Results:-

Position	no.	Name	Team	Bike	Best lap time
1	80	Michael Barnes	Lightning	Lightning SB2	1:47.553
2	89	Tim Hunt	Lightning	Lightning SB2	1:54.730
3	1	Steve Rapp	Brammo	Empuse RR	1:57.133
4	5	Martin Szwarc	Martin Szwarc Racing	Zero S	2:10.342
5	96	Kenyon Kluge	K Squared Racing	Zero S	2:13.893
6	7	Jason Lauritzen	Ritz Racing	Zero S	2:14.858
7	619	Jennifer Everson Lauritzen	Ritz Racing	Zero S	2:18.858