Our friend Luch Carlin takin' the streetbike for a rip! He was all smiles!
Photos by Laura Barkley
Barkley posts excellent results in Mission B.C. Mission Raceway Park was the site of the CMDRA's third stop on its 2006 schedule. The weather was near perfect, with clear skies and temperatures approaching 30 degrees. This made for a rather slippery track, as the EB Speed team would find out throughout the upcoming weekend. The Street Class 2006 Suzuki GSX-R1000 performed flawlessly all weekend. Ethan was now becoming more and more comfortable on the wheelie prone 167HP streetbike. In Saturday's morning test session, Ethan was able to get the Walt Healy Motorsports backed 2006 Suzuki GSX-R1000 into the upper 9.6's at 145+MPH. After qualfying was over, he had secured the number two spot with an excellent .026 reaction time! In the morning test session, the times dipped even lower to an incredable 9.59 @ 148.8 MPH! As the bike is wheelie-prone, Ethan was forced to short shift at 9000rpm in first gear. In future events, they have decided that this bike will carry some extra weight on the front end. Team EB Speed is confident the near stock GSX-R1000 can dip into the 9.4's @ 150+ in the right conditions. With twenty two riders gunning for the win, the Street Class would prove to be one of the most competitve classes of the weekend. Even though we had run 9.6's several times, it was decided to run a conservative 9.70 dial in, and hope that we could maintian quicker reation times and run the bikes down before the finish line. This conservative apporach worked flawlessly, making round after round. We met up with Tom Tourand of Maple Ridge abourd his CBR 1000 in the finals. Tom had a great light, and both riders stayed on the gas the whole quarter mile. Ethan broke out with a close 9.67 on his 9.70 dial in versus Tom's much too quick 11.75 on a 11.90 dial giving Team EB Speed the win. Our Pro Street program has been slow to get off its feet, but high hopes sourounded the EB Speed pit that the bike would start to show its potential. The bike was booked in for a test session on Friday prior to the CMDRA event, in an effort ot gain insight into the chassis setup and fuel managament. Friday's times were less than spectaculer, running in the 9.4's at 160+ MPH. Pluggin the laptop into the bike and dowloading the recorded data after each run, we were beginning to net mall improvemts. Saturday evening was spent working on the bike in hopes of better results in qualifying. Tom Tourand opened up Saturday's qualifying session with a bang, running a stout 8.97 @ 166 MPH abord his Hahn turbochardged Suzuki Hayabusa. Then U.S. based racer Mark Fuerborn stepped up and pulled an 8.94 @ 159 MPH on his Kawasaki ZX12R sporting a healthy shot of nitrous oxide. We managed a clean run and turned a 9.06 @ 164 MPH. Putting us in third spot, good for 4 more points in the championship standings. Tom Tourand would go on to run another 166+ MPH pass in qualifying, giving him the new speed record for the class! That evening, Ethan and EB Speed crew chief, James Carlin, made several more changes to the bike. New clutch plates, radical changes to the multi-stage lockup clutch and shorter gearing were also installed. In the opening round of eliminations on Sunday, we met up with Ken Froese and his nitrous powered Suzuki Hayabusa, who prior to this event was tied with Ethan for top spot in the overall standings. The changes made the prevoius night really payed off and we ran a 9.02 @ 161 MPH to Ken's 9.23 @ 150 MPH. In round two, we lined up against number two qualifier Tom Tourand. Another smooth run and the score boards flashed an impressive 8.78 @ 164 MPH over Tom's slow 9.23 @ 155 MPH. That run would be the teams new personel best with the new bike, and would stand to be the low E.T. of the weekend in the Pro Street class. Number one qualifier, Mark Feurborn, would also make it to the finals running consistant high 8.9 second passes. However in the finals, Ethan had an uncharacteristically poor reation time, giving Mark a sizable head start. We ran a quicker 8.91 @ 164 MPH to Mark's 8.94 @ 159, but we were unable to pass him before the stripe, resulting in a runner-up finish. This event marked the halfway point in the CMDRA six race season. We are currently sitting first in in the championship standings in both the Street and Pro Street classes. The Street Class GSX-R1000 is running great, and becoming more and more consistent with every event. The turbocharged Pro Street GSX-R1000 is beginning to show its potential. In Mission, the boost was set at a realatively low 11psi out of a possible 22+. Now that the clutch setup is close, and we are making good power, look for the times to drop and the speeds to go up. CLASS / QUALIFYING / RESULT STREET E.T. / 2nd / 1st PRO STREET / 1st / 2nd
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