During the second session of practice for the 12 hours of Sebring Jon Field of Intersport racing suffered a right rear suspension failure while traveling at high speed between turns 9 and 10. the car spun and as a result of the high speed the air going under the car sent it air borne. Jon was sent flipping and rolling down the track and came to a stop quite some time later as the photos illustrate. But as you can see he was able to get out of the car under his own power, which is amazing and was possible due to the strict safety rules of IMSA. the car did its job breaking up into pieces as it dissipated the forces of impact. you can even see that his helmet that we painted stood up to the jolt quite well. Unfortunately however, the Intersport team won't be able to compete in this years 12 hour race but hope to be back for the Long Beach Grand Prix next month. what was especially disappointing was the fact that Clint and Jon were looking to be very competitive this year. at the time of the accident they were the fastest in all of Monday's practice times. get patched up fast and strong guys, i know you can do it, you will both have new helmets waiting for you at Long Beach!

I worked many all nighters getting these two helmets ready for them to use at the 12 hours of Sebring. They are both brand new to endurance racing so they HAD to have the cold air helmets to help cope with the muggy Florida climate and long driver stints. I only had a week to paint both helmets and as you can see they both took many hours to paint. I am so relieved that they are finished and delivered. check both of these helmets out in detail on page 5 of the helmet gallery.

Brian is a long time Censport client, friend, and fellow competitor. this is probably the 5th bike I have painted for him and this one has to be my favorite so far. he gave me his body work that came with the bike when he purchased it. it was all flat black which just isn't Brian's style. we added some gloss red and gun metal gray metallic stripes to it. the gunmetal matches the frame color and the red is a classic Ducati hue. i also added some nice custom race numbers and text to fill out the frontal area. sick bike whip! Let me ride it.

Quite often, I get people asking if I design logos, so I figured I'd posts some up here to share with you. Click the logos above for enlarged versions showing more detail. So, yes, I design logos, and would love to design one for you. Give me a call or shoot me an email, thanks!

I just participated in my first charity cause this weekend. I need to get out and help the community more often but this weekend I got to have fun and help give back to those in need at the same time. Some buddies of mine who work on my race bike asked if I wanted to join their four man team and race an indoor kart event to help out kids with disabilities, of course I jumped at the opportunity. The event was setup with teams of four and each driver would drive for 25 minutes. Although there is no trophy and only bragging rights on the line I still had a blast. We finished 3rd out of 10 teams. And hopefully put some smiles on some kids faces at the same time.

If you aren't familiar with the Rossi tribute R6 that we painted let me give you a little background information. My good friend Mark Harper is an amateur custom bike builder. He transformed his 2007 Yamaha R6 into an M1 look-e-loo. He put us in charge of painting it up as authentic as possible. The paint and the bike turned out so good that it won the BozBros custom bike competition at the Moto GP event at Laguna. Part of the prize was to have the bike featured in 2 Wheel Tuner Magazine. So this is it! The first time Censport has been publicized! Lets hope it isn't the first AND last time you see our work on the newsstand near you!

This helmet design is by far the most intricate produced by us to date. It is completely different than anything I have created and it just goes to show that pretty much any style is doable here. The only part of the design that was planned was the actual dragon, which was drawn by hand and then drawn again on the computer to make a stencil out of it. The rest of the paint job was done on the fly as I went. Since the dragon is such an odd shape I had to fill the voids in with something to fill it out, so I decided to do smoke chrome flames with a thin red pinstripe. Symetry is one thing I really pay attention to, and getting the dragon perfect from side to side and joining in the middle was very difficult. The candy red flames inside the red background were also challenging to get symmetrical. I took these photos with a flash so the red outline of the flames and the white line around the dragon would stand out more. All I can say at this point is that I am glad it is complete because it consumed my life for a couple weeks. All in all about 50 hours went into painting this thing! I hope you like it Mario, treat it well.

A friend of a friend was visiting from Spain and was wanting to buy a ski helmet while he was here. I told my buddy I had one laying around in the shop and to come in and try it on and see if it fit, if it did than it was his. He tried it on and it fit, but he wanted some color on it. So I whipped this up for him in one day as a present so he could take it back to Spain. Hopefully all his friends will like it and maybe I can get some more over seas business from it.

Now available are iridium coated visors using a factory clear Arai shield. They are perfect for endurance drivers who find themselves doing twilight to night stints, they would also work for sedan drivers as well. These shields really look cool when on the helmet. They produce some really cool color and when you look out of the helmet there is a slight tint so it helps with glare in the day time in sunny conditions. They would also be nice to have in overcast conditions because it helps with flat light. Colors available are blue, silver, and gold.

I just finished these two flame themed helmets and they were quite the challenge. The silver helmet is 9k gold leaf that is engine turned by hand and took a long long time to do! The pink helmet is for his daughter and it is metal flake and candy pink on top of the flames.

For more than two hours the BMW Rahal Letterman Racing Team had been on the way to score its second victory in the Asian Le Mans Series, before a problem at the second pit stop dropped the BMW M3 GT2 down in the classification. At the end of the day, Dirk Müller (DE) and Tommy Milner (US) finished fifth in Okayama (JP) after 110 laps. Dominik Farnbacher (DE) and Allan Simonsen (DK) secured victory in their Ferrari F 430. On Saturday Müller and Milner had won the maiden race of the new Asian Le Mans Series.

Again Müller was on duty during the first part of the three-hour race for the BMW Rahal Letterman Racing Team. From fifth on the grid the 33-year-old kept out of any trouble on the first lap, before setting his sights on the leaders and improving to fourth on lap six. Afterwards the competition involuntarily aided the progress of the BMW M3 GT2: First the Porsche 911 RSR with Wolf Henzler (DE) at the wheel stopped due to a technical problem, and then David Murry (US) also dropped back in his Ford GT Mk7. When Milner rejoined the race after the team’s first pit stop on lap 44, the BMW M3 GT2 was able to take the lead for the first time.

Like his teammate Milner put in another flawless performance and headed into the pits as leader on lap 78, in order to hand over the car back to Müller. However, the engine wouldn’t start after the pit stop was completed and the time needed to remedy the problem meant that Müller went back into action in the fifth spot. Four laps down on the front-runners the BMW works driver put in one quick lap after another, but there just wasn’t enough time to make up the lost ground. He ultimately brought the BMW M3 GT2 home in fifth and clocked the fastest GT2 lap in 1:32.136 minutes.

Bobby Rahal (Team Principal): “Obviously we are disappointed, because we were again in a good position to win the race. But then the starter motor failed at our pit stop, and our chances were over. Of course we are happy with yesterday’s victory. However, if you are so close to scoring a second win you want that to happen. I hope that the Japanese fans liked the show we put in here in Okayama. For us it was a great experience.”

Tommy Milner: “Compared to the final 20 minutes of yesterday’s race, when I was under huge pressure and had to defend our lead, I had a much quieter stint today. Thanks to the great work from our pit crew I was able to take the lead and then opened up a gap. Unfortunately the problem during the second stop then ruined our race. However, thanks to our win on Saturday we can leave Japan on a positive note.” 

James Sofronas, of Newport Beach, Calif., captured his second SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge GT Championship win of the season. Almost as soon as the start lights flickered off to begin the 2009 World Challenge GT Finale, the yellow flags came out and the pace car was deployed, so that workers could remove Dino Crescentini’s No. 4 StopTech/GMG Porsche 911 GT3 from the sand in Turn Three. On the ensuing lap five restart, second-starting Sofronas was sandwiched between the No. 10 Applied Computer Solutions/SunMicro Ford Mustang GT of Davis and the No. 3 Applied Computer Solutions Ford Mustang Cobra of Boris Said. Sofornas was not keen on spending any more time between the teammates, and made his move to the inside of Davis in Turn Two to take the lead on lap six. The pass earned Sofronas the AutoWeek Move of the Race Award.

"On the start, I just wanted to get away from the line and establish my position,” Sofronas said. “Brandon [Davis] had a good start and I got into Two and just kept it clean not wanting to affect the Championship at all.

“It was pretty clear that Brandon didn’t want to get in the way or become a part of any mistakes. It was a calculated move on his part. He just left it open for me and I had to take it there. He knew he had to win a Championship and he showed that he had the maturity to get it done.”

Sofronas never looked back, taking his third-career win by 4.297 seconds, averaging 82.342 mph. The Californian set the Débaufré Fastest Lap of the Race in the process, a 1:30.919 (88.615 mph).

“The car was hooked up and once I was in the lead,” Sofronas recalled. “I just put my head down and Todd [Ketchum] would give me some splits and then, all of a sudden, I looked in my mirror and no one was there! It kind of got boring. I want to win a race fighting for it; it’s a lot more exciting. But, don’t get me wrong, the way we did it today, I’ll take it all day long.

“I kept saying 'what’s going on behind me. Entertain me because there’s not much going on up here,’ and it sounds like it was a bloodbath back there. I can’t wait to see it on TV.

“The GMG guys worked very hard. It’s very gratifying to win here. We ran five cars in two different series this weekend. They worked so hard and they were up late and I was with them here early in the morning as well. This is a great way to send them off into the offseason to get ready for next year. We love World Challenge. We’ve been doing this for a long time and look forward to doing it for years to come.”

By winning the 28-lap, 62.664-mile race, Sofronas sealed the World Challenge GT Manufacturers’ Championship for Porsche. It is the German marque’s eighth Title, which it claimed by 14 points over Ford (67 to 53). Volvo was third, with 48 points, followed by Chevrolet (45) and Viper (18).

“Winning the Manufacturers’ Championship for Porsche was a big one because of my business being focused on Porsche tuning,” Sofronas added. “That was big to help them clinch that for the second year in-a-row.”

The race was red flagged after only 4 hours of running the scheduled 12 due to heavy monsoon rain and flooding. Tommy finished 1 lap down from the leaders in the GT2 category but it was a strong finish nonetheless. Milner and Mueller climbed into 4th place overall in the GT2 standings with their 2nd place finish. They have a chance to take 3rd overall in the championship if they have another good running at the season finale at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca in a couple weeks time.

Overcoming the constantly changing and difficult conditions Jake French has won a spot on America's Team and will be traveling to Egypt this December to represent the United States and Censport Graphics in the Rotax Junior class. The 2009 Rotax World Finals will take place on December 9-12 2009 at the world-class desert track of Ghibil Raceway in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

So far this year Jake has won 4 national championships in 3 different series and he is the current point leader in the Rotax Jr. national championship. Censport Graphics would like to both congratulate Jake on a fantastic karting year and wish him good luck in the world finals for team USA.