Competitors can be forgiven for feeling like they may need divine intervention to beat ADRL Pro Extreme Motorcycle racer Ashley Owens this year.

Riding for veteran team owner and fellow competitor Paul Gast, Owens has qualified number one at four of five ADRL events in 2010 (missing the chance for a perfect record when rain shortened qualifying at Martin, Michigan), holds both ends of the class performance records, and is yet to lose an elimination round, prevailing as the winner of all three completed events so far.

But the soft-spoken rider from Decatur, Alabama, remains humble and focused on the next round, the next race, and hopefully, his first ADRL world championship.

Competitors can be forgiven for feeling like they may need divine intervention to beat ADRL Pro Extreme Motorcycle racer Ashley Owens this year.

Riding for veteran team owner and fellow competitor Paul Gast, Owens has qualified number one at four of five ADRL events in 2010 (missing the chance for a perfect record when rain shortened qualifying at Martin, Michigan), holds both ends of the class performance records, and is yet to lose an elimination round, prevailing as the winner of all three completed events so far.

But the soft-spoken rider from Decatur, Alabama, remains humble and focused on the next round, the next race, and hopefully, his first ADRL world championship.

“I’m just trying to enjoy it while it lasts because there’s always someone coming up and anything can happen. There are a lot of tough competitors out there and I think eventually somebody will step up and run better than us and then at that point we’ll just have to move forward and do the same ourselves,” he states.

Owens is quick to deflect most of the credit for his success to his team owner and the technicians who built his 1800 cc-equipped, ’09 Suzuki at the Fast by Gast shop up in Grand Island, New York, as well as to his crew members, some of whom he’s been racing with for years.

“I know everybody says it, but this really is a team sport and the whole team deal is working real well for us,” Owens says. “And this new deal with Paul, all new stuff, top-of-the line parts, and all of Paul’s motors make a lot of horsepower; it all just gives me a lot of confidence out there.”

Of course there’s always that chance of the proverbial failure of a two-dollar part ending the team’s streak.

“So many things can go wrong with the bike, with the riding, with the reaction times, with just about anything, really,” Owens recognizes. “And I think we’ve been a little bit lucky a few times; well, maybe not lucky, but fortunate when we’ve made a few little ‘saves’ in the pits like when we caught an ignition box that was bad, but we caught it right before the round.”

The attention to detail just makes it that much tougher for the competition to counterstrike and with the class elapsed time record set by Owens at Virginia Motorsports Park to a previously unthinkable 4.05 seconds and his speed record from the same event holding firm at 178.21 mph, it’ll require a big effort to challenge his on-track performance.

“I keep waiting on it; there’s always someone who’s going to step up eventually,” Owens says. “But I don’t want to start pushing it and start breaking a lot of stuff. We’ve been real fortunate this year because the reliability of the bike has been a huge factor in what we’ve been able to do.”

And despite an easy-going nature and well-liked personality in the pits, Owens also realizes some of his two-wheeled rivals may be tiring of his dominance.

“Everybody’s still pretty good; it’s just a good group of people,” he says. “I haven’t really heard anybody say anything bad, but you know, some don’t like it, I’m sure, but most of the guys just want to step up and run a quicker ET. I mean that’s the whole point of the class, or at least that’s how it is for me.”

Which may be the worst news yet for the rest of the Pro Extreme Motorcycle crowd.