Sensational Second MotoAmerica Podium Of The Year For Luke Power
Luke Power ended his maiden MotoAmerica Supersport season with a superb second place finish in the final race at Barber Motorsports Park yesterday. The result means the seventeen-year-old from Australia is classified fifth overall, an impressive result considering he had no prior knowledge of the circuits, tyres, or the motorcycle he would campaign.
A technical issue on the opening day saw Luke miss valuable track time following an FP1 spill. He salvaged a fourth row of the grid start in second qualifying before another technical issue threatened to put him out of Saturday’s opening race on the sighting lap. Able to start the race, albeit on the back row of the grid, Luke passed half of the field on the first lap before a second crash cut short his hopes of another front running race.
A steady warm-up, after a bike rebuild by the team meant the #68 Suzuki mounted rider was able to compete on Sunday. Starting on wet tyres, he rode a brilliant race, backing up his early season podium at Road America with another outstanding performance on a drying track to ensure P5 in the final points classification. He also had the accolade of once again being the top Suzuki mounted rider.
Luke will now head to Europe for two weeks of off-track promotion, including a visit to the final European round of the FIM Superbike World Championship in Portugal. Details of his 2023 plans will be announced in due course.
Luke Power:
“What a weekend. I have no words. It has been such an up and down weekend, the toughest of my entire life. We had electronic issues, two crashes and so to finish on the podium yesterday and to be top five in my first year in the US is just unbelievable. I made a mistake in race one after we had a tech issue on the sighting lap, and I am sorry to Sam (Lochoff) as we both went down. Today in warm up I wasn’t really feeling that confident but then we had a short session before the race, and I felt comfortable. I knew in the race I would have to manage the tyres and that was my plan. The target was to end the season with the best result I could, and the podium was just the icing on the cake. By the time I moved into second I could see that Josh (Herrin) was too far and I decided to just focus on hitting my marks and not making any mistakes. I want to thank 3D Motorsports for their support this year, all my sponsors, my manager, and my mam and dad for everything they continue to do for me and for letting me race motorcycles. Finally, I want to thank everyone at MotoAmerica for making my first year in the series such a memorable one. I am off to Europe now and really excited to be going to Portimão to check out the World Superbike paddock before heading home with a smile after ending the season in such a good way”
