Le 21è Mon­dial du quad qui s’est déroulé les 25 et 26 août 2007 à Pont de Vaux (Ain) a vu la vic­toire pour la sec­onde année con­séc­u­tive du team belge Piron, sur un Yamaha 450 YZF piloté comme l’an dernier par le trio Alexan­dre Piron/Stéphane Piron/Guy Meertens.

Avec 120 équipages qui ont représenté plus de vingt nations, cet événe­ment incon­tourn­able dans le monde du quad avait encore réuni l’élite mon­di­ale avec de nom­breux vain­queurs des années précé­dentes. Il est à noter que un tiers des par­tants était con­sti­tué par des pilotes de moins de 18 ans, preuve de l’intérêt gran­dis­sant pour cette discipline.

Les trois manches (trois heures le samedi, cinq heures de nuit et qua­tre heures le dimanche) ont été riches en rebondisse­ments, sur une piste aussi dif­fi­cile que tech­nique et rapide. On a longtemps cru que le jeune trio Romain Couprie/Clément Jay/Anthony Jay, peut-être les plus rapi­des en piste, allaient décrocher la vic­toire. Mais c’était sans compter sur les rebondisse­ments incon­tourn­ables dans une course d’endurance.

En plus de l’épreuve reine des 12 Heures et de sa dauphine le PDV Quad Con­test, pour la pre­mière fois cette année des motos ont pu tourner sur le mythique cir­cuit de Pont de Vaux pour le Défi Motos. De nom­breuses ani­ma­tions, tant dans la ville de Pont de Vaux qu’au sein du vil­lage Quad­expo ont attiré un pub­lic venu en masse. On a ainsi pu approcher Stéphane Peter­hansel venu faire des démon­stra­tions sur la piste au volant d’un Mis­tubishi Pajero du Paris-Dakar, rappelons-le con­struit dans la commune.

Cette année, l’organisation ren­for­cée s’est sur­passée et nous donne rendez-vous les 22, 23 et 24 août 2008 sur la plaine Bres­sane pour une épreuve qui est recon­nue à juste titre comme une date phare du quad mondial.

Christophe GARCIA

Classe­ment final Mon­dial
# Team Rid­ers Machine Tours
1 TEAM PIRON PIRON (B) / PIRON (B) / MEERTENS (B) Yamaha YFZ 210
110 TEAM RACE MORIN (F) / BONNARD (F) / CICLET (F) Suzuki LTR 207
103 HOLZ RACING / DOUGLAS WHEEL GILLI (I) / FREDERICK (USA) / HOLZ (USA) Suzuki LTR 207

John Mitchell took an out­stand­ing dou­ble win in round three of the Euro­pean Quad­cross Cham­pi­onships, held at the Hun­gar­ian track of Nyar­e­gy­haza. Paul Holmes was also on top form as he took two thirds and moved into third over­all in the cham­pi­onship.
Team ATV World Yamaha moved their gru­elling race sched­ule to Hun­gary with newly crowned British Cham­pion John Mitchell already lead­ing the Euro­pean by 12 points. British Under 21 Cham­pion Paul Holmes was look­ing to build on his points tally and move into the top three.

It all started well as John and Paul went into qual­i­fy­ing. With such a tech­ni­cal track it was imper­a­tive that both rid­ers got good starts. John made sec­ond, just behind Jeremy War­nia and Paul took fourth. The track was sandy and had some impres­sive jumps. It was also red hot with John describ­ing it as the hottest weather he has ever raced in!

In the first of two 30 minute plus races, John was sec­ond into the first cor­ner, he passed War­nia only to get caught on a burn and had to bat­tle to take the lead. He then pulled away to fin­ish with a lead of over a minute. Paul Holmes made an impres­sive third place finish.

John took the holeshot in race two and rode hard to pull a gap from sec­ond place, fin­ish­ing com­fort­ably with a 32 sec­ond lead. Paul Holmes was eighth off the line and had to work hard to move through the pack. This task was made even harder as the hot weather had resulted in blis­ter­ing on his hands. It took real deter­mi­na­tion for him to break through the pain bar­rier and go on to take third place.

After all the auto­graph sign­ing and poster hand outs, John and Paul finally made it to the podium, greeted by rap­tur­ous applause from the Hun­gar­ian fans. Thanks to the organ­is­ers for a great event, well organ­ised and plenty of fun! With both ATV World Yamaha YFZ450’s work­ing per­fectly again the team now head to Ger­many for round five.

John Mitchell now leads the Euro­pean Quad­cross Cham­pi­onships by an incred­i­ble 25 points with Paul Holmes in third position.

Source: ATV World

For the fifth time this sea­son, Harley-Davidson Laval Buell rider Michael Leon fin­ished on the podium. Leon rode his Buell XB-12R to a sec­ond place fin­ish after start­ing from pole posi­tion in round 6 of the Cana­dian Thun­der Cham­pi­onship, held August 12 at Atlantic Motor­sport Park located in Shube­nacadie Nova Scotia

Michael set a new lap record dur­ing Saturday’s qual­i­fy­ing ses­sion, with a time of 1:11:303, low­er­ing the record that he set last year by 0.677 seconds.

After a less than stel­lar start, Michael was third at the begin­ning of lap one fol­low­ing BMW rid­ers Michael Tay­lor and Michael Fer­reira. Within a few laps, Leon was able to pass Fer­reira and chase down Tay­lor set­ting the fastest lap of the race in the process, a 1:11:435. After repeated unsuc­cess­ful pass­ing attempts by Leon, Tay­lor was able to use his wealth of expe­ri­ence to stay ahead for the win.

Join­ing reg­u­lar crew mem­bers, Car­los Car­ras­cosa and Jonathan Payan was team engine builder Alex Grupp of Mile­stone Motor­sport. With results being so crit­i­cal at this point of the sea­son, Alex made the trip from Whitby ON to Nova Sco­tia, by motor­cy­cle to spend the week­end at the track. The crew worked hard from start to fin­ish, swap­ping out motors twice in order to break in and try a new engine con­fig­u­ra­tion, not to men­tion crash repair efforts from a low­side tum­ble on Thurs­day. Our results this week­end, and through­out the sea­son, would not have been pos­si­ble with­out Alex, Car­los and Jonathan’s hard work.

Elka Suspension’s Stephane Lep­ine pro­vided valu­able sus­pen­sion tun­ing advice via tele­phone as the team bat­tled ini­tial rear trac­tion issues.

With one round remain­ing, the team still leads the Cham­pi­onship, now by only 5 points, over Michael Tay­lor. The Cham­pi­onship will be decided on Labour Day week­end at Shannonville.

Note that live feed of the track announcer is now avail­able dur­ing the race events at cdnsuperbike.com. The Thun­der race is usu­ally the sec­ond race of the day held at approx­i­mately 2:00 pm. Tune in on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 2 and lend your support!

H-D Laval is spon­sored by Dee­ley Harley-Davidson Canada, Mile­stone Motor­sports, J Pre­ci­sion Rac­ing Heads, Elka Sus­pen­sion, Rev­o­lu­tion Per­for­mance, Les Impor­ta­tions Thibault, Bell Hel­mets, Hal’s Harley-Davidson, Pri­matek, Indigo Pow­der Coat­ing, Woody Air­brush, Flexi-Glass, and Gianmajor.

We recently had Elka Sus­pen­sion put on our 2007 Suzuki.  My son Cole Camp­bell com­petes in the junior 125 CMRC divi­sion of South­west­ern Ontario.  He is really impressed with the sus­pen­sion and has found that the bike responds well.  I just wanted to let you know that we dealt with Brad Dehaan from Lon­don and his ser­vice was excel­lent.  He had the sus­pen­sion ready within days just in time for our first CMRC race.  We have had Fac­tory Con­nec­tion in the past, it was good sus­pen­sion as well, but I do like the per­sonal touch Brad has given us.  Just wanted to give you a lit­tle feedback.

Car­olynne Camp­bell
Delhi, Ontario, Canada

Hello Marc,

I’ve finally fin­ished up my test­ing of the shock you sent me for my 04 GSXR 750. The fol­low­ing is a com­plete report.

Upon open­ing the box, the first thing I noticed is the Elka shock is beau­ti­ful, a work of art. I stud­ied it for awhile before I put it back in the box while I awaited my tire order, because I try to setup my bike with approx­i­mately 15–40 laps on the tires as that’s about the extent that I run them under rac­ing con­di­tions, and the tires on my bike had gone 100 laps already dur­ing a school I was teaching.

My tire order arrived May 3rd, and our race week­end started with Fri­day prac­tice. I removed the Penske triple clicker and set the Elka to the same length (335mm) and installed the new shock. I checked the sag, and it was 3/4 inch out of the box, per­fect start­ing point. I suited up and went out for a ses­sion. Hon­estly, I was so rusty, I just used the ses­sion to get myself up to speed and check for any imme­di­ate dif­fer­ences between the shocks. I found noth­ing strange and it felt really good along our bump­i­est sec­tion, a medium speed curved straight that goes from 2nd gear to 3rd and back to 2nd, all while on the side of the tire.

When I came in I decided it was close enough to put some fresh tires on and really test. Unfor­tu­nately, my job as track owner/promoter took over and I wasn’t able to make it back on track on Fri­day. Sat­ur­day we had winds of 45mph sus­tained with 60mph gusts, so I opted not to ride practice.

Sun­day morn­ing I had to skip prac­tice to do my pro­moter duties. I had to announce the first 4 races and then suited up for race # 6, Heavy­weight Super­bike. After a warm up lap, armed with a brand new set of Pirelli Dia­blo Supercorsa’s I had not rid­den on or tested, I took the line for the race. Third place into turn 1 and into 2nd by turn 3. Lead­ing the race was Mike Shreve, 3 time ASMA #1 plate holder and cur­rent AMA Pro. I was able to stick right on Mike’s tail and for the first time I was able to hold it wide open down our bump­i­est sec­tion. My best lap time ever, a 1:09.21 hap­pened on lap 3. I fin­ished the race in 2nd place and quite happy with the first real test.

In the pits dur­ing the lunch break, I added a click of low-speed com­pres­sion to the shock to help with too much weight trans­fer out of the slow bus stop and waited for the For­mula Arroyo/Unlimited GP race.

Another mediocre start put me into turn 1 in sec­ond place, again behind Mike Shreve. I was able to stick to his tail once again, and we pulled a small gap on AMA Super­stock reg­u­lar and 2006 ASMA #1 plate holder Ivan Garza. Shreve almost high­sided right in front of me and that allowed Garza to catch back up and the three of us cir­cu­lated in the high 1:08 range. I was hav­ing a slight prob­lem run­ning wide in the carousel, the fastest turn at ASR that leads onto the long back straight. A bit past halfway, I was get­ting tired and start­ing to make mis­takes so I waived Garza by and cruised home 3rd. On lap 4 I turned another per­sonal best lap, 1:08.81. The lap record is 1:08.60. If only I had done a lit­tle more test­ing before the race I believe I could have bro­ken the record. But, for only adding one click on slow-speed com­pres­sion from a shock, out of the box… it per­formed awesome!

This past week­end was a 2 day track­day and I resolved to fin­ish test­ing. I went out for 10 laps to get a feel from the bike and get myself up to speed. I then pro­ceeded to adjust the shock a lit­tle bit each ses­sion, only to keep going back to the same set­tings. The only thing I really found, was adding one click of pre­load cured the prob­lem I had run­ning wide in the carousel. I also ended the day with one more click of slow speed com­pres­sion and two less rebound from the out of the box settings.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the Elka shock. It was closer in setup right from the box than any­thing I’ve ever used in my life. The valv­ing is spot on for our track and I will be under the cur­rent lap record in the clock­wise direc­tion, hope­fully next month.

Roger Heems­ber­gen, Pres­i­dent
Arroyo Seco Raceway

Dear Sebastien and Stephane,

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to you Sebas­t­ian for your sup­port lead­ing up to the National Opener at Mont Trem­blant. Please also pass on my thanks and appre­ci­a­tion to Stephane for his help at the track. He was great and helped us a tremen­dous amount.

We only had a very lit­tle bit of dry time on the Super­bike (3 ses­sions) and he helped us find a bet­ter base­line than we had all last year. Stephane your help is very much appre­ci­ated. We will be tak­ing your sug­ges­tions for AMP and test­ing early next week prior to our next regional round in Shu­bie, next weekend.

Once again thank you for your con­tin­ued support.

Terry Steeves
TSR Per­for­mance Racing