This past weekend Team Vammus Racing attended the first round of the Parts Canada Superbike Championship, held at Calabogie Motorsports Park.

The weekend would prove to be very daunting as the brand new facility, was not quite up to motorcycle racing. The Calabogie layout is beautiful, and challenging, with perfect pavement. The problem was that the track was designed for car racing and was surrounded with guardrails and had little room for run off. As the weekend progressed several racers were injured from crashing at the new venue.

Practice and qualifying went well for Derek as he got up to speed and was always running in the top four, in the chase for the 2008 National Suzuki SV650 cup. At the end of final qualifying Derek put it on the front row, with a 4th place grid position.

For the final race Derek got a good start and was running in 2nd place. After a couple of laps Derek went into the fastest part of the track and as he braked for the corner the bike stuck in 6th gear. Derek barley made the turn as he was lucky to slow the bike down enough for the corner. For the next few laps the shifting difficulties with the bike made it hard for Derek to defend his position. Derek soldiered on but slowly drifted back to 5th place where he would eventually finish the race.

All things considered it was a decent result for Derek battling a dangerous layout with a malfunctioning shifter. The team looks forward to the next few rounds at more familiar and safer layouts.