Barkley makes history in Mission

The cool dense sea level air combined with a smooth sticky racing surface allowed Ethan to finally begin turning up the boost on his 2006 turbocharged Pro Street GSX-R1000. Out of the box in early testing Saturday the bike ran a nice clean pass nudging the 8.0's at a mere 170 mph with a mild "off the trailer" tune. In round 1 qualifying the newly shod Micky Thompson tire spun just a touch out of the hole resulting in a soft 7.7 @ 185. Some slight chassis adjustments were made and the tune was left the same. Ethan shot off the line and the front tire hovered above the track, the result was a historic 7.505 @ 187! On the third and final qualifying pass the tune was slightly more aggressive, but the tire just couldn't hold all the power at the line and spun slightly, resulting in a 7.6 on the scoreboards.

Sunday's opening test pass was strong as the air was cooler than on Saturday allowing the team to make more power with less boost. A medium tune was selected and the fuel maps were enriched slightly to compensate for the now "thicker" air. A smooth launch and a clean pass flashed 7.6 @ 177 on the boards. As the eliminations rounds wound down Ethan wanted to push Eleanor even harder. To back up the 7.505 as an official CMDRA record he needed to make another run within 1% (7.580 or better). Ethan had the bye in eliminations due to his top qualifying spot and this was the run to make it happen. The bike launched well but down track the bike was headed for the centerline and forced Ethan to make aggressive corrections, 7.586 @ 181.56 flashed on the boards, just outside the 1%. Later in the day Ethan found himself in the finals against Ken Morrison on his turbocharged ZX14. Ken was having issues get of the line cleanly but he was showing big speed down track. The two left the line with nearly identical reaction times but Ethan pulled away quickly taking the win by posting a solid 7.61 at a mere 176 mph as the bike had major a major ECU glitch at half-track killing the power for the latter half of the run.

All in all it was a very solid weekend for Ethan with new personal bests as well as posting an unofficial record ET. In three weeks the team will head back to Castrol Raceway for the CMDRA Season Finale and another shot at the record books.

Follow Ethan on twitter @ethanbarkley

And on Facebook "Ethan Barkley"

Photos by: seven62.com & EB Speed

High resolution images available upon request