Cycle News

SUPERCROSS ROUND 9 / MARCH 2, 2019 MERCEDES-BENZ STADIUM / ATLANTA, GEORGIA P66 MONSTER ENERGY AMA SUPERCROSS Tomac (who had qualified first during the day program) rounded the opening lap in 13th. Webb barely held off his team- mate Musquin for the first half of the race, but a huge mistake in the sand handed Baggett the runner-up spot, and he resumed the chase. But even though both Baggett and Musquin could get close to Webb throughout the 26-lap main event, they could never find a way by him. Webb took the win over Baggett and Musquin. "I got a little tight in the middle, but by the end I started finding my groove," Webb said. "I knew Blake [Baggett] was coming. He's strong in the whoops, I'm guessing, but this is incredible. I'm 23, and I've come here every year since I was four years old watching at the old Georgia Dome. I raced here on a KTM 50 in front of all of these fans in the Junior Chal- lenge. I got sixth that night! And now I'm on top! It's pretty cool. It was a tough main, but man, it was worth it to get this win here. I think this might be the top one." Roczen held on for a distant fourth place; a gift from Plessing- er, who fell in the sand on lap 17 and handed the spot to Roczen. Plessinger still recovered for fifth place, which was his first-ever top-five finish in the 450SX class during this, his rookie 450SX season. Tomac finished about three and a half seconds behind Plessinger in sixth, followed by Brayton, Dean Wilson, Joey Sa- vatgy and Cole Seely. to the racetrack. He missed the Atlanta Supercross and he'll return to action once he passes the tests. RED FLAG The 250SX East heat race was red-flagged about halfway through for downed rider Wilson Fleming. At the time the race was red-flagged, Chase Sexton was leading Austin Forkner, but after the staggered restart, Forkner quickly passed him and went on to win the heat. MIKE ALESSI Thirty-year-old Mike Alessi returned to AMA Supercross in Atlanta for the first time in almost two years and put his Smartop/Bullfrog Spas-backed Honda into the main event, eventu- ally finishing 16th. He was filling in for both Malcolm Stewart and Vince Friese on the team. KTM SENIOR SUPERCROSS CHALLENGE? At one point in the press conference, Blake Baggett joked that it felt like the KTM Junior Supercross Challenge with all three of the leaders racing KTMs. "It felt like the KJSC race, be- cause it was just us. It's like, 'Man, it's just KTMs!'" Musquin replied, "With more power." Baggett responded, "A little bit, but then again, those things are fast now." B FOR BAGGETT When asked during the press confer- ence what grade he would give himself at the halfway point of the series, Blake Baggett responded, "I'm going to go ahead and give myself a B, because that's the answer I always picked [on a multiple-choice test] when I didn't know what the answer was." SCARY DECISIONS Blake Baggett talked about how he was hitting a triple-triple section in the ruts. "I had a good line, and I had good speed to get over it, but if you charged it too hard, you drug your footpegs on the first one and you'd come up short, and then same thing with the second one; you had to be patient," Baggett said. BLOODY CLOSE On the opening lap of the 250SX main, Austin Forkner clipped the handlebar of teammate Adam Cian- ciarulo's motorcycle with his rear tire as Cianciarulo—on a different rhythm through the rhythm section—was leaving the ground and Forkner was landing. "It was close," Cianciarulo said. "Austin [Forkner], he had started farther inside of me, and he came out of the corner and obviously he must've gone double-double, and I was on a different rhythm, and I was going up while he was going down, and he was drifting out to the left, and it almost ripped the handlebars out of my hands. He came down right on my clutch, and somehow it bent my clutch up. It was weird. My clutch was all bloody and stuff after the race, but luckily I didn't really feel it until after. It was a scary moment. It almost put me into the Tuff Blocks, too, right off the bat. But it's kind of on me. My first corner was too timid, and those guys snuck in, so that's what happens when you're back there." It bent his clutch upward because the rear wheel is spinning upward at the contact point. Cianciarulo still won and didn't seem to be too concerned about his bloody hand. Briefly...

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