The final round of the Central Roadracing Association season took place September 19-21 on Brainerd International Raceway’s famed Donnybrooke Course and the top story of the weekend was undoubtedly Christian Schmidt joining former CRA legends Robert Jensen and Mike Moores with his third overall championship. Schmidt was an almost unstoppable force all season long across multiple classes and had an insurmountable points lead heading into the weekend but that didn’t stop him from pushing hard for multiple wins, culminating in the GP2 class victory in the 5-Hour Endurance Race with longtime teammates Aaron Anderson and Bell Helmets rider Shane Keaveny on the Destroked Jamokes Yamaha R5.
Schmidt had two great battles against talented novice Trevor Treviranus in the Ultralight class and prevailed in both, with his largest margin of victory being 0.131 seconds. With Treviranus on track to become an expert for 2015, the battle between the two riders looks to continue for the immediate future.
The CRA welcomed a few Ninja 250 riders from the MRA in Colorado for the last round of the 2014 season and all of them had a great showing. Rachel Gillie brought home two Ninja 250 podiums while David Absolon took one and Jose Rivera managed to grab a top-5 finish for his efforts. While “Team Colorado” did their best to unseat class frontrunner Sam Miller, Miller took off in the front of the pack and never looked back, taking victory in all three Ninja 250 races. Miller’s Team Tree Tree Racing teammate Billy Lachmiller swept all three novice Ninja 250 races throughout the weekend.
The Lightweight Novice battles were fierce throughout the weekend and the best example of that is Dave Pederson’s pass for the win around the outside of Luke Trombley on the last lap. Pederson continued his recent strong run of form and held on for the victory and took home two wins compared to Trombley’s one.
The Middleweight and Heavyweight Expert races saw great battles between Kyle Ohnsorg, Kaleb De Keyrel and Scott Stall in the beginning of the day but an unfortunate incident in the Middleweight Superbike race eliminated De Keyrel from competition for the rest of the weekend. Ohnsorg took the opportunity to bring home two victories, as did Stall, with De Keyrel and Billy Vossberg taking one victory apiece.
The annual 5-Hour Endurance Race was packed with GP2 class bikes, with more GP2 entrants than all other classes combined. The expectations for the overall race win fell to the two Team Worldwide bikes, Team Hoff and there was a small hope that Destroked Jamokes could pull off an upset by winning the overall race on a GP2 class bike.
From the start, Scott Stall took the lead on the Team Worldwide 2 bike and gave up the top spot to Jordan Imrie on the sister Team Worldwide 1 machine when he made his first pit stop. The lead didn’t last long for Team Worldwide 1 as the bike ran into a fueling issue shortly before Imrie was due in for his first stop. With Team Worldwide 1 sitting idle at the side of the track while the problem was rectified, Kyle Ohnsorg reclaimed the top spot for Team Worldwide 2 and began a strong run that would see his team retain the lead all the way to the end of the race. The Destroked Jamokes avoided the reliability issues that many people assumed would plague the team and were running in second place overall with a little more than 30 minutes left in the race but a pit stop for fuel and a tire change dropped them down to third place overall. While Team Hoff looked like a contender early in the race, mechanical issues and crash damage dropped them significantly down the order as the race went on.
Behind the dominant GP2 bike of Destroked Jamokes was a great battle for second in class between MNSBR and Blockhead Skunkworx with MNSBR finishing 50 seconds in front of Blockhead Skunkworx at the end of five hours of hard riding.
The Central Roadracing Association congratulates all of its competitors on a fantastic 2014 season!
