Gorman WORCS

Brian and I went down to Gorman a few days early so he could go riding on the motocross track at open practice the Thursday before the race.  It took Brian a couple of motos to get comfortable but by the end of the day he was going fast around the track so going down early was productive.  Kurt Caselli and Mike Kiedrowski were also riding around on Thursday.  Mike looked like he was on a mission riding 30 minute motos at 100%.  Caselli also looked good on his local track but spent most of the day showing off doing the big 120 foot step-up jump.  Also on Thursday Brian called into radio station 610 and talked to Larry Nastin on his talk radio show.  Brian said it turned out well and it was easy to do an interview with Larry because he pumps you up so much with his questions.  

On Saturday Brian rode the 125/ 4-stroke race on the 520.  He got a good start behind Caselli who race racing a 125.  Kurt showed his local knowledge of the area and opened up a big lead early and never let off, while looking very solid on his 125.   Brian held onto second until Russ Pearson and RJ Thompson caught and passed him.  Brian then started to scout out the track looking for good lines for the next days race and played around with Dave Neumeister for the rest of the race.  The course for the weekend was typical so cal desert and was 4.5 miles in length.  There was a hard pack motocross track with a bunch of table tops that was pretty good, followed by the traditional GP off road section that they always run at Hungry Valley.  It was all two track road that was third gear corners and fourth gear straightaways.  There was no single track or any technical obstacles on the entire track.  The only thing that salvaged the race is that they could water the whole track.  After the race TopSpeed productions put on the Nasty Jam featuring Cory Nastazio and five of his friends putting on a show on their BMX bikes.  Along with the bikes the band, Ribsy Nickel from Santa Cruz, was going off with a concert along side of the bike riders.  The highlight of the event had to be when the lead singer made up a song on the spot about the nasty jam and the weekend at Gorman.  It was a good time and was neat to see the top BMX riders doing their thing in person.

When the riders took to the line on Sunday's pro race a loud crack of thunder exploded and everyone was excited that it might actually rain and cool the temperature away from the mid 90's.   Brian got off to as bad as a start as you can have getting stuck in the gate.  We talked about him needing to get out of the gate faster and had him looking at the pin instead of waiting for the gate to fall before he took off.   He somehow made a bunch of early passes and was top ten coming off the moto track.  Up front Ty Davis got the holeshot with Mike Kiedrowski close behind in second place.  This was the race everyone was looking for as Ty led the series and Mike was close behind in second.  Behind them was Caselli, Ryan Dudek, Robert Naughton, Shane Esposito, and the rest of the pack.  Brian quickly made his way into fourth place and had a good battle going with Dudek for most of the race.  I could see Russ Pearson and Steve Hatch were some ways behind Brian but were charging hard so we warned Brian about them during his pit stop.  During the race we got some bad news about Dave Neumeister.  He was going into a turn over a rise and his front tire stuck and he went over the bars and ended up breaking his leg.  Brian Spearle was right behind his and saw it happen and showed great sportsmanship and stopped to help Dave out.  Dave was to ride on the Canadian Six Days team in a couple of weeks and so he has to be bummed about the injury.  Heel up fast Dave.  Up front Ty was getting hounded by Kiedrowski for the first five laps.  The two of them pulled away from the field and they were having a great battle for the race and the championship.  On the sixth lap Kiedrowski made his move and immediately pulled away from Davis.  At this point the unexpected happened.  It started to rain.  It rained so hard for LA the ground almost to wet.  The good thing it did was bring down the temperature a good ten degrees and kept the sun behind the clouds for the first time during the weekend.  Brian was up to a solid fourth when his rear brakes went out about 2/3 of the way though the race.  Caselli was still thinking about winning the race and charge up and caught up to Davis who had faded a bit after being passed by Kiedrowski.  Curt made his pass with two laps to go and then Ty unexpectedly pulled off the track.  He went by and his bike looked fine but we later found out he had suffered from heat stroke.  Kiedrowski went on to win the race and has a good points lead now with only on race to go in the series.  Caselli came within 30 seconds of Kiedrowski at the finish for second place, followed by Russ Pearson who charged hard all day and ended up with another podium finish in the WORCS series.  Steve Hatch also came from way back for fourth, followed by Dudek, Naughton, Bobby Garrison, then Brian managed eighth without brakes.  Local D-36 riders held up the honor with Craig Wesner and Robert Fouts charging hard all day long to round out the top ten.

On another note I got kicked off the track trying to watch the race.  When this series started it was supposed to be a spectator friendly event.  The only place to watch the race was around the motocross track and there you had to be behind a fence a good 100 feet from the track in most places.  We need to have spectator sections off of the motocross track to showcase the riders talents in their specialty- off road racing. 

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