Since the beginning, G-Force has been a "Racing" Team. Every season, we participated in every race to chase wins, and ultimately the Championship. Looking at our results, since 1994, we have done just that....won Championships. Lots of Championships.
When we chose to develop the NCs, the ultimate goal was to win Championships. At the time we started, there was one guy who, for years, was "Untouchable" in the 400cc class on his FZR400. We started out to chase him down, then we beat him in a race. In 2005~2007, MIke Lohmeyer was then the "Untouchable" on the G-Force NC450V. We even had a few good runs for the Championship in the Formula-IV class against the SV-650s, leading the Championship for the better part of one season.
But, the act of trying to develop the 450cc engine while trying to campaign a Championship chase was just too much. Every time we had an engine set-back, we had to scramble to get another engine in the bike and race with less-than optimum preparation, testing or sleep. As well as very expensive, it was becoming very dangerous. So, Lohmeyer decided to hang it up for a while.
In 2008, Mark Elrod took over that "Untouchable" position in the 450cc Superbike class aboard his G-Force NC428V and NC450V. He won the 2008 Championship over Lohmeyer, then continued that winning streak in 2009. In 2010, Mark won every race he entered in the 450cc Superbike class, proving he was the ultimate "Man to beat" for that era. But, the year still came with its challenges and in the end Mark missed two races that dropped him enough points that it ultimately cost him the Championship.
For 2011, I rebuilt the bikes from the frame up to try and prevent such things from happening this season. There were some serious new hurdles that made building these bikes on schedule seem much more difficult than any other year. Probably the main hurdles that stand out were Mark and his wife having a baby, so his available time was practically nill, and my moving 400 miles away from the rest of the Team making it much harder to coordinate and work together with everyone.
The end result was not being able to complete the bike before the first race of the seaon. We were working on it until the 11th hour, but the weather was so bad we figured the race orginazation would call the first race. They did call it Sunday, but without much notice, they chose to race some of the races Saturday. We weren't there, and they raced the F-IV class without us. That was the class we were hoping to focus our efforts on this season - to race against the SV-650s.
In a continued effort to try and get the bike done for the 2nd race, we still pushed to get through the final hurdles. One of those hurdles didn't get completed until yesterday afternoon (Round 2's Saturday practice day). It was feeling very stressful and that feeling was far to familiar and uncomfortable. So, Mark decided it was not worth the risk to jump into a Championship chase "half-cocked" and always working against the clock. We're not racing this weekend either.
Although very disappointing from a "Racer's View", it feels like a huge weight has been lifted that will allow us to develop the bike, fine tuning everything just right for the 2012 Season Championship chase. We'll continue to work on everything we planned, and race events throughout the rest of the season to "test and develop" what we're doing. We hope we can still win some races in the process, but we have decided that 2011 is still a "Development Season" for us, not a "Racing Season". Again, it was a tough decision, but one that feels more comfortable and hopefully should be more fun.
