A DAY AT
THE TRACK
WMRC at Mission Raceway Park — where British Columbia's motorcycle road racing community has gathered since 2002.
Field Notes
There are days when you drive forty minutes out of the city and come back a completely different person. Not because anything dramatic happened — but because you spent six hours watching people do something they are genuinely, unreservedly good at.
Mission Raceway Park sits on the south bank of the Fraser River, about an hour east of Vancouver. The road course — River's Edge, they call it — is 1.9 kilometres of tarmac with nine corners that wind through a paddock full of vans, trailers, and people who have been doing this since before you knew what a superbike was. The Westwood Motorcycle Racing Club has been running here since 2002, and before that they ran at the original Westwood circuit in Coquitlam for over thirty years. This is not a new thing. This is a very old thing, done very well.
Entry to race days is free. Gates open at 7am. You sign a waiver, find a spot on the grass, and then you watch. And what you watch is — genuinely — some of the most skilled riding you will ever see outside of a television broadcast.
01
Mountain High Racing to the River's Edge
The Westwood Motorcycle Racing Club was founded in 1959. That is not a typo. Sixty-seven years of motorcycle road racing in British Columbia, run by a volunteer organisation that has survived track closures, land development, and a decade without a home circuit.
When the original Westwood circuit in Coquitlam closed in 1990 — swallowed by a housing development, as so many good things are — the club did not dissolve. It waited. It kept its licence, kept its members, and kept looking. In 2001 they were invited to run a test day at Mission Raceway Park. The 1.9km road course was deemed safe enough for motorcycles. The first full season started in 2002, and they have been back every year since.
The track has been improved steadily. Turn 1 was reconfigured. Air fence went up in the critical corners. The paddock got better. The racing got faster. Past Canadian Superbike Champions Steve Crevier and Steve Dick have raced here. World Superbike competitor Brett McCormick has raced here. And on any given race weekend in 2026, the 2025 club champion Dexter Falkenberg — who won both Lightweight Superbike and Lightweight Supersport — will be out there again, trying to defend.
The WMRC community — a club that survived a decade without a home track.
"Entry to our events is free. Gates open at 7am. Everyone is welcome. The racing is real."
— WMRC, MISSION RACEWAY PARK
02
What Actually Happens
A race weekend at WMRC runs on Saturdays and Sundays. There are ten rounds in the 2026 season, starting in late May and running through to September. The classes cover everything from 250 Production and 600 Supersport through to Open Superbike and the Formula Thunder class. Super Motard runs too, which is its own particular kind of spectacular — flat-track bikes on a road course, sideways through corners that the superbikes treat with considerably more respect.
The paddock is first-come, first-served. No garages, no electrical hookups — this is a proper club racing environment, not a corporate hospitality tent. People arrive in vans with their bikes strapped down in the back, unload in the paddock, and get to work. Tyre warmers go on. Laptops come out. Conversations happen between people who have been doing this together for twenty years.
The marshals deserve a paragraph of their own. WMRC marshals are stationed right at the edge of the circuit — close enough that you can see their faces when something happens. They are volunteers, every one of them, and the calibre is high enough that several have been invited to marshal at MotoGP, World Superbike, WERA, and IndyCar events. They are the reason the racing is safe. They are also the reason the atmosphere is what it is — people who genuinely care, doing a job that matters.
If you want to ride rather than watch, the Hybrid Track Day option is the best deal in British Columbia motorsport. $170 plus GST gets you four sessions on the circuit — two in the morning, two in the afternoon — run in between the race events. You are not just riding a track. You are riding a track while real racing is happening around the schedule. The energy is different. Everything is different.
Racing action at River's Edge Road Course, Mission Raceway Park. Photo: Roadracing World.
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03
The 2025 Champions
The 2025 season produced a full slate of class champions. Dexter Falkenberg took the overall club championship and won both Lightweight Superbike and Lightweight Supersport. Ken Lalonde swept Open Supersport and Superbike. Julian Fipke won Middleweight Twins and Formula Thunder. This is what a healthy club racing series looks like — deep fields, multiple champions, real competition.
Dexter Falkenberg
Club Champion · Lightweight Superbike · Lightweight Supersport
Ken Lalonde
Open Supersport · Superbike
Julian Fipke
Middleweight Twins · Formula Thunder
Tyler Rouse
250 Production
Robert Moysychyn
600 Supersport
Keir Link
Formula 1:15
Dean Thompson
Formula 1:18
Nick Dudziak
Formula Ultra
Ben Wallman
Middleweight Superbike
Marbod Kern
Super Motard
— ADVERTISEMENT —
WMRC
EST. 1959
WESTWOOD MOTORCYCLE RACING CLUB
Mission Raceway Park · Track Days from $170 · Free Race Day Entry · wmrc.ca
04
How to Get Started
The WMRC runs a New Racer School three times a year — in May, June, and July. Each school is a three-day programme: classroom on the first Sunday, short track at Mission on the following Saturday, and the full road course on the Sunday. The school is run by Scott Borthwick and Bob Boorman, and the curriculum covers everything from bike preparation and safety equipment to racecraft and circuit etiquette.
If you are not ready to race but want to ride the circuit, the standard track days are open to all skill levels. Multiple groups run simultaneously — beginner, intermediate, advanced — and Control Riders are on track to guide and support newer riders. The mandatory tech inspection and morning riders' meeting are not bureaucracy. They are the reason nobody gets hurt.
PRACTICAL DETAILS
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The Verdict
WMRC — River's Edge
Mission Raceway Park, Mission, BC · wmrc.ca
Personal Note
I have been to a lot of motorsport events. I have been to Formula 1 races, to World Superbike rounds, to rallies in the mountains. And I will tell you honestly — a WMRC race day at Mission Raceway Park is not lesser than any of them. It is different. It is smaller. It is more human. The gap between you and the racing is about three metres of grass and a marshal in a yellow vest.
There is something about watching people race motorcycles on a circuit that they built themselves — that they fought to keep alive for sixty-seven years — that puts a different kind of weight on the afternoon. These are not paid professionals. They are accountants and mechanics and teachers who get up at five in the morning on a Saturday in May and strap their bikes into vans and drive out to Mission because this is what they do. This is what they have always done.
The 2026 season runs from May through September. Ten rounds. Free entry. Forty minutes from Vancouver. If you have never been, go. If you have been, go again. And if you ride — book a Hybrid Track Day, because $170 for four sessions on a live race circuit is one of the best deals in British Columbia.
Best Day Ever. Without question.
— GERALD SHAFFER, JUST GERALD MAGAZINE
