ET Finals Report
ERP racers traveled to Brainerd International Raceway to compete for individual and team honors against 19 other Division 5 race tracks.
Friday the weather was very cool with some sunshine. Several of our racers went several rounds in the gambler races including David Marshall who tagged the wall past the finish line when he had an oil filter failure but was able to return for the next round!
Saturday was about the same with no sunshine and breezy making for cold and challenging conditions. With the forcast for Sunday calling for rain, the decision was made to do 1 time trial Saturday and go into 1st round of elminations and try to get 2 rounds completed on Saturday. First round had 20 of our 38 racers advance to the 2nd round and 14 of those 20 went on to win 2nd round which was completed just before it got too dark to race (BIR has no lights).
With 34 team points we were in 3rd place in points at this time. Sunday morning it was raining as predicted until late morning, with what looked like an opportunity to race, the track was dried and the decision was made to complete the the event on the 1/8 mile! Just as they were ready to start it rained again until mid afternoon when the track was dried and racing started at 5.25 pm. With only 2 hours of day light to complete 4 to 6 rounds of racing racers were pushed hard especially after round 3! Round 3 was hard on team ERP as only 6 of 14 racers advanced to round 4. In round 4 Mike Sandstum lost in Sportsman, and Dave de Moss lost in Pro Bike. In round 5 Tim Sparks our last racer in Pro lost as did Tom Klemme our last Pro Bike left. The great news was in High School class where 1st year racer and 3rd generation racer Megan De Moss won the class with a great run! Super Pro racer Carl Anderson won round 5 and 6 to advance to the finals where he lost a very close race as darkness was closing in as was fog and dew! Awesome job Carl as he ran 4 rounds of racing in the last hour of racing and included a perfect run in round 3 !!!
Our team finished in 2nd place behind only the team from Cedar Falls Raceway. Congratulations to all of our team and thanks for making the trip. Next year we go back to Topeka.