VOL. 50 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 5, 2013
P37
PIONSHIP
Briefly...
DUNGEY, ROCZEN
AND KTM CLEAN UP
AT ANAHEIM III
ORANGE
SWEEP
Ryan Dungey
is the fourth
different rider to
win this year.
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
I
t was a roller-coaster ride for the Orange team
at Anaheim III in round five of the Monster Energy Supercross Series, but when all was said
and done the Red Bull KTM crew could not have
asked for a better ending to what was an exciting
and entertaining night of racing. KTM came away
with a big sweep, winning both the 250 and 450
mains in front of 41,294 fans, and for the second
week in a row they also had two KTMs in the top 15
in the 450 class. Heck, they even took a win - but
mostly a crowd-approving win - in the KTM Junior
Cycle Challenge race that returned after a five-year
hiatus.
Ryan Dungey and Ken Roczen had a big hand in
KTM's success on this night, with Roczen getting it
started with his second victory in a row in the 250
main, and Dungey capping it all off with a solid win,
his first of the year, in the 450 main.
After getting off to a fast start in the 250 final and with his chief rival Eli Tomac a non-factor after
getting off to a midpack start - Roczen pretty much
breezed to an uneventful win. The same, however,
could not be said when it came to Dungey's he-
Honda Muscle Milk's Justin Barcia was still upbeat and positive
going into A3 after suffering two
hard get-offs at the previous two
races. He said that he felt pretty
good physically coming into the
race, but still might not have been
100-percent. "My body has been
pretty fine, but the scary thing is
that I did hit my head two times in
both those crashes," Barcia said. "I
didn't ride during those two weeks;
I raced on the weekend only. It's
tough to do that - it's not easy. You
feel tight, get arm pump, but I did
feel real good tonight and had a
great time. But, for sure, it's been a
rough two weeks - two DNFs - so it
feels real good to come out here tonight and put in some good racing.
Second in the heat race and third
in the main is not a half-bad night at
all. I felt good, had fun, and tried to
give those guys as good a race as I
could. The plan tonight was just to
go into the race and put in 20 solid
laps. When I got behind those guys
I was just waiting for a mistake, and
if a mistake didn't come, I probably
wouldn't have been on the podium
tonight. But I wasn't going to push
the envelope tonight, I didn't want
to crash."
Eli Tomac was another rider coming into the race a little sore after
crashing out of last week's 250
main. "I'm glad to be here racing
here this weekend for how it [the
crash] looked on TV - it looked
pretty bad," he said. "My knee's a
tiny bit sore. I mean, it's fine when
I ride, but when you touch it, it's a
little bit sore still. It will get better."
Yoshimura Suzuki's James Stewart was disappointed for not getcontinued on next page