Lightning strikes in Canada with Lightning Motors win at 3rd TTXGP race

Michael Barnes starting out strong, photo by David Herron

Today Michael Barnes brought home another win for Lightning Motors in this weekends TTXGP race, the third of their North America championship series. It brought five teams from around the U.S. for the first electric motorcycle race in Canada. Beautiful, clear and hot weather was welcome after the torrential rainstorms on Friday, and made for a perfect day to race. The results were in first place Michael Barnes (#80, Lightning Motors), in second place Thad Wolff (#37, Team Electra), and in third Jennifer Bromme (#23, Werkstatt Racing).

Michael Barnes took off strong at the beginning of the race and just kept on going, nearly lapping the entire field. This is the dominant bike of the North American TTXGP, and on the track it sounds like the wind as it whooshes by. Michael had a personal goal today, to best the lap time of his friend who was racing a gas bike that weekend. His friends lap time of 1:34 was almost met by Michael's lap time of 1:35.278.

Regardless of the competition between Michael Barnes and his friend this factoid demonstrates something. The LIghtning Motors bike, in its first year of racing, is already fast enough to credibly race the gas powered superbikes. In the Pro Sport Bike race shortly later the winner was Jordan Szoke with a best lap time of 1:23.331 riding a Honda CBR600RR, and the slowest best lap time was by Matthew Leahey, 1:35.974, also with a Honda CBR600RR. Michael Barnes lap time of 1:35.278 was faster than Matthew Leahey's speed. If the qualifying were solely on the basis of speed the Lightning Motors bike would have qualified for the superbike race.

Despite being eclipsed by the Lightning Motors bike, the other teams gave incredible performances and it was an exciting race.

In second place, Thad Wolff riding for Team Electra, had a very strong showing. Their bike is a vintage Norton Featherbed frame restored and converted to electric by Brian Richardson. It's a very light bike with a powerful motor and battery pack. It is a beautiful bike with a strong presence on the track. With a 1:44.144 best lap time this bike is slower than (not by much) the superbikes, but within the ballpark of the Sport Twins (Suzuki SV650) practice held today.

In third was Jennifer Bromme, Werkstatt Racing, riding a Mavizen TX02. The TX02 was designed from the Team Agni bike which won the 2009 Isle of Man TTXGP and races this year as #22 in the North America TTXGP. Jennifer has had a long series of issues with the bike, including this weekend. Through a close partnership with Mavizen and others to resolve the issues, she got on the track and had an awesome race and her first time on the TTXGP podium. Her fastest lap time of 1:58.629 was slower than the Sport Twin (Suzuki SV650) bikes, and faster than the CBR125 bikes racing this weekend.

In fourth place was Michael Hannas riding for ElectricRaceBikes.com. Their bike is following the dual Agni motor design of the Mavizen and Team Agni bikes, and was almost unable to race today. A complete controller failure yesterday turned the bike into a hunk of inert metal. Most electric motorcycle components are special order items not carried by the on-track parts suppliers who simply don't have much call for the dozens of specialty parts on electric motorcycles such as this failed controller. It being a saturday afternoon, and the nearest distributor thousands of miles away in Seattle, it didn't look feasible to acquire a replacement controller before the Sunday noon race. But above-the-call-of-duty work by both the TTXGP staff and the manufacturer located a controller in Chicago and an overnight delivery by a courier relay got the controller to the track by 8AM. With their hunk of inert metal converted back into a motorcycle, they were in the race but unfortunately an overheating problem kept the bike running at a crawl for most of the race. Even with these problems their fastest lap time was better than the CBR125 bikes racing this weekend.

In fifth place was Steven Belknap riding for Square Wave Racing. They were the only team using a transmission (a CVT) in earlier races, but for this race they removed the CVT and added a few battery cells for a higher voltage. Unfortunately while their speed did improve over earlier races, it was not enough to improve their standing. Their fastest lap time of 2:12.218 would have placed them in the middle of the CBR125 race this weekend.

Team Agni was registered to race but did not arrive.

Pos	#	Rider	Team	Distance	Laps	Best Time	Total Time
1	80	Michael Barnes	Lightning Motors	31.656 km	8	1:35.278	12:55.780
2	27	Thad Wolff	Team Electra	31.656 km	8	1:44.144	14:08.791
3	23	Jennifer Bromme	Werkstatt Racing	27.699 km	7	1:58.629	14:12.150
4	15	Michael Hannas	Electric Race Bikes	27.699 km	7	2:00.564	15:22.676
5	16	Steven Belknap	Square Wave Racing	23.742 km	6	2:12.218	13:38.272