Racers Edge Performance press release:

Racers Edge Performance and Craig McMartin Racing had a successful debut in the superbike class with rider Beau Beaton battling for the podium in the Superbike class and winning races on board the bespoke Irving Vincent 1600 in Pro-Twins at round one of the 2016 Swann Series held at a twilight meeting at Sydney Motorsport Park over Friday and Saturday 11-12 March.

Making the step from Formula Oz to the Superbike class in 2016 saw the team start a new phase of development with the Racers Edge Performance Craig McMartin Racing Panigale R adapting to the new control Dunlop tyre used in this year’s series along with adapting to the new updated version of the 1600cc reining Pro-Twin Champion – all Australian built – Irving Vincent.

Friday morning’s showers robbed the team of valuable track time following little opportunity to do any valuable testing on the new rubber in the lead up to this first round. Friday’s second practice around midday however offered a dry track and the first real chance to stretch the legs of the Panigale R.

The bike felt good immediately and Beau finished the first practice in fourth place less than a second off the best time, a great start to the year. By the end of the single qualifying session for the Friday afternoon races in the AFX-SBK series Beau had managed to improve the lap times by another three tenths of a second to secure a second row grid position.

Friday afternoon’s first race saw Beau launch the Panigale R off the line and battle with the lead group around the 3.93km Sydney Motorsport Park Braham Circuit layout, finishing the first lap in the thick of the action in fourth place.

The close action on lap two saw Beau loose a position to Superbike veteran Robbie Bugden and then have to maintain fast lap times to hold off his 2015 Formula Oz adversary Paul Byrne, eventually taking fifth place and shaving nearly a second from his previous best lap time.

Unfortunately, the rain returned for the second race on Friday afternoon, Beau rode with a smart strategy to score as many points as possible without undue risk to bring the bike home in a solid seventh position and sixth overall for the round. A second row grid for the first race of the Swann Series the next day a solid first day out on the Panigale R in 2016.

Sunday was bright and sunny with no chance of the wet track of Friday making a reappearance. Beau launched the Racers Edge Performance Craig McMartin Racing Panigale R off the line and was in second, challenging for the lead, when a first lap incident back in the pack caused a red flag stoppage.

In the restart Beau got another good start and was third at the completion of lap one. Moving into second with a pass on Yamaha mounted Michael Blair on lap two Beau continued to lap consistently while battling for position at seemingly every corner. With track temperature over 50 degrees Beau was unable to reproduce the lap time of Fridays race one and dropped slightly off the back of the fourth placed rider with one lap to run.

On the final lap Beau experienced a still undiagnosed intermittent electrical issue and limped home to finish ninth, not a true reflection of the pace of bike or rider.The team were unable to locate any issue with the bike, and pleasingly there were no further issues of the same nature for the remainder of the weekend.

Race two saw Beau get a flying start from the third row due to the progressive grid format and get inside the top five on the first lap, eventually completing it in sixth at the back of a close lead pack, a position he would hold till the chequered flag.

Race three saw another solid points finish with sixth place along with the most consistent run of laps over race distance of the weekend, only .7 of a second between fastest and slowest laps shows the bike has moved on in just one round of the 2016 season with plenty more to come.

Beau finished sixth overall for the round in the Superbike class, but gave enough indication that the Panigale R is ready to challenge for the podium in the cut throat Superbike Class this year.

In the Pro-Twins Class Ken and Barry Horner had worked hard on upgrading the 1600cc pushrod Irving Vincent’s that took last year’s Pro-Twins class by storm and arrived at Eastern Creek full of enthusiasm for a new season.

Beau used the upgraded kit to good effect and sent a warning shot across the bow of fellow competitors with an impressive 1:34.4 in qualifying, over 1.5 seconds faster than the rest of the field.

Race one on Friday’s AFX-SBK program was completely dominated by Beau and the black missile as they simply left the field in their wake, recording an impressive victory by over 3.5 seconds. Due to the wet track the team decided not to contest the second race on Friday and were forced to settle for a second row grid for the first race of the 2016 Swann Series.

Saturday’s first race saw Beau pushed all the way by Michael McMillian and his rapid Aprilia RSV-4. After a race long tussle that saw Beau use the obvious handling advantage of the Irving Vincent around the technical areas of the circuit to eke out a small advantage Beau took victory by a scant .2 of a second.

Continued refinement of the package between races by Ken and Barry along with Steve Mudford from Race Dynamics saw Beau improve his fastest lap in race two by a healthy .7 of a second ensuring a more comfortable 2.1 second margin of victory after a close first two laps.

Races three and four in the Pro-Twins didn’t go according to plan for Beau and the KH Equipment Irving Vincent with the fuel pump failing in race three as Beau pulled away at the front and another fuel pump failure caused detonation in race four, calling a halt to the Vincent’s charge for victory.

Pretty positive weekend all up for us” said Beau Beaton. “We made a smoother than expected transition to the new control tyre in the Superbike class but we really need to work on making the tyre last a bit longer. We had really good speed early on Saturday and I felt I could run with the leaders but we were struggling by race three.

We got a great start in race one and I was up to second when the red flag came out. I got another pretty good jump in the re-start and was lapping well until the last lap when we had some sort of intermittent misfire which caused us to lose a few positions.

Craig, Greg and Doc checked it all out and couldn’t find anything and we never had another issue with the bike all weekend. Even with the extremely hot conditions the bike was coming off track after the races under 100 degrees. We’ll try and get a test in before Mallala and work with Steve Mudford from Race Dynamics to address that tyre wear issue and hopefully be able to challenge for the podium at Mallala.

Ken and Barry have done an enormous job in the off season with the big Vinnie, and that is reflected by the lap times. It was a real disappointment when, as always, the proverbial 20c part let us down in race three and four. The guys worked well to change the fuel pump from the other bike into the No1 machine for race four only for it to fail as well, I kept pushing on and it started to detonate and then there was fuel everywhere so we had to call it a day.

That has put us behind in the title chase but we’ll come back strong next round. As always I must say a big thanks to Greg and Julie from Racers Edge, Craig McMartin for building the bikes and Steve Mudford fine tuning the setup while Mark “Doc” Downie and Greg worked tirelessly on them all weekend. Ken and Barry have made massive steps forward with the Irving Vincent and hopefully we will get some results for them at the next round as a reward”.

“Not a bad weekend, but we have had better” commented Team Manager Greg Maher “In saying that I think we showed glimpses of the potential that both Beau and the bike have. We will need to work on the tyre wear issue though as that was where we lost a bit at the end of the meeting. We will be able to work with the suspension and impressive electronic package on the Ducati to sort that out and find that half to three quarters of a second. We’ll work with Craig McMartin and Steve Mudford to look at everything. We are satisfied that we are moving forward every time we head out and learning more about the bike and the Dunlop control tyres. It was great to have Craig at the track with us as well, his knowledge of the bike and the way he is able to mentor Beau can only be a massive advantage for us as this year unfolds”.