The second and third rounds of the WPSA Nationals were in Canterbury Downs this past weekend. It had been over six weeks since the Duluth WPSA opening round, a long time in the racing world, but the BMRT crew was busy during this time. With a new REV600 stocker and generally new Open sled there is a lot of testing and preparation to do. The real test of course is in competition against the best in the world.

At X-Games qualifying races throughout December BMRT pro riders, Iain Hayden, Brett Turcotte, and Garth Kaufman all qualified for Winter X and will join their teammate Blair Morgan in Aspen at the ESPN X-Games in late January.

Back to Canterbury…

Being early in the season and after such a long break from national competition the racing tuning and setups for the new XP platform still need to be sorted out and tested in real competition, particularly the stocker as the new XP600 is an all new sled from the predecessor 440 REV. Fridays Pro Super Stock competition at Canterbury found BMRT struggling a bit during qualifying to find the best setups. Morgan and Turcotte transferred to the main finishing 8th and 11th. The second round of Pro Super Stock in this double header weekend did not go as well for the team. Some trial and error in tuning and setups combined with some frustration in the racers did not get us the results we were looking for. Still the season has 8 rounds remaining and the experience we gained in competition this weekend with the stock class will help us improve our results in the coming rounds.

In Pro Open, our sleds seem to be more competitive, Morgan, Turcotte and Hayden all made the main, finishing 4th, 5th and 10th. In the second round of Pro Open, all four BMRT riders made the 15 man field of the main …. Things were starting to look up!

Bad starts had our guys working hard from the back, but their hard work paid off with a 3rd place for Morgan, 4th for Turcotte, 9th for Hayden, and 10th for Kaufman.

So there were no wins for BMRT on this weekend, but we did get Skidoo’s first podium of a so far, trying season. More importantly, we finished off the weekend strong, gaining momentum heading west to the fourth round in West Yellowstone MT.