With only scattered showers expected at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala. earlier this month, the Augusta Triumph/Ducati (ATD) team, in search of its first American Motorcyclist Association victory, decided to go with regular road tires on their Daytona 675 instead of the rain tires all other competitors were using.
Had they stuck with that plan, it could have been a costly mistake.
After running a few laps and realizing the rain would remain steady throughout the two-hour race, the team swapped tires. That decision ultimately led to Mark Crozier and Phil Caudill winning the AMA Pro SunTrust Moto-GT race, the first series victory in ATD's six-year history.
"It was awesome," said Crozier, in his second year racing exclusively for ATD. "We've done a lot of hard work towards (winning) over the years. Finally, everything came together."
After ATD earned the pole position and led the most laps during the race, AMA officials walked over to Crozier, who was waiting in the pits as his teammate was out on the track, to deliver the long-awaited news that the team had at long last been victorious.
"It was a really positive weekend for us," said Crozier, a native of Warner Robins, Ga. "To finally finish on top of the podium, what could be better than that?"
Caudill, in his first year with the team, got the call over the radio.
"It was exciting, but it was also a relief because he had been close so many times in the season," said Caudill, an Ohio native who currently resides in Sugar Grove, Pa.
The ATD team was started by local businessman Tom Clancy, who later handed the team over to his sister, Ellen Lewis. Lewis, an assistant principal at Harlem High School, says she picked up the responsibilities because she "didn't want to see the team die."
Since taking over the team, Lewis has made an effort to keep the community and her students involved with ATD. Some of the Harlem students have even painted the bikes that Crozier and Caudill race in the series. The youngsters feel such a connection to the vehicles they work on that, according to Lewis, they refer to them as "theirs" when asking how a race went.
"I'm very interested in pushing them forward and getting them into the sport," Lewis said.
With the victory, ATD moved from eighth to third in the AMA standings. There are five races remaining, and the team is in the running for the championship.
"It's been known that we are a championship team and we've had the ability to compete for a championship," Crozier said. "But now with how the points have fallen and the results, we're definitely a contender."
Augusta Triumph/Ducati will next race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., in June.
Reach Joey Jones at (706) 724-0851 or joey.jones@augustachronicle.com.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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