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Two more Canadian Championships! Coming into the final event of the CMDRA's 2009 Season, Ethan had a sizeable lead in both of his racing divisions. In the RCC Turbo's Pro Street Series he had a 118 point lead, and a 116 point lead in the Mission Springs Brewing Co. Street Series. Barkley only needed to qualify on both bikes to secure his 7th and 8th national titles. Saturday's qualifying session went extremely well. Aboard his turbocharged '06 Suzuki GSX-R1000, Ethan posted a run which his competitors won't soon forget. With the boost turned up, and the track prep nearly perfect the scorboards flashed 7.608 @ 187.22 in the second round! That was over a full tenth of a second quicker than Ethan's best pass to date, and was over 3 tenths ahead of his nearest competitor! On his '09 Suzuki Hayabusa, "Snow White", Barkley continued to make smooth consistent passes in the Street class, and qualified 5th out of 22 competitors. Clear skies greeted racers and fans for Sunday's elimination rounds. First up was the Street Class '09 Busa. Ethan wasn't pushing the bike too hard, and was running a fairly conservative dial in of 9.55. He was focused all day, cutting great reaction times and making error free runs. After 5 rounds he found himself in the finals and ran a 9.56 on his 9.55 dial in to take the win. Since Ethan qualified #1 on the Pro Street GSX-R, he had a bye run in round 1. He decided to run a slightly more aggresive clutch tune-up to see if it would net a better time. Unfortuatnely the bike bogged slightly off the line and only ran an 8.22 @186 mph. In round 2 the descision was made to see how much boost could be put through the 999cc motor. Ethan lined up against Ken Froese on his turbocharged Hayabusa. It was a great dragrace, with Ethan pulling out the win with a record setting 7.653 @ 194.59mph. That would stand as the fastest pass by a Canadian aboard a Pro Street motorcycle. In the finals Ethan met #2 qualifier Dave Burleigh on his turbocharged Hayabusa. Barkley decided to leave the same tune up in the bike. The GSX-R left the line extremely hard and was on a record pass until the 900 foot mark, when the motor started to backfire and lost power. He still took a convincing win over Burleigh's 7.977 @ 183.78 mph with a stout 7.69 at a slowing 181mph. It was a fantastic weekend for the Suzuki Canada/Walt Healy Motorsports/EB Speed team. An entire seasons worth of hard work and dedication culminated in an outsanding performance for the year end event. Between the two bikes, he placed first at 5 events and finished runner up 4 times on the season. Ethan now sits atop the CMDRA's all time win list and has an unprecedented 21 CMDRA records. Ethan has ammased an unmatched 8 Championships in just a short 7 year career with the organization.
Photo by James Carlin
Photo by James Carlin
Photo by Laura Millsip
Photo by James Carlin
Photo by James Carlin
Photo by James Carlin
Photo by Laura Millsip *high resolution images available on request
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