Tremblant- June 2-4: Schouten takes home another win!

Vicki travelled to Le Circuit Mont Tremblant this past weekend for Round#2 of the Parts Canada Superbike Series and Round#4 of the Women’s Cup Challenge series. Considered to be the jewel of the Canadian road-racing scene, track conditions at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant were near perfect and Vicki excelled taking home her third consecutive victory in the Novice Women’s Cup series.

Test sessions went well on Thursday and Friday for both the Women’s Cup Challenge and AM600 events. Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant is a track unlike most others that Vicki is used to riding. With lots of fast turns and highspeed straightaways on smooth pavement, Vicki immediately fell in love with the racetrack!

Qualifying for the Women’s Cup was held on Saturday afternoon. Despite forecasts for warm and sunny temperatures, the afternoon was filled with gray skies, cold temperatures and constant bouts of rain.  By the time the Women’s Cup qualifying heat race came around, the rain had started to disappear and the track was quickly forming a dry line. With no time to change to dry tires, almost all of the women’s field were forced to compete on rain tires.

Vicki had a great start to the qualifier and led the Novice women’s field into the congested turn one of Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant. However, by turn four something unexpected happened! Two ARTRacing teammates, Vicki and Vanessa, experienced a near-collision. Vanessa’s rear wheel caught a wet patch of pavement causing her Wheelsport HondaCBR600 to lose traction and Vanessa, still suffering from a collarbone injury, to lose control of the bike. Vicki was right on her rear wheel and could see that Vanessa was losing control of the bike. “I thought for sure she was going down!” exclaimed Vicki, “and I thought I was going with her!” Vicki managed to get around Vanessa and maintained the lead for the Novice women’s field. Concerned about Vanessa’s well-being, Vicki was happy to see upon the next lap that Vanessa had managed to hold onto her bike despite her injury, regain control and continue to press on. Great job Vanessa!

Vicki went on to win the Novice women’s qualifier putting her on the pole for Sunday’s race card.

The Women’s Cup Challenge was the first race of the day on Sunday and it was a perfect day for racing—sunny skies, warm weather and thousands of fans to come out and watch the Women’s Cup and the Parts Canada Superbike series.

Vicki did not get the start to the race that she had hoped for. Despite starting on the pole, her start was not as strong as usual and she got caught up in traffic immediately in turn one. She was passed by a few novice women competitors and had to work hard for the first half of the lap to make up time. After some jostling back and forth, Vicki drove hard into the second straightaway and managed to pass her competition. It was a close call as she almost missed the turn but she managed to manoeuvre the bike into the corner on time. Now out front of the novice women’s field, Vicki rode hard and maintained her lead on the rest of her competition, taking the checkered flag once again!

Once again a special thanks goes out to all of our sponsors including Honda Canada, Wheelsport, Bell Helmets, Performance Under Gear,  Compulsion Racing, Jeepy and to all of our friends and family who came to support us!