Monday Morning Coffee Opinion Column

By Billy Rainford

That was a busy weekend! I had always planned on heading to the final AMA Pro Motocross Championship round at Ironman MX in Crawfordsville, IN, but when I heard that we’d have our 3 riders from Team Canada MXON racing, there was no question I was going to make the 7-hour drive from London.

Unfortunately, we got word that our 250 rider and 2-time defending Canadian Triple Crown Series 250 MX champion Ryder McNabb had crashed while practicing and wasn’t going to be able to join his teammates. That wasn’t the news we wanted to hear but we’re told it won’t affect his participation heading to Ernée, France for the 2023 MXON at the beginning of October.

I hopped in the DMX Van on Thursday afternoon. I always plan it so I miss going through Detroit at rush hour. Not that Detroit is exactly booming these days, but it’s still a big city that I try to avoid at peak times, nonetheless.

The weather was kind of perfect in London when I left. As soon as I got out of the Great Lakes area and through Windsor and Detroit, the temperature rose to 33 C at 8pm! They were experiencing some crazy heat wave down there that had The Weather Network app issuing a Heat Warning until midnight.

It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear because I only had a hotel booked for the Friday night and had planned to simply pull over and sleep in the van whenever I felt I’d gotten close enough on Thursday night.

Fortunately, Emily had grabbed a couple USB-charged little fans that I was going to have to put to good use if I was going to want to get any sleep at all in these conditions. And you know what? They worked great and stayed running for the entire time I was pulled over in a Pilot truck stop parking lot about 30-minutes from the track!

First up was the final Moto Combine of the season on Friday. Our own #800 Preston Masciangelo from Brantford, Ontario, was going to be racing again (he did the one at Red Bud earlier in the summer).

Oh, I should also mention that the heat wave continued on Friday. Even people there from Texas and Florida were saying it was ridiculously hot and humid. Standing in the shade did just about nothing. It felt like Loretta Lynn’s.

I must have looked like I was suffering because I had a lot of people walk past me and say that it was supposed to be better on Saturday for the National. I think it’s just the bald head and the sweat glistening in the sunlight that did it.

We were missing a few of the other top riders who had already made the move to racing on Saturdays, like Julien Beaumer, Daxton Bennick, and Casey Cochran, to name a few. But that didn’t mean the field was any easier.

In moto 1, #15 Gavin Towers held off #27 Krystian (I wonder how many times that is right at Starbucks?) Janik to take the win.

Masciangelo struggled with the humidity and crossed the line 16th. In fact, they considered not even lining up for the 2nd moto. When I spoke with them in staging for moto 2, the plan seemed to be to go out and do 2 or 3 laps before pulling in so as not to risk anything bad happening in the sweltering heat.

The gate dropped and Janik was down in turn 1. Preston came in blind and bounced over him and his bike, hitting the ground. He got up in last place (well, Krystian was behind him, but he was way back) and I really didn’t know what to expect. I figured that would likely send him back to the pits early. Wrong.

Preston decided to press the pace, caught up to the pack, and started making passes!

Considering the way they went into moto 2, I was impressed with Preston’s tenacity. If you’ve ever struggled in the heat trying to race something, you know how tough it can be. I even said to Justin Masciangelo that it’s tough because you sometimes don’t see it coming until you find yourself swearing away and thinking fixating on food or water while you continue to fall apart. And then it’s usually too late and the bad decisions start happening.

To my surprise, he stayed out and conitued to push the pace! He managed to get himself all the way up to 14th by the checkered flag, so he’s got to be happy with his performance. I know I was!

I put together a video of his day. Of course, I had to put it to some John Mellencamp‘s Small Town, since he’s about as Indiana as you can get!

Towers looked to be in complete control of his speed in both motos. He held his gap over Janik in the first moto and then, when Janik went down in the first turn, did the same in the 2nd moto over #300 Drew Adams. The battle to the flag between #263 Avery Long and #21 Enzo Temmerman was the one to watch with Long taking the position.

Also on Friday, I was surprised to look down from one of my vantage points and see Troy Smith and #48 Devyn Smith heading for one of the tunnels from the infield. They tried to get into Budds Creek but were a little too late to make that one happen, so they were at Irnoman MX to try an AMA National for the first time. In fact, I think Devyn told me in our interview that it was his first-ever time even being at one!

Here’s our interview from Friday afternoon:

So that meant we had 3 Canadians to keep an eye on for Saturday afterall!

Here’s a breakdown of their numbers:

#485 Devyn Smith:

Qualifying: 63rd – 2:03.977

Consolation Race: 15th

#493 Jess Pettis:

Qualifying: 12th – 1:51.478

Moto 1: 10th

Moto 2: First turn crash. Did one lap and pulled into the mechanics area. Rode back to pits with Nico. DNF

Overall: 14th

#539 Dylan Wright:

Qualifying: 7th – 1:50.753

Moto 1: 8th

Moto 2: 9th

Overall: 8th

Of course, the numbers don’t exactly tell the whole story…

Devyn looked aggressive and will only be more comfortable next time he tries to line up. Kudos to them for staying east for the entire summer and staying long enough to give this a shot. He’ll be a stronger rider because of it.

Jess Pettis got off to a good start in the first moto and looked good. He has top 10 speed down there, no doubt! The race ended up looking like something we’d have seen in Canada this past summer. He was ahead of Dylan Wright, but Dylan slowly closed the gap and made the pass. Here at home, that would have placed them 1st and 2nd but down in the AMA that put them 8th and 10th with #953 Harri Kullas between them.

As I said, they both showed they have top 10 and better pace against this stacked field.

In moto 2, it looks like, in true Canadians-racing-an-AMA-event fashion, the two of them either came together or came very close as they headed into the first sweeping right-hand turn.

Dylan was on the inside and a half bike-length ahead and it looks like it may have been what put Jess to the ground. Turn 1 is chaos and it’s just how racing goes sometimes. It’s just so classic that it was our 2 guys.

Jess dusted himself off and tried to complete a lap but was forced into the mechanics area to talk things over with Nico. Nico hopped on the back of the bike and the 2 of them headed back to the pits. It looked like the front end was messed up to the point they weren’t able to simply push something back into alignment. They were already packed up and gone when I finally got a chance to go look for them for an interview.

Dylan’s first moto was interesting because he slowly moved his way forward after a mid-pack start. Things got interesting when he closed on his old friend #69 Phil Nicoletti. I noticed Phil looking around and he knew it was the Canadian Champ coming up. You’ll remember they have a history from that race at Sand Del Lee when their lines came together and Phil’s hand got pretty messed up in the contact. Dylan got past him and set his sights on Jess, who was running in front of the Club MX rider.

He crossed the line up in 8th place but had the pace to be up further than that. He actually crossed the fist lap way back in 18th place!

In the second moto, Dylan got off to a better start and was up in 7th place on lap 1. He cross-rutted and went over the bars trying to get around #9 Adam Cianciarulo (yep) and that put him back in 18th place on lap 3.

I thought that was the end of our stellar day for Canadians, but Dylan didn’t fold up and mail it in. He put his head down and started making his way toward the front in very impressive fashion!

The only other rider likely to have passed as many riders as Dylan was Kullas who was outside the top 25 early.

I think Dylan was the last rider to not get lapped by #18 Jett Lawrence but it could have been #47 Freddie Noren. Either way, with 2 laps to go, Dylan was closing on #36 Gerrett Marchbanks, Nicoletti, and Cianciarulo. He knew he was gaining quickly but simply ran out of laps. He said in our post-race interview that he just cruised the lap half of the final lap in and crossed the line in 9th to take 8th overall on the day.

Oh, I also made a bet with Mike Bonacci (he bet me, I just accepted) from Club MX that Dylan would finish ahead of Nicoletti in the OA and won a cool $1 in the process…by 2 points. As far as their pace goes, it shouldn’t have been that close, but I’ll head over to the Dollar Store and grab a Mars bar for 87 cents to celebrate.

Next up, Gopher Dunes for Round 1 of the SX/AX portion of the schedule on September 25th.

Red Bull Outliers

Thank you to Noel Flatters from Superfine Media for keeping our Instagram page updated with what was going on out in Alberta for the 2023 Red Bull Outliers event.

Results:

  FIM Pos. Rider Lap Last CP Arrival Last CP Gap Prev. Penalty  
OFFICIAL RESULTS
PRO
    1 304 – Lettenbichler, Manuel 3 7 17:13:02,54 –    
    2 57 – Bolt, Billy 3 7 17:13:43,56 +41.02    
    3 84 – Hart, Trystan 3 7 17:15:22,24 +1:38.68    
    4 74 – Roman, Mario 3 7 17:15:29,57 +07.33    
    5 55 – Young, Wade 3 7 17:27:17,23 +11:47.66 00’30”  
    6 23 – Kabakchiev, Teodor 3 7 17:29:15,00 +1:57.77    
    7 47 – Green, Matthew 3 7 17:32:16,20 +3:01.20 00’30”  
    8 39 – Riordan, Will 3 7 17:34:19,70 +2:03.50    
    9 22 – Walker, Jonny 3 7 17:36:15,45 +1:55.75    
    10 20 – Walkner, Michael 3 7 17:40:32,67 +4:17.22 00’30”  
    11 1 – Jarvis, Graham 3 7 17:42:56,89 +2:24.22    
    12 89 – Gomez Cantero, Alfredo 3 7 17:45:39,40 +2:42.51 00’30”  
    13 4 – Goirand, Didier 2 5 17:32:15,75 -13:23.65    
    14 99 – Petrie, Branden 2 4 17:27:20,51 -4:55.24    
    15 711 – Curtis, Keith 1 7 17:35:00,85 +7:40.34    
    16 17 – Wilton, Spenser 1 5 17:12:23,97 -22:36.88    
    17 997 – Flynn, James 1 2 17:03:26,33 -8:57.64    
    18 805 – Bartziokas, Joseph 1 2 17:21:01,22 +17:34.89    
    19 115 – Mccullough, Quinn – 7 17:32:25,05 +11:23.83    
    20 94 – Chaine, Phillipe – 7 17:33:12,12 +47.07    

There’s no Women’s class so Lexi Pechout raced the Amateur class and was the top-finishing female rider:

AMATEUR:

1 309 – Bafia, Dominik 5 00:05:14,87 –  
    2 313 – Larsen, Kyle 5 00:05:24,24 +09.37  
    3 312 – Phillips, Russ 5 00:05:25,17 +10.30  
    4 320 – Edwardson, Blake 4 00:05:42,44 +27.57  
    5 330 – Routley, Kaleb 4 00:05:45,36 +30.49  
    6 314 – Carruthers, Caleb 4 00:05:48,57 +33.70  
    7 333 – Melnyk, William 4 00:06:15,26 +1:00.39  
    8 308 – Leiterman, Keegan 3 00:04:55,02 -19.85  
    9 325 – Carew, James 3 00:05:21,07 +06.20  
    10 327 – Rose, Jared 3 00:05:28,07 +13.20  
    11 303 – Pechout, Lexi 3 00:05:31,70 +16.83  
    12 323 – Ford, Alex 3 00:07:24,68 +2:09.81  

Have a great week, everyone. I shot video of Devyn Smith’s day, Jess Pettis’s day, and Dylan Wright’s day, so watch for those on our YouTube channel ASAP.