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Virginia City Grand Prix After thirty years of being one of the biggest and most
prestigious races on the west coast this years Virginia City was to be the last.
For the last VC the old format of 4 ½ hours of racing around a 27 mile
loop was being brought back. Brian
decided to race the 125, which meant that he would race on Saturday with the C
riders. Since we both didn’t know we were going to be in town until
after the drawing date we had to post enter and Brian ended up with # 386 which
would have him eating serious dust. Brian
got into the lead on adjusted time within a lap and all was going good until he
lost his clutch on the second lap. He
decided to ride without one and ride smooth with the throttle and try to carry
his speed. With a 27 mile lap he
was stopping for fuel on every lap. Going
into the last lap he had a minute and a half lead over Dave Wood but with only
two miles to go his motor gave out on him and he was left stranded out in the
desert. He was frustrated with
having led the race for that long only to not be able to win or even finish the
race. For Sundays race there
wasn’t as many riders so I got #134. I
was racing my new KTM 200 for the first time, which I was very excited about.
The dust was really bad and it was hard to work through the riders.
There gets to be groups of four or five riders in packs and when you come
up on these packs you can’t even see the ground.
I knew I would have to do two laps before gassing to have a shot at
winning so I went around the pits and tried to pick off some more riders.
On the second lap it was actually more dusty because the riders who I was
trying to get around were faster and did not want to give up their position.
By the third lap I got around local fast guy Robbie Zimmerman and for the
first time got some clean air. I
picked up the pace some and when I came in for gas after the fourth lap Brian
told me if I wanted to win I would have to pick up the pace on the last lap.
That got me motivated and I pinned it on the last lap.
My pit crew made it out to five or six spots to cheer me on which was
nice and I kept the hammer down all the way to the checkered flag.
I had too much time to make up on eventual winner Shane Espinto so I
ended up in second place. All in
all it was a good weekend with no crashes and a chance to see all of the people
that we grew up racing with. |