Mid-Season Race Report
It’s been a very good Arai year
in auto and motorcycle racing—
topped by winning both
the
By Richard Rossi
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So we’ll take a midseason pause to let you know how 2010’s been going so far.
First, of course, would be Arai drivers Dario Franchitti and Jamie McMurray winning both of the country’s biggest “500s” – the 2010 Indy 500 and NASCAR® Daytona 500 respectively. You don’t get too many opportunities to notch both of them in a single season. In fact, the same weekend that Franchitti won Indy, Lewis Hamilton in his Arai GP-6RC (Racing Carbon) F1-spec helmet won the Turkish Formula-1 GP. And not to be outdone by the four wheelers, Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa and his Arai Corsair-V helmet gave Arai the Italian MotoGP win at Mugello less than a week later. How’s that for a perfect race week.
Staying with the cars, here’s a sampling of Arai’s successes:
Formula 1: It’s really easy to find an Arai success story in the 2010 F1 season: Arai drivers and the GP-6RC (Racing Carbon) helmet hold all four of the top championship positions! Arai driver, and 2008 world champion, Lewis Hamilton, in his McLaren-Mercedes leads the championship, followed by his teammate, Jenson Button, the 2009 world champion, in second. Then RBR-Renault teammates Mark Webber in third and Sebastian Vettel in fourth round out the Arai front four.
IndyCar: So far, this championship is looking like another sweep for the Arai GP-6(PED) auto-racing helmet and the drivers who choose it. Arai holds the top four positions here too, which consists of two sets of teammates, three Aussie drivers, and one born in
NASCAR: Other than McMurray’s first Daytona 500 win this year, Arai drivers Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton are second and seventh respectively after 19 of 36 races.
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In the world of MOTORCYCLE RACING, we have reports from MotoGP, World Superbike, and, of course, our own AMA series.
MotoGP: With Mr. Rossi on the sidelines for the first time in his GP career, the championship leaderboard has done some shifting. Arai’s top-of-the-line Corsair-V race helmet is protecting the skills of Dani Pedrosa in second and Ducati’s Nicky Hayden in fourth, giving Arai two of the top five 2010 championship spots thus far.
World Superbike: Notwithstanding the rejuvenated Max Biaggi’s current tear, Arai riders hold second place with Leon Haslam, third with Jonathan Rea, and fifth with the venerable hard charger, Nori Haga.
AMA Pro Road Racing:
Superbike: It’s Arai and the Corsair-V helmet holding down three of the top five championships spots, including number one by a single point for Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden, followed as closely as possible by Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes in second, and Hayden’s teammate Blake Young in fourth. Over the past couple rounds, it’s been a bar-the-door slugfest between Hayden and Hayes, making for some of the season’s most exciting duels.
Daytona Sportbike: Arai anchors second, third and fourth in this championship at the midpoint. Current champion Danny Eslick is second aboard his RMR-GEICO Powersports Suzuki, M4 Monster Energy Suzuki’s M4’s Martin Cardenas is third, and surprise Dane Westby who continues to build on his early-season successes, lies fourth on his Project 1 Atlanta Yamaha R6.
SuperSport: The kids are alright in this up-and-comer class. It’s an Arai logjam at the top of East division standings with our guys holding down all of the top-five championship positions. Running them down in order, we have
AMA Pro Grand National Flat Track: Would holding eight of the top ten positions in this year’s championship sound like domination? We think so, too. It starts with the top three spots—Joe Kopp, Jake Johnson, and Henry Wiles. Then Jared Mees fifth, Kenny Coolbeth Jr. sixth, multi-time champion
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There you have it so far. And we haven’t even touched the off-road championships. We’ll get to them next week to conclude our mid-season report. If you have any championships and/or Arai pro riders you’d like to see mentioned, just let us know.
Till next week …