Bridgestone/WERA National Endurance Report for Code4-Racing Team

Riders: Andy Allen, Matt Brooks, David Lucero
Pit Crew: Eric Odle, Christina Karam
Machine: 2006 GSXR 750 Bike #181
Class: Heavyweight Supersport (HSS)
Track: Miller Motorsports Park

We started the weekend off making the trek to Utah for the WERA event. Virtually everyone on the team showed up Thursday or early Friday morning. Our Code4-racing teams paired up with the Twin Works Factory teams to share one of the front GP garages at this top-notch facility. Special thanks goes to ZoomZoom Trackdays for their facility support. Weather was wishy-washy and we were just hoping it wasn’t going to rain or that a tornado wasn’t going to come through. It was very windy, and a little wet at times.

Friday practice: This was the first time Matt or Andy had ridden the 750, and also the first time Andy has run anything with GP shifting. Nonetheless, everything went very smoothly in practice and we were able to get down to some respectable lap times running earlier generation Supercorsa Pros. Later in the evening we went over rider order, pit stop procedure and pit to rider/rider to pit communications. All was looking good.

Saturday morning we had a quick practice, mounted new Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa tires and it was time to go racing. Andy started us off and was able to get a good launch and hang right with the 2nd place Twin Works Factory team rider. All was going good until on the 20th lap. Andy got caught up with a slower rider and had to trail brake a little too late washing out the front. Luckily nobody was hurt and even more surprising was the bike was pretty much unscathed. It was still 100% rideable with just a bit of road rash. Andy rode it in, we made the rider switch, filled up and David was off. During the stop the WERA officials noted the front tire didn’t look good. After inspection we agreed the front looked pretty ragged but to get David out there and see how things felt. After a few laps he pulled in to let us know we should get another new set mounted, only this time back to the old gen Pirellis, and he was off again. After this we found out the old gen tires weren’t available and we’d have to go with another new set of Diablo’s when we reached the half-way interval. At this point, with the crash and the extra stop, we were in 4th in our class out of 4 but only a few laps down. The rest of the race went on without any mishaps. We ended up changing one set of tires about half way through and couldn’t make up the time we lost at the beginning and took 4th. We were 6 laps down from 3rd.

We learned a lot and had a lot of fun considering how things started off. Next time we will look to finish on the podium and bring home some hardware. Congrats to all the teams in the race! There were zero red flags and only a few who started did not finish.

Thanks to our sponsors & crew, More Power Racing, Suomy, Eric Odle, Christina Karam, Shawn from Z2 trackdays and the Twin Works Factory Crew for all their help. Couldn’t have happened without all of you.