The Barracuda Lightning team won the e-Power/TTXGP race at Le Mans yesterday, validating that teams risky move to race at Le Mans rather than finish out the season with the TTXGP North American championship.
Rather than dissect why Lightning chose this path, let's look forward to what is shaping up to be a seriously exciting TTXGP World Championship race at the Daytona International Raceway.
First, that race will have Muench Racing, Barracuda Lightning, Team Icon Brammo, as a repeat of the lineup at the Laguna Seca e-Power/TTXGP race, and will include Zongshen, assuming they choose to come to America for a race.
At Laguna Seca, Barracuda Lightning's Michael Barnes barely beat Brammo's Steve Atlas to win that race. However, he beat Muench's Himmelmann by 16+ seconds.
At Le Mans, Barracuda Lightning's Duhamel barely beat Muench's Himmelmann by just shy of 2 seconds. We wonder how much effect on this result came from Duhamel's lack of experience with this bike, as well as the lack of testing and setup time for Lightning to set up the bike for Duhamel.
At the Miller Motorsports race, Steve Atlas was badly beaten by team-mate Eric Bostrom.
At Le Mans, the Zongshen racers all finished well down from the leading bikes. However in most of their meetings Zongshen and Himmelman have been duking it out for the lead.
All this suggests there will be a massive battle between racers with the Brammo, Lightning, Muench and Zongshen teams. It's just not clear enough to predict now who will win. The margin of victory in each of these pairings has not been clear enough to point to which team has the more powerful motorcycle/rider combination.
Oh, and there will probably be some Zero Motorcycles bikes, and the Virginia Tech team, and maybe even one or two of the teams from Australia. It's fair to say that in the overall rankings these teams will finish well down, but that doesn't mean their results won't be as interesting. Effectively the TTXGP has three classes and the competition within these award categories is just as intense.
Rather than dissect why Lightning chose this path, let's look forward to what is shaping up to be a seriously exciting TTXGP World Championship race at the Daytona International Raceway.
First, that race will have Muench Racing, Barracuda Lightning, Team Icon Brammo, as a repeat of the lineup at the Laguna Seca e-Power/TTXGP race, and will include Zongshen, assuming they choose to come to America for a race.
At Laguna Seca, Barracuda Lightning's Michael Barnes barely beat Brammo's Steve Atlas to win that race. However, he beat Muench's Himmelmann by 16+ seconds.
At Le Mans, Barracuda Lightning's Duhamel barely beat Muench's Himmelmann by just shy of 2 seconds. We wonder how much effect on this result came from Duhamel's lack of experience with this bike, as well as the lack of testing and setup time for Lightning to set up the bike for Duhamel.
At the Miller Motorsports race, Steve Atlas was badly beaten by team-mate Eric Bostrom.
At Le Mans, the Zongshen racers all finished well down from the leading bikes. However in most of their meetings Zongshen and Himmelman have been duking it out for the lead.
All this suggests there will be a massive battle between racers with the Brammo, Lightning, Muench and Zongshen teams. It's just not clear enough to predict now who will win. The margin of victory in each of these pairings has not been clear enough to point to which team has the more powerful motorcycle/rider combination.
Oh, and there will probably be some Zero Motorcycles bikes, and the Virginia Tech team, and maybe even one or two of the teams from Australia. It's fair to say that in the overall rankings these teams will finish well down, but that doesn't mean their results won't be as interesting. Effectively the TTXGP has three classes and the competition within these award categories is just as intense.
When ?
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