Superbike racing Round #2 CSBK A day-in-the-life at the Autodrome St-Eustache

It's Saturday, July 7th, 2012 and we're at the Autodrome St-Eustache for Round#2 of the CSBK http://csbk.ca media challenge.

Alex is riding bike #3 in the media class with a bunch of other journalists and then there's the real racers. In this round the kids racing the CBR250Rs are Ryan Roche 17, Sean Smith age 16, Tomas Casas age 13 and Stacey Nesbitt age 15 (last year's CBR125 champion).

St-Eustache is Montreal's track, just to the west of the city, past Laval. The track is just under a mile (1.6km) long, but it's very fast. The top Superbikes are lapping in 0:45 and the CBR 250Rs are lapping in 0:59; Alex is lapping at about 1:03 - not bad for a rookie. Races are short, but very sweet fun to watch.

The track owner is a character, Alan Labrosse, made a strong first impression when laying out the rules of the track at the morning racers meeting. It takes a certain personality to run a race track and Alan has made a big investment in the track. Not to mention, he's fought off city councils for sound restrictions and resurfaced the the track. Thanks Alan.

What's great at the Autodrome St-Eustache is that you can see most of the motorcycle racing action very well from the stands. Food, not so great but hopefully that will improve.

Like most tracks, the day is punctuated by the sirens telling a new class to get out on track. In between that everyone seems to be scurrying around, fixing tires. Most bikes are in a state of repair, but miraculously ready before the sirens. But while everyone is busy, no one to too focused to answer a question or return a wave. It really is one big family out here.