AMA Dirt Track National Round 1
The season is finally here… Bout time! Ive been prepping everything including myself for this time of year since I healed from my wrist injury last December. After a while you wonder why you are spending all this crazy time training, building bikes, and practicing until you roll up at the track, thats right! Im ready to rip it up… almost forgot! We rolled the freshened rig up into the Ozark mountains somewhere on the back side of who knows were in a town called Ava, Missouri a day early to get relaxed and to start getting set up for the weekend. Duro Tire sponsored Nick Lee’s rig came in right behind us and we set up a demo area for everyone to check out Nicks bikes and rig. (Nick is the world burnout king on road bikes… pretty interesting individual) Check him out Here. Needless to say we had the pits display on lock in our own little sector of the venue. Friday practice went well, I could really tell my fitness was on point and training has me dialed in for what I need to be doing, mostly kept it to myself and didnt want to show my cards. (even though I was pounding out more laps than most anyone and was coming in for adjustments without hardly breaking a sweat) Thanks Eric!! Our qualifiers were early saturday afternoon and the track was incredibly dry slick compared to the moist tacky surface from the night before. These conditions gave us fits during the day on set up and was making qualifying extra difficult for us. Good friend and exhaust sponsor Mark Pullam from Leo Vince exhaust rolled in with his son Jake to hang and give me support, which was really cool of them. We ended up qualifying somewhere around 11th position and was completely bummed. We decided to flip flop the set up and put Mark on grill duty in the rig while the bike setup was completely changed. BIG roll of the dice. By the time the mains came around my crew and I had already decided that we had to switch to take no prisoner mode. We had all the ingredients, desire, fitness, and now hopefully a bike that was dialed in. Turns out thats exactly what we had! After starting from the back row and coming thru the pack, it was evident to everyone things were dialed in. Unfortunately I had a larger deficit to over come from the top qualifiers and simply ran out of time before I could pick off any more. 20 laps down I ended up starting from 11th position and fought my way up to a 6th overall for the night. By the last 3 laps most riders were dangling off their bikes from exhaustion… When the checkers dropped I felt like I had more in the tank. Not bad. Not what we wanted… but considering the battle it was a decent ride. The gamble paid off. My DASA motor was pulling hard and the newest release of Duro Tires were perfect. Last year I finished 12th at the first round, so we are off to a way better start. My goal is to improve at every round and to continuously work my way up the podium for the remainder of the season. Gonna be digging deeper. Here are some pics by Darren Wentz. Stay tuned.
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