Whiplash 2009, Race #2 Wickenburg 2-22-2009

I am still buzzing over this weekends race.  The senior pro class is full this year and it is a lot fun.

The Wickenburg course is my favorite so I really wanted to win this one. I was lined up next to Rick Ellsworth and his new KTM; we were on the 2nd row for our class. TJ Miller and John Baj were on row 1. The green flag dropped, Rick and I both got a good launch and we were side by side through 1st and 2nd gear and luckily I pulled a bit in 3rd gear so I had clean air in front of me. I caught up to John in the rocky hills section, he waved me by on one of the tight hilly turns but I spun the tires and went wide but it was too late and I couldn’t get by and in the process I ran over a small thorny cactus with both right tires so now I was nervous about getting a flat. John moved over after a bit and I got by and I had clean air until I caught TJ around mile 18. He let me by and I had clean air for the rest of the lap.

I considered stopping to have my tires checked after lap 1 but they seemed ok so I kept on going. After 1 mile my pit told me on the radio that TJ was 1 minute behind me. Lap 2 was uneventful and clean. I stopped for fuel after lap 2 and I exited the pits making sure not to break the pit speed limit. After about 2 miles I heard some noise on my radio but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. So I just kept up a good pace.

Around mile 8 I looked back and I could see some dust in the distance and I didn’t know who it was so I just went for it the rest of the lap. I knew some fast guys had started behind me and I didn’t want to lose the race on overall time. I caught and passed a few 900’s all of whom moved over quickly. After the 1st powerline section I caught up to a Pro who wasn’t interested in letting me by. I was yelling for him to move but he held his line for a bit. I think he believed we were in the same class, it was at this point I wished the senior pros had different colored number backgrounds or something.

The rest of the lap was uneventful, I just concentrated on keeping a solid pace and I just hoped nothing strange would happen with the quad. I crossed the finish line first in my class but I had to wait a while to see how close behind me the others were. The noise I had heard on the radio at the start of lap 3 was my pits telling me that Jason Fritz was about a minute behind me. Jason came in a few minutes later and then I knew I had won. It was a great feeling to get my first win in the new class.

While I was loading my quad I noticed a crack in my fancy LSR race frame so that sucks. I really don’t want to tear this quad apart again.

Thanks again to all of my sponsors.  The quad is performing great.  I still can't believe I am running a stock rear shock; the GT Thunder revalve is awesome.  Jim at Motowoz rebuilt my front shocks prior to this race and they are really excellent and the turn around time on the rebuild was great.  This DFR engine has 30 hours on it now and it still runs awesome. And of course my Flexx bars are still holding up great, I don't even know how many hours I have on them.  The JD Performance A-arms are great too. Thanks to BRM for the awesome graphics package, I really like the way the quad looks.

Photos by DGP Photography (I shrunk them down for the web)

results photo by Jeff @ http://jandsphoto.com/

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