鈥淭eam KYT Americas earned a hard-fought Superbike class victory at the inaugural N2RA 6-Hour Endurance Race at Virginia International Raceway, overcoming a mechanical failure that put the team more than 20 minutes behind just minutes into the six-hour event.

鈥淭he team consisted of Rise Moto founders, Brandon Cretu and Brian D鈥橝pice, along with KYT Americas-sponsored athlete Dan Kruger. Rise Moto serves as the North American distributor for KYT Americas.

鈥淐retu and Kruger are long-time friends and international road racing veterans, with both having competed at the legendary Isle of Man TT and Macau Grand Prix.”

鈥淭he team鈥檚 race took a dramatic turn just three laps after the start when a clutch failure forced an unscheduled pit stop and complete clutch replacement. The repair cost Team KYT Americas more than 20 minutes, leaving them with a significant deficit almost immediately.

鈥淥ver the remaining hours, Cretu, D鈥橝pice and Kruger steadily fought their way back through the field, ultimately overcoming the early setback to secure first place in the Superbike class. Proving that anything can happen in endurance racing and a team should never give up!

鈥淔ollowing the victory, the team collectively decided to donate its entire $4,000 first-place purse to the Roadracing World Action Fund, supporting the organization鈥檚 efforts to provide Airfence and other soft-barrier protection at motorcycle racing and track-day events throughout the United States.鈥�

鈥淲e are headed to another new track this week at Indianapolis for Round
3 of Formula Drift. I have podiumed at this track twice in my history (back in Pro-Am, I think it is also my first Pro-Am podium in my 350Z many, many years ago). So, hopefully we can make this our third podium at this track! They are planning to run a similar layout, but they added some new asphalt and track so it should be interesting! We are excited to run the new setup and get some data with the 370Z and much, much more power so many years later鈥�”

鈥淲e had fun in Atlanta, though we didn’t get the results we were hoping for.

鈥淚t was a rainy start, and practice was cut really short. We tried some new setup changes that didn’t quite work in Atlanta how we wanted, with a few more practice laps we may have been able to get the car where we wanted.”

鈥淩ound 3 is in the books! We had a little whirlwind of a competition in St Louis. We started off the first practice day pretty smooth, with the track and gearing working pretty well. We made a small change in gearing to dial in better wheel speed and then just started to get laps.

鈥淥f course, this never lasts long as next thing we knew, we lost our accessory belt towards the end of the first practice session. We quickly figured out that we had a pulley that was starting to fail so we put a new belt on to get through practice and then swapped the pulley between sessions. Next session went pretty聽well and we felt rather good ending the night with a good car and good setup.

鈥淭he next day started the same鈥� until it didn’t! We were getting in several laps until on one lap, my spotter told me to push a little deeper into Zone 1. Well, I did, but a little too deep and we dipped a tyre just outside the track edge. Unfortunately, there was a very large rock on the edge of the track buried that had slowly found itself visible from all the cars that had been digging out the rut. I was the guinea pig and my wheel hit just right and sent me into an airborne, 360 degrees and actually jumped over the car behind me.

鈥淟uckily, Cody Buchanan, the good driver he is, dodged me and we luckily did not damage much. We got towed off track and had to just swap some wheels and do a four-wheel alignment to get it 鈥榮traight enough鈥�.”

鈥淕reetings all! It has been a hectic few weeks and we are about to repeat it all again!

鈥淔ormula Drift New Jersey did not pan out the way we wanted, with a close battle in our Top 32, but we did learn some lessons. We had some major contact in our last practice session. We also were dealing with some fuel pressure issues.”

鈥淲e are back! We had a GREAT weekend with a 5th place finish! We could not be happier (unless we got a podium).

鈥淭he event went great for us. We were able to get the car finished up fairly early this year and got in our testing in March. This proved valuable and we really dealt with basically zero issues during practice and competition with the vehicle. Our biggest issue was an AN line that needed a little tightening. Everything worked as it should! It is a great feeling when you can just feel confident and rely on your vehicle. Especially when you are about to throw your car down the hill at ~90mph!”

鈥淪ince my mid-summer update, our team has continued having an epic season and we are well-positioned to take back-to-back National AMA/WERA championships for 2023.

鈥淚t has been a busy four months 鈥� we first travelled up to Road Atlanta and won five races. Next was the CMP Circuit in Carolina where we also won. Then it was up to Mid-Ohio to take four podiums in four races. This was a new track for us so plenty of work but also great fun and tens of thousands of spectators, which made it exciting. Finally, we just got back from Pittsburgh from another National and Endurance Race and won our Endurance Class and I took a very important podium along with a top-five finish to gain valuable championship points.”

鈥淲e are currently leading all three National Championships and keep racking up the wins, podiums, and championship points. The season is going great!

鈥淲e will be at Road Atlanta this coming weekend for a smaller event and then off to Virginia in September for the Summit Point Nationals and Endurance Championship. We then have a private test and finish the USA Season in October at Barber in Alabama for the Grand National, where we hope to be crowned National Champion across multiple classes including the prestigious Superbike Class.听

鈥淣one of this would be possible without the ongoing support from 91传媒, so a big thank you and we hope to update you all with great news after Barber in October.鈥�