The forecasted rain for Saturday arrived and the crew in the multi-tiered Dodgers Stadium did their best to save the track during the morning by covering it with plastic sheeting. A delayed scheduled helped in this respect and the fast and slippery layout was in pretty good nick for practice, heats and the main events. The racing surface was still testing “it would come up and bite you and we saw that a few times” said Ryan Dungey who leads the standings outright after his third trophy on the bounce with second place.
Reed started the Main event abysmally and although when standing on the podium afterwards he gave credit and thought to the two riders who crashed (Trey Canard and Ryan Morais) he must have been thankful of the restart after one lap that allowed him to be at the front of the pack.
The incident that extended the over-running schedule even more saw Canard hit by Morais and both riders stretchered from the facility. Canard appeared to be unconscious, and at the time of going live there was no confirmed word on the state of each.
A subdued recommencement of proceedings saw Reed move ahead of holeshotter Jake Weimer and then largely control a four second gap over Dungey. James Stewart’s turbulent opening to the 2012 campaign continued for the third week in succession with a crash in practice that ended the Yamaha rider’s participation after just three laps. Stewart would give Reed his only pressure during the event (not before he had block-passed and forced Weimer to the ground) but a mistake in the timing section meant he clipped a tuff bloc and dropped his YZ. The Floridian would remount and deflect the attentions of a fuming Ryan Villopoto who had earlier run off the track and was momentarily stuck on a bloc. The champion had been dead-last after the incident and almost enacted a repeat of his Phoenix chase to the rostrum.
Crashes for Ivan Tedesco and Josh Grant left both holding their shoulders but elsewhere Brett Metcalfe, Davi Millsaps, Josh Hansen, Broc Tickle, Kevin Windham and Mike Alessi filled the top ten respectively with the unfortunate Weimer eleventh.
Eli Tomac was a clear winner in the Lites with Dean Wilson able to catch and pass an impressive Zach Osborne for the second step of the podium. An off-track excursion and spill put Cole Seely out of the reckoning while Marvin Musquin lost the chance to possibly depose Osborne after casing the last jump of the timing section and taking a walk back to the paddock. Tyla Rattray looked a little out of sorts in fourth.
OTOR’s two race stint on the AMA scene now ends but the Supercross series will still have full coverage inside the magazine and with issue 23 the race from Anaheim (2).
