Barkley Dominates CMDRA Season Finale

The CMDRA finals took place September 13th and 14th, 2008 at Castrol Raceway in Edmonton Ab. Ethan Barkley spent the two weekends prior to the event testing a new clutch tuneup on his Pro Street GSX-R1000, in hopes of setting a new record. Also on his mind were the championships in both the Power Up Lubricants Pro Street series and the Mission Springs Brewing Co. Street series. In the Pro Street class, Ethan was only 64 points behind first place, which made it neccesary to not only win the event, he needed to set both the elapsed time and speed records. In the Street series, the margin was 89 points, which meant class leader Glen Kneller would have to lose the first round and Ethan needed to win in order to close the points gap. It was shaping up to be a high pressure weekend for the Suzuki Canada / Walt Healy / EB Speed team.

Saturday's qualifying aboard the '08 Suzuki Hayabusa went very well. Ethan was running consistant 9.60's at 150 mph and after the three rounds of qualifying he ended up in third spot out of 30 competors. During testing in the Power Up Lubricants Pro Street class Ethan was pushing the limits, and ran a record setting 7.95 at a mere 171 mph in the Saturday morning test session. Qualifying was more difficult, the front end kept coming up too high forcing Ethan to chop the throttle. Even with the diffuculties, he still ran an incredible 8.001 @ 183mph which was good enough to put him in top spot. The team was determined to get every available point, and that particular run was good enough for one half of an E.T. and Mph records, now he just needed to back them up.

Sunday was off to a great start as Ethan continued to run consistent 9.6's to 9.7's aboard the '08 Busa in the morning test session. Round by round Barkley ran down his competitors and made up vital ground in the championship standings on point leader Glen Kneller. Five rounds later Ethan found himself in the finals against Ken Morrison on his Kawasaki ZX-12R. Ken is an excellent racer and had come on strong in the later part of the season, but he made it easy for Ethan. Knowing Ethan was on his game, Ken really pushed the lights and jumped the start, automatically giving Ethan the win. However Barkley still managed an incredable 9.63 on his 9.60 dial in as he crossed the finish line. Even with all that hard work, the championship had slipped away by a mere 4 points!

Pro Street was shaping up to be a very tense battle. Even though Ethan had qualified first, the other top racers were right behind running in the very low 8's. The goal was not only to come in first, but to complete the second half of the records which would put him in top spot for the championship. The first round had Ethan lined up against Skyler Laforest on his newly purchased nitrous injected Kawasaki ZX-12R. Electrical gremlins hampered Laforst's times and Ethan cruised to the win with a solid 8.02 @ 181mph vs. 10.33 @ 142mph for Skyler. In the semi-finals Ethan was lined up against Gerald Beatch from Medicine Hat, Ab. Gerald was running well all weekend running as quick as the mid 8's but could only muster a low 9 second run. In the other lane, Barkley unlaoded a bomb on the entire Pro Street class with a 7.84 @ 181mph and secured the E.T. record for an extra 20 bonus points. These runs were great, and the times were outstanding as most of the season up untill now was filled with less than spectacular times. But the team needed more speed in order to capture the Mph. record and a chance at their fifth consecutive championship. The points battle was playing a role for Ken Froese who made it to the finals, as he beat points leader Glen Fraser in the previous round. If Ken won the event, he would win the overall championship. Ethan needed to win the race to secure second place, and needed a run of 184.46 mph or greater to win the championship. The EB Speed team put an even more aggressive tune-up in thie GSX-R1000 in hopes of achieving more speed. As the lights flashed green, both bikes left the line together and were well on thier way to great runs. Both bikes spun the tires at about half track, but Ethan regained traction and crossed the line first with another 8.02 vs. 8.44 from Froese. Unfotunately that little bit of tire spin slowed Ethan's drive substantially and he only managed to run 180.72 mph. Without the speed record, Ethan finished a mere three points back of first place in the championship.

It was a great way to end the season and the Suzuki Canada / Walt Healy / EB Speed team showed the rest of the class that they were still the team to catch.

*high resolution images available on request

All photos by Laura Barkley