Carter Gets His First

Henny Ray Abrams | May 3, 2009

Garrett Carter won his first AMA professional road race with a dominant ride in the rain-delayed and shortened SuperSport race on the wet Barber Motorsports Park road course.Starting eighth on the grid, the Michigan rider took the lead from Russ Wikle (Suz) on the fourth of 12 laps with a pass between the turn five hairpin and the downhill museum roller coaster turn six.When he crossed the line ending the fourth lap he had just over a second, but built the lead by seconds a lap before his pace slowed to just a second a lap. At its peak, ending the tenth lap, the lead was 9.249 secs. He slowed at the finish to win by 4.292 secs.Wikle had a lonely race to second, with Huntley Nash finishing third, 14.206 secs. later.Fifth place finisher Joey Pascarella continues to lead the points standings with 62 to 49 for Leandro Mercado, who finished fourth.The 17-lap race was originally scheduled to run at 3:00 p.m., but a tornado warning at 1:40 p.m. CDT followed by torrential downpours halted all on-track activity before racing could get started.  The SuperSport race was shortened to 12 laps and run at 4:00 p.m. CDT.The Daytona SportBike class is currently on track for a warm-up session, followed by their race. The American Superbike race will the final one of the day. Both will be shortened from 21 to 16 laps.

Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor

Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.