Earlier this year, ICAFe Companies partnered with Ryhno Racing’s Ryan Nolan #411 as a sponsor for his 2024 motorcycle racing campaign. Ryan is an accomplished motorcycle road racer in the Midwest (CCS and ASRA), and he was looking to make his debut in the United States’ premiere professional motorcycle road racing organization, MotoAmerica.
Ryan is one of the primary liaisons between club racers and one of the major national club racing organizations (ASRA), so he is very well known and respected amongst veteran racers. He is also one of the head control riders and coaches for the midwestern track day organization (Motovid.com) which provides an avenue for motorcycle enthusiasts to get onto a racetrack in a non-race environment. He has coached and helped a huge amount of track day riders to become novice and expert racers over the last decade. He’s won over 10 regional championships in the lightweight division on a Suzuki SV650, and in 2023 made the move to the more powerful and hyper competitive middleweight division on a Yamaha R6.
Based out of Sheboygan, WI, Ryan is a business analyst by day as well as a part-time photojournalist for Road Dirt TV. His professionalism, enthusiasm for racing, and (most importantly) his passion for helping new racers succeed on the track is what piqued ICAFe’s interest in supporting his 2024 racing campaign. In the Midwest, he may have an argument for helping more track day riders make the jump to racing than anybody else in the last five years.
Ryhno Racing is a small, grassroots team run by Ryan and his wife, Natalie. ICAFe joined many other local businesses from Southern Wisconsin in supporting his efforts to qualify for the MotoAmerica race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI. He coined this campaign “GrindToTheGrid”, and it says a lot about Ryan’s connection to the community to see so many other local business’s logos alongside ICAFe’s represented on the bike.
The MotoAmerica races at Road America took place on May 31st – June 2nd, 2024. In order to qualify for the grid, a rider needs to be within 108% of the pole qualifying time in either of the two qualifying sessions (one Friday afternoon, one Sunday morning). In a terrible stroke of bad luck, Ryan’s #411 Yamaha R6 dropped a valve and blew the engine on the Tuesday leading up to the race on a practice day. For most racers running their own team and attempting to qualify for their first professional race at arguably the most horsepower dependent track in the country (Daytona has an argument), this would have been game over. Instead, Ryan, Natalie, and the rest of his team scrambled all over Wisconsin and Illinois to put together a bike for the effort by prepping his coaching bike with all of the race components from the primary bike sans the engine.
Friday came and, with very little sleep for any of the team, the bike passed technical inspection. Qualifying for the race was always going to be difficult, but the change to the coaching bike instead of the primary bike meant that he would be considerably down on horsepower. Ryan put in a great effort in the first qualifying session but missed the cutoff by just over 1 second. The team immediately got to work for the remainder of the day to make every positive change they could based on the feedback Ryan could give from the limited amount of track time he’d been able to get.
Saturday morning came, and it was an overcast morning that was threatening rain, though it ended up being a dry affair. The live timing trap speeds were indicating that Ryan was giving up over 20mph on the massive high speed straightaways due to having to run the lower horsepower backup motor. However, he was making up a ton of time on the slower, more technical sections of the track. Ultimately, he missed the qualifying cutoff time by under 1 second.
Devastated, Ryan’s immediate reactions weren’t to sulk in the fact that he wouldn’t be racing in the main show that he’d spent over a year preparing for, but to apologize to his team and supporters for coming up short. We can’t speak for all of Ryhno Racing’s supporters, but we believe the heroic effort by Ryan, Natalie, and the rest of the team to come within 0.8 seconds is just as (if not more) impressive than making the show with the primary engine. Through a massive effort from the members of Ryhno Racing, they nearly pulled off a miracle. ICAFe is proud to have its logo on the side of the #411, and we know that Ryhno Racing will continue to #GrindToTheGrid.
If you’d like to learn more about Ryhno Racing, you can visit their website here: https://www.ryhnoracing.com/
Ryhno Racing YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Ryhno411
Ryan Nolan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryhno411
Ryhno Racing Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Ryhno411
