NorthWest Mini Moto 12-Hour — TCKC

NorthWest Mini Moto 12-Hour at TCKC. Twelve hours of racing, 721 laps, and 16.6 seconds separating P1 from P2. We finished P2 in Open Mini, behind Subversive (#15). Brandon already posted the soulful version; this is the long one. It was my second time running this bike at the NWMM 12-Hour, with an all-new team this year.

Building the team

Five active riders plus me, with reference checks running through Sage, Garrick, and Gavin. All references came back clean. I drafted Kyle Nesbitt, Dustin Walbon, Brandon Hope, Jay Braillard, and Kevin McPhetridge.

Friday: getting the bike to TCKC

I was coming from Vancouver and couldn't leave until Friday morning, which made the run to Prineville and then to TCKC tight. Jay grabbed the bike Friday morning and drove it to TCKC, arriving at 5 PM. I rolled in around 5:30. That single move saved the whole logistics chain.

With the help of the team we got to work on prep items: set up the second wheel set (front rotor and rear sprocket installed, mounted on fresh Pirelli SC1s) and installed a new chain and front sprocket. Jay, Kyle, and Brandon got laps on the bike that evening.

The start and the first red flag

Le Mans start, me on the bike, with Brandon holding it for me on the line. We had grid P4. I got it started on the first kick (honestly surprised it fired so easily) but left the line in 11th. Far from great, but completely fine with it given the chaos of a Le Mans start. By the end of lap 5 we were back to P3, the bike already at race pace (50.3s). I settled into the 50-second range and held it, then handed off to Kyle at the first pit.

Around hour 1.5, lap 100, the race-wide red flag came out with Kyle on the bike. Everyone parked for about 15 minutes while Dave and his crew of volunteers took care of things.

The restart at roughly 1:46 PM was our worst moment of the day procedurally. We struggled to get the bike running, were late to the grid, and then it died again right as we were ready to launch. The starting issue we'd been managing all weekend showed up at the worst possible moment. We ended up starting from the back of the grid with a push start from Rick Engstrom, one of the best guys in the paddock.

Into the lead

The middle hours settled into rhythm. Kevin took his one stint, then he and Jay shifted focus to the YCF for the rest of the race. Dustin took over around 2:50 PM and lit it up.

On lap 234, during Dustin's stint, we took P1 outright in Open Mini. He held the lead for about 45 laps before pitting, and the fastest lap of the entire race, 47.294 seconds, came on lap 215 of his run. Brandon's debrief put it well: "Dustin had the best lap of each configuration." He did, both of them.

Brandon took over after Dustin and held station. I rode stint 6 and worked back to P1 by the end of it. We were leading Open Mini going into the scheduled track change.

The track change

TCKC ran configuration 3.B from noon to 6 PM, then switched to 1.H for the back half. That meant a race-wide red flag for about 30 minutes for the changeover.

Kyle took the bike for the restart at roughly 6:33 PM. He gridded P2, gave up the apex of Turn 1 cleanly to the bike that gridded P1, and held P2 through Turn 3. He came in for fuel around 6:46, went back out at about 6:52 with a full tank, and took P1 overall on the new layout.

Kyle's crash

About seven minutes after going back out from his refuel, Kyle crashed at the Turn 2 hairpin. T2 in the 1.H configuration is a super-tight 180-degree corner, the kind that punishes any rushed pass. Kyle's description after: "a 3-wide outside pass on the T2 hairpin put me out on dirty pavement, which didn't have enough grip for me to try to make an outside-to-inside pass." For context, T2 has bitten me twice myself in past races.

Kyle got the bike back up and brought it in. He came over, hugged me, and said he was sorry. The bike (and Kyle) were fine; it passed tech without any issues and was back out on track without delay.

Dustin took over for stint 8. The crash recovery cost us about 3 minutes 45 seconds on lap 417 alone. Subversive took the on-track lead by lap 418, and the team ahead of us settled in. By the time the deficit maxed out around 8:15 PM, we were down by roughly 4 minutes.

The comeback

Position-wise we'd already recovered from P3 to P2 during Dustin's stint 8, locked in at lap 463. But Subversive kept extending on cumulative time, the gap peaking around 8:15 PM during Brandon's stint 9 at roughly 4 minutes back.

From there it was a clean run to the checker: me, then Dustin, then me again for the closing 71 laps to midnight. We clawed back about 3.8 minutes of Subversive's lead at roughly a second per lap. At the line, 16.6 seconds back. P2 Open Mini, 721 laps each.

Why P2 instead of P1

Subversive's setup choice, a larger fuel tank, gave them a real strategic edge. Their longest continuous stint between pit stops was 82 minutes, and they hit 70-plus minutes multiple times. Our intended stint length was about 70 minutes, and a few of ours stretched right to that limit: Dustin's stint 4 (87 laps, 1h 12m) and my closing stint (71 laps, 1h 12m, with the tank running close to empty across the line).

Total long laps over 100 seconds (excluding red flags): Subversive 3, us 7. Total time stationary in the pits: Subversive about 5.6 minutes, us about 15.4 minutes. Final margin: 16.6 seconds. Subversive ran the smarter race in the pits, with tank strategy, clean execution, and no crashes. Tip the cap to them.

From our side, it was the bike-starting tax plus Kyle's crash. We just needed one less thing to go wrong; all else equal, we'd have made it an even closer fight.

Thanks

To Cory and Tim at Cascade Tire and Racing for the new piston, valve check, and dyno runs the week of the race. To Sage for serving as our rider-reference desk. To Mark and my 2Fast family for giving me a place to hone my skills and pass them along to others. To Garrick and Gavin for cheering us on remotely all weekend.

To Jay for the Prineville-to-TCKC ferry that saved the whole logistics chain, and for putting team Spiva ahead of his own bike all weekend. To Kyle for taking the track-change restart, the battles, and bringing it back in. To Dustin for being the fastest rider on every configuration of the track. To Brandon for the laps, the leadership, the photo and video documentation that captured the weekend, and the post-race debrief that wrote half this report. To Kevin for taking the bike for the restart after the 1:46 PM red-flag chaos and putting in a clean, steady hour-plus stint.

To every team that brought a bike out, 17 across Open Mini, Formula 125, and Formula Middleweight. A 12-hour endurance only works because everyone shows up. Special shout-out to Subversive for the win, to Hells Canyon for P3, and to everyone we shared the track with all day and night.

To David and the volunteers at NorthWest Mini Moto for putting on such a great event, and to Rick and the TCKC crew for helping host such an amazing weekend. See you in 144 days for the 24-hour.