WisecolYamahalMSR/FMF/KlotzlAcerbi
armatelBallzeeILaegers/
Outerwears/MaxxisiKawasaki/Suzuki/EKlKTM/Scott GNCC Series
Round 4: Big Buck GNOC
Suzuki's Rodney smith started third,
bided his time, then ran off with his
second victory of the year in South
Carolina.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY
PAUL CLIPPER
CROSS ANCHOR, SC, APRIL 8
eam FMF Suzuki's Rodney Smith
took a third-place start and bided
his time at the Big Buck round of the
Grand National Cross Country Series.
He stayed in a good position and
paced the leaders, waiting for a break
or mistake, and his patience paid off.
This is Smith's second win out of four
races so f~r this year.
It was a hard-fought battle, with
Smith riding close in second place at
the end, seemingly resigned to a runner-up finish until leader Fred
Andrews, of Kawasaki Team Green,
lost it on a plywood bridge and tumbled into a creek.
"I was sitting in second until Fred
went off the bridge," said an obviously tired Smith. "His bike was in the
way, but I had a line with just enough
room to get by. "
From there in, it was just a matter
of keeping Shane Watts at bay,
which he managed with a few seconds to spare.
Current series champ Watts, of
Team KTM, spent the bulk of the race
Y
hanging back in sixth or seventh place,
falling back as far as ninth before taking advantage of heat attrition and
putting on a push to charge to within
eight seconds of Smith at the finish.
"( was making heaps of mistakes
today, and Jason [Raines] was making no mistakes whatsoever," Watts
said of the Yamaha-mounted thirdplace finisher. "He really deserves to
be on the podium today."
Watts was followed in by Raines,
who held on to a good start and made
it payoff with a little luck at the end.
"People have told me over the years
that, if you hang with that lead group,
everything will come into place on
the last lap," Raines said. "[Mike] Lafferty let me by, McLevy let me by - it
looked like they were getting tired or
hot. Then Fred went down really hard
out there; his bike was on the bridge,
and he was down in the gully. I
wound up riding over his bike; then I
was in second, but I knew Shane was
Even though he led as the field began
its final lap of the course, Kawasaki's
Fred Andrews ended up a
distant fourth after
failing off a bridge
into a stream on the
last lap.
KTM's Shane Watts rode strong, as
usual, but a few mistakes kept him
from challenging Smith. He still
finished second and holds a 20-polnt
lead in his championship defense.
12
APRIL 25, 2001 '
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