2011 - Lighspeed racing now Thompson Racing. - by Dean Thompson

Lightspeed Racing has been renamed Thompson Racing. It is now officially a family team, as Dean’s son Jake Thompson is now racing, though he will be focusing on Motocross racing, while Dean continues in roadracing. Jake will be competing in the Vancouver Island Motocross Series aboard a 2009 KTM150SX in Junior Class MX2, while Dean will continue racing his 2004 Yamaha R1 at Mission Raceway and select rounds of the Western Canadian Championship in the Open Supersport and Superbike classes. New for this year at Mission is a Ninja 250 Cup series and Dean is building up a 2004 Kawasaki ZZR250 to race in the class. The majority of the mechanical and technical work is being done by team sponsor Duane Forth of Dragonfly Cycle Works in Comox (thanks Duane!). There is a possibility that Jake may pilot the 250, but if not Dean will ride in the new class. The majority of parts for the baby Ninja were sourced and ordered through Jack’s Motorcycles who has been helping us for the last 6 years with the racers program offered by Motovan. Big thanks to Jack Nylund for all his support and to Motovan for offering a great racers program. Also a big thanks to Bernie Denis of KIMPEX for allowing me to take advantage of their racers program, administered through the kindness of Courtenay Motorsports.

-Dean Thompson (June 13th -2011)

2009 Pre-season Testing in the U.S. - by Dean Thompson

During the off season, in November 2008,  I acquired a 2007 Honda CBR600RR to build into my 2009 season race machine.  After months of ordering parts and assembling the machine into a track weapon (with the help of Duane Forth of Dragonfly Cycle Works) it was ready for testing.  Luckily a friend of mine and fellow racer, Gerhard Mueller, was heading off for a 10 day track day trip to Thunderhill Raceway in California and Portland Raceway in Oregon, and was nice enough to invite me along. Unsure if the CBR would be bug-free, I opted to bring along my Yamaha R1 as a back up bike.

  
View the Thunderhill 2009 Gallery

The weather at Thunderhill when we arrived on April 5th was perfect. We set up the huge RV of Gerhard’s and bunked down for the night, anxious to get riding the next morning. At 7AM we woke up to another gorgeous day: blue skies with a daytime high of 27 degrees. Fortunately the CBR was perfect. The little 600 handled even better then my old R6 and had a generous amount of mid-range and top-end power, which brought a big smile to my face.

After the weekends track days, I signed up for the race school that was to run Monday and Tuesday. I sat in on a bit of the classroom stuff, but my main concern was to get a lot of track time with one-on-one instruction by a few of the AFM fast guy racers. I signed up for my first 45 minute session with Steve Metz, an AFM front runner and occasional AMA Formula Extreme racer. He pointed out improvements I could make in my body positioning, so I worked on that for an hour and then went out with the next instructor I had signed up with, Michael Potts. Unfortunately, a red flag cut our session short after we rode about 2 laps of the big Thunderhill Raceway. We had a short debrief and I headed back to my pit area.

After lunch I was signed up to ride with AFM prodigy Carey Shaughnessy. After we rode about 4 laps we stopped for a quick chat, and Carey had a shopping list of things I needed to improve on. The main problem he noticed was my corner entry and exits were weak, after years of forcing bad habits on myself by racing around the treacherous “Togaring”.
I needed to make myself use the entire track for entry and exit so I could carry more corner speed. I worked on this for the rest of the day on my own and made another appointment to ride with Carey on Tuesday morning. Thankfully my practice paid off, as he noted a huge improvement on all the areas he had noticed weakness in the previous day.

Tuesday afternoon we headed North to Portland International Raceway (PIR). We arrived after the gate was locked so we set the RV up in the parking lot outside the track. Wednesday morning, once the gate was opened, we rolled in to the PIR facility. Not quite as fancy as Thunderhill but not too shabby. Unfortunately the track surface was covered with a thin layer of dirt from a previous activity that took place on the dirt beside the asphalt surface. After a couple of hours it was in better shape, but the cold temperatures made for limited traction. We played around for the day but decided to leave the next morning and head for home. All in all it was a great trip and a very successful pre-season test for the new CBR and myself.

-Dean Thompson (April 14th - 2009)