Sean Dylan Kelly has had an eventful start to his first year as an OrangeCat Racing BMW rider in the Quad Lock Superbike Championship.

The Floridian suffered a monumental crash during practice for round two at Barber Motorsports Park, losing control of his BMW M 1000 RR over the notorious high-speed hill between turns 12 and 13.

The BMW was rather worse for wear, but Kelly refused to acknowledge his own personal injury until after the race weekend was completed and after he put his spare M 1000 RR on the box with a third-place finish in race two.

“I fractured the very tip of my middle finger on the right side, which is luckily a minor injury considering it could have been so much worse,” Kelly said. “I chose not to get the finger X-rayed while I was at Barber because I didn’t want it to be an excuse I gave to the team. I didn’t feel the best, but I was still fast enough to get on the podium. So, I told the team that, if I break a finger this weekend, we should be on for a win!”

Jokes aside, Kelly is enjoying his best start to a MotoAmerica Superbike season yet, and it comes during another period of change. This year marks the third new team in as many years for the 2021 MotoAmerica Supersport Champion since returning from Europe and the Moto2 World Championship, but it is also his first domestic Superbike season without his longtime crew chief, Jeremy Toye.

Now paired with Cameron Beaubier’s former crew chief and current OrangeCat Racing Technical Director, Dave Weaver, Kelly admits it was a shame not to be able to keep Toye on board, but he knows he’s in more than capable hands with Weaver, who helped guide Beaubier to the title last season.

“Dave is an incredible guy, as are my data engineers,” says Kelly. “They are all extremely knowledgeable but it’s not like I’m fully starting from fresh as there are some team members I already knew.

“Coming back to the BMW after a year on the Suzuki hasn’t been as big a transition as I thought it might be because they are both very different bikes. It’s hard to compare the two, and the BMW M 1000 RR has had a few new parts thrown at it since I last rode it, but it feels really similar to 2024.

“I’m not exactly where I want to be just yet, but we’re improving each time we go out on circuit, and we’re close to the front guys already. I’ve got a lot of tracks coming up that I enjoy—Laguna Seca, Circuit of The Americas—and I want to be the reference rider when we get to those places.”