Sean Smith Crashes Twice and Finishes on the Podium

Honda has invited 6 journaists to race in the the CBR250R Superbike Challenge in ten races on five tracks this summer http://csbk.ca The journalists are grouped in with the real racers who are four kids aged 10 to 20 years old. The first race was held at Shannonville racetrack this weekend http://www.shannonville.com/.

Sean Smith is from Calgary, Alberta, he's riding in the Honda CBR250R Challenge, on not-so-lucky-in-the-rain number 7. The practice ride was early Saturday, and the rack was wet from morning thundershowers. Sean low-sided the right side of the bike. He seemed seriously disapointed and a bit shaken up after the crash, but he was fine and more concerned with the damage to the Honda CBR250R than himself.

With the practice ride behind him, the sun came out and dried up all the wet, just in time for the qualifying race. Basically the racers take the track as fast as they can and their fastest lap time determines where they start in the race.

In qualifying Sean went down a second time, but this time low-sided on the left. He describes it as coming into corner 3 too fast, not finding the grip he needed, adding too much brake with the bike leaned over too far resulted in the motorcycle washing out in to the grass. In the video he said "I started fliping and we all started flipping..."

Here Eric Vlasic, lead tech at Honda Canada describes the damage to the motorcycle.

Luckily the bike frame was not bent and after Jordan and Eric taped duck taped the fairing together, both the bike and Sean were read for the race.

Turns out Sean's knee is hurt bad and he's not sure to race.

Prior to the race, I found Sean sitting on his bike in deep concentration. He was determined.

Here Sean explains his day and lead up to the race.

Sean's determination payed off, he placed 3rd on the podium in Sunday's race. The winner was Ryan Roche from Pickering, Ontario, second place went to Stacey Nesbitt (last year's 125 Champion).

Unfortunately, two riders did go down in the same race including David Booth, racing in the Journalist series and Tomas Casas who was leading with Ryan Roche. I'll add more about that story shortly.