After a long week spent preparing and travelling for the Aeroflow Summer Speed Fest at Adelaide International Raceway, Luke Crowley Racing (LCR) is pleased with their results.
“Upon arrival at the venue, we were a little worried as to whether or not the track would allow us to go fast. However, we found that the track was more than capable of running fast numbers and as a result all of the Pro Stock Bike riders were happy to run the full quarter mile,” said Luke Crowley, LCR team owner and rider.
Despite having a gearbox issue and not being able to see the finish line properly during the final session of qualifying, and hence shutting the bike down at the 1000 foot mark, the LCR team still managed to take pole position with a time of 7.375/152.43.
“We believe that with the right weather conditions and the right carburettor combination based on the 60 foot times that the bike was producing we would have been able to run in the low 7.20 second range” said Crowley.
During the first round of eliminations, the team showed that that the team was consistent by taking the win over Mark Hancock with a time of 7.38 at only 170MPH.
Based on the fact that there was only six bikes entered for this round of the championship, the LCR was granted a bye run for their semi-final appearance. At first the team made the decision that they were only going to stage the bike and accept the green, however 20 minutes before the run, Crowley had made the decision to make it a full run and try and get high MPH points for the event.
“It was the first time that we had run in the left lane all weekend. The lane was very slippery and therefore to ensure that no damage was done to the bike I decided to shut it down. I felt that the run wasn’t going to be good enough to get lane choice,” explained Crowley.
Once again in the final the Ipswich TintWerx, Nilrust Suzuki was in the left hand lane, whilst Maurice Allen had lane choice taking the left hand lane. When staging the LCR team noticed that there was a pile of rock on the track right in the path that Crowley had been lined up in. This caused Crowley to be a little off-guard and not cut the best reaction time, which equated to the runner up for the event due to a holeshot loss with Maurice Allen taking the win with a 7.55 at 177MPH to Crowley’s quicker 7.34 at 180MPH.
“It’s a tough way to get beat but it’s just one of those things. Despite the issues that we had in the final we still managed to claim low elapsed time and high speed for the weekend and that also means that we maintain the championship lead. When the rave was said and done we only lost the race by .045 seconds. We will now go back and prepare for Sydney in five weeks-time. We will have a spare motor on hand for the event, which we intend to test with before the event so that if we ever need to use it, we know that it will meet our expectations,” Concluded Crowley.
The next outing for the Luke Crowley Racing team will be the 2013 Nitro Champs at Sydney Dragway May 3 – 5 2013. Luke Crowley Racing would like to thank Ipswich TintWerx and Nilrust for their continued support of the team’s racing efforts.
