Parts Unlimited World Off-Road Championship Series
Final Rounds: Avi Resort Casino
wasn't sure I could hold it, but after
about 45 minutes, I felt pretty good
and ran the same pace the whole
race. I'm just real happy, especially
this being my first race on the KTM."
While Caselli might've been the
man of the hour at Laughlin, Mike
Kiedrowski was certainly the man of
the WORCS series. The Yoshimura
Suzuki team rider went into the
Laughlin race with the best chance of
winning the title, and instead of going
for the win, the former 125, 250 and
500cc National MX Champion played
it safe by settling into a comfortable
third place after the halfway point and
staying there for the duration, wrapping up his first major off-road title.
"It feels good to finally get it [the
WORCS title] over with," Kiedrowski
said. "With six races [over the course
of the year], you had to be patient, so
there was a lot of stress. It feels really
good to have motocross championships and then to come over to offroad and get a championship as well."
Finishing out the year in the second and third places were two riders
that Kiedrowski knows quite well - his
Yoshimura Suzuki DR-Z430 fourstroke teammates Rodney Smith and
Steve Hatch. Neither Smith nor
Hatch, however, had a particularly
good day at Laughlin, finishing out
their rides in seventh and ninth place,
respectively - but they did complete
the Suzuki 1-2-3 sweep of the series.
As a result, Suzuki also won both
major east coast (GNCC) and west
coast (WORCS) off-road titles.
"That was our goal," Hatch said.
By
KIT PALMER
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL DEMAREE
LAUGHLIN, NV, DEC. 12-13
q wenty-year-old Kurt
U tainly made his new
Caselli cerbosses very
happy. Not long after getting hired by
KTM to compete on their off-road racing team alongside Shane Watts and
Michael Lafferty, the young rider from
Palmdale, California, promptly went
out and showed his appreciation by
scoring an impressive win at the final
round of the Parts Unlimited World
Off-Road Championship Series in
Laughlin, Nevada. And he did so without having to put up much of a fight.
Caselli took the lead from Suzuki
rider Robert Naughton on the first lap
of the two- hour race and never looked
back. Riding a KTM 250 MXC, Caselli
stretched out his lead with each lap,
eventually taking the checkered flag
well over four minutes ahead of
Naughton for his first win of the series.
"I had a good start and set a fast
pace on the first lap," Caselli said. "I
44
JANUARY
9,2002'
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