CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 56 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 5, 2019 P63
And then there's Nichols' teammate
Ferrandis, who ran second early in the
main event before succumbing to pres-
sure from Cianciarulo's rookie team-
mate Garrett Marchbanks. Still, Fer-
randis ran third until the final lap, when
his motorcycle quit running (he burned
up his clutch in the mud). But since it
was the final lap, and Cianciarulo had
lapped eighth place, Ferrandis was
credited with seventh, also his worst
finish of the season so far.
But for Cianciarulo, he simply went
out, grabbed the holeshot, and led
every lap on his way to his third win in
the first five rounds.
"It feels good going into the break to
kind of put the mind at ease a little bit,"
Cianciarulo said. "I haven't had the red
plate since I was basically a little kid [in
2014, when he was 17 years old], so
that feels good, too, but I think when
you have a stressful kind of day like
this, with a lot of mud, you start thinking
my back in early December. I was off for a
month, and then I came back, so I wasn't fir-
ing on all my cylinders, especially for the first
round or two. For round three or four, I was
fine physically, as I am now. But that contrib-
uted to some of the taking it easy in the early
races, and being pumped for a podium at the
early races. But I do also think I have a dif-
ferent mindset this year." He was then asked
about whether riding slightly slower also
affected his motorcycle's chassis settings,
and he said yes. "Yeah, I mean, I thought I
was all-good [in terms of chassis settings],
but you never know until you go racing, and
sure enough, I was just a little bit off," Tomac
said. "We were good, but we weren't great.
But yeah, if you're not 100 percent, you'll set
up your chassis a certain way, and if you're
healthy, that changes. And we've been work-
ing with my body to get it to 100 percent, too,
so it was both."
HILL BANGED UP
Justin Hill (JGRMX/Yoshimura Suzuki)
crashed in practice and went to the hospital
with what turned out to be a rib injury and
missed the main event. "I had a blast in the
mud for a few laps, before I hit a hole in the
whoops that was hidden under standing
water," Hill said. "I smashed my rib cage
into the handlebars pretty badly, so I went
to the Alpinestars Mobile Medical Rig to get
checked out. Unfortunately, there was a sus-
pected puncture on my spleen that required
a trip to a nearby trauma center. Results for
my spleen came back negative. It turned out
to be cartilage damage on my ribs. As soon
as I can heal up from that I'll be good to go."
THUMBS DOWN
Justin Brayton (Smartop/Bullfrog Spas
Honda) also sat out the main even with an in-
jury. He injured the thumb in practice but tried
to continue on. He rode his heat race and
finished 12th but did not return for the LCQ.
Briefly...
