Round 4 at Racetown couldn’t have gone any better. After spending the whole week prior in Oakhurst riding Grizzly’s for the 2011 brochure and ad shoot I was a little worried going into the race weekend without having ridden my YFZ-R in more than a week. Saturday started well with me riding the early morning Unclassified race to knock the rust off. The track was fast and fun as it was completely smooth for the morning session.
Saturday afternoon was the pro practice with timed qualifying for gate pick in Sunday’s main event. I did my fast lap as soon as the green flag waived and while my lap wasn’t perfect, it was good enough to take the top spot with a 9:25.41 over Jeremie Warnia’s 9:25.48. That’s right, only .07 of a second difference between first and second qualifiers, Josh Frederick was third, 4 seconds back.
Sunday’s main event started great with my #94 YFZ 450R pulling me to the holeshot. Warnia was close behind and pressured me for the first couple laps until he crashed while trying to pass me on the outside entering a one lined corner. He got up next to me down a rough straight and tried to squeeze in where there was no room, his front wheel turned pretty hard into my nerf bar and then I saw him tumble over the berm from the corner of my eye. After that I had about 10 seconds of breathing room over Frederick. I settled down after about 4 laps and began to smooth out and ride my lines like I wanted. From there my lead began to grow, eventually getting up to about a minute before I rode very conservative for the final couple laps and brought it home to take the win with about 40 seconds over Frederick and Warnia around 3 minutes back in third.
Special thanks to Motoworks, who has been working on improving power and keeping the bike quiet enough for the sound tests. Elka and Roll Design have really been working hard with me to improve my offroad suspension package and we have made great improvements. This was my first WORCS race with the new shocks and we obviously had great results.
Results:
1) Dustin Nelson Yam
2) Josh Frederick Can
3) Jeremie Warnia Can
4) Beau Baron Hon
5) Josh Row Hon
Thanks Everyone,
Dustin Nelson #94