Applegate and Dennie Burke steal the show at Second Creek Thriller...

Mike Applegate and Dennie Burke took center stage at the MRA/Second Creek championship round. RPS assisted Applegate lead the MRA RPS sponsored riders this weekend with victories in Heavyweight Superstock and Superbike and the Solo Heavyweight endurance race. Just as impressive, Applegate scored a 4th place on his Superstock 750 in the premier Race of the Rockies class and 2nd in the Open Supersport class. Dennie Burke won the race of the day on Sunday with his triumph in Open Supersport. In this race, Burke was punted off the track by Rich Deeming after he almost high-sided and Deeming consequently rammed him. Although Deeming took the lead for a moment, it was short lived as Deeming lost his front brake lever after burying/breaking it in the Kidney of Burke and he consequently crashed in the next turn. After surviving this episode, Burke then faced a barrage of challenges from MRA #1 plate holder Ricky Orlando. Ricky and Dennie bartered for territory for most of the remainder of the race. Amazingly, Mike Applegate finished second to Burke in this race.

With RPS committed to both the CMRA and MRA races, the game plan was for RPS to support customers during the week to prep them for the Saturday and Sunday race and leave out Thursday night for Texas/CMRA. New to the RPS customer/sponsored rider stables this weekend were MRA fast guy Crash Lowe as well as new racer Luke Johnston. Mike Vigil and Jason Smith also received some custom valving that was designed to increase their drivability on the turn exits. The results were immediate and RPS will continue to work with them at Pueblo to move them even higher up in the standing. In addition to the shows put on by Burke and Applegate, there were a stack of performances by RPS riders that deserve the attention of the readers of this site. Here are the riders and their highlights:

As mentioned already, Mike Applegate was the star of the weekend at Second Creek. He is without a doubt one of the best raw talents in the MRA. Many would think that Mike has some "really special stuff" in his bike, but the truth of the matter is that he DOESN'T. His forks have stock pistons on the valves. That have been re-sprung and RPS has put in a custom valve stack, but for the most part, there is nothing expensively exotic about the bike except the rider!!! Great job Mike.

RPS Sponsored Ryan Burke Saturday when his GSXR-1000 bucked a bit and dislocated Ryan's shoulder. Ryan unfortunately crashed as he tried to get his dislocated should back into place. Ryan has had a tough year, but still had many great moments on the Race Track.

RPS Sponsored Dennie Burke used the latest version of the RPS developed Penske valve stack to capture his win in the Open Supersport class. The biggest obstacle this year so far has been the ability to get traction out of his 160bhp plus Supersport monster. RPS's Marcus McBain and Dennie Burke have worked hard to develop this technology and it looks like the work is paying off. Congrats to Dennie on solidifying his championship chase.

RPS Sponsored Justin Meyer had a somewhat disappointing weekend. The previous round had been good to Justin with top 3 finishes the order of the day. The tight and twisty SCR track does not seem to suit Justin and he had to settle for top 10 finishes instead of the top 3 as he has been accustomed to. 

RPS Sponsored Rich Deeming had a rough weekend and settled for consistent finishes rather than wins. The consistent finishes should net Deeming no less than one championship this year.

Crash Lowe is a new RPS customer. Crash has been having rear wheel traction problems this year and RPS was able to put some special valving configurations on his GSXR 600 and 750 race bikes to solve this. This looks to have helped him tremendously and it look like there is room for some more fine tuning, but overall the results look to be very good. Crash finished well most of the weekend with a 5th place in Middleweight Supersport, 3rd place Heavyweight Supersport, 4th place Open Supersport, 4th place Solo Endurance Heavyweight, 3rd place Middleweight Superbike, and 6th place Heavyweight Superbike. This looks to solidify his championship run for the season. Welcome aboard to the RPS team Crash.

RPS Sponsored Greg Greenwood put in a hell of showing with strong finishes in Amateur GTO  (3rd Place), Amateur GTU (2nd Place), Solo Endurance Middleweight  (4th Place), Middleweight Supersport  (11th Place), and Middleweight Superbike (7th Place). This strong showing looks to solidify Greg's 2nd place championship in the Amatuer GTU class.

Novice Gene Bazyl (RPS Sponsored) has really grown as a rider this year. He is actually done a damn good job of becoming a better rider through hard work and some good people giving him advice around him. On Sunday, Gene posted some outstanding finishes which include 2nd place Novice GTO and that put him into the points lead for the Novice GTO Championship. What was really impressive for Gene was that almost every lap was identical during that race. He never varied more than 1 second off of his 1:11 pace. This is indicative of his skills starting to grow.

Rounding out the weekend were consistent finishes by RPS sponsored Andrew Brown and Alex Kuretz. Congrats to all of the RPS customers and riders that improved this weekend.

Editors note: Marty Sims also had three victories this weekend. Marty IS NOT assisted by RPS and it was originally misreported that RPS assisted Applegate was the only rider with 3 wins this weekend. Our apologies to Marty Sims for incorrectly originally reporting that Applegate was the only rider to win 3 races. RPS also congratulates Sims on an excellent weekend.