Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

all was said and done, Reed had clicked off the quickest time of the night by a full second over Carmichael. In the main event, Reed had multiple laps in the 57s. blett, LaRocco's longtime friend and business associate, said. "He's a little sore, but he'll have the blood drained in the leg tomorrow and should be ready by next week," Following practice, Ricky Carmichael seemed pretty happy with his bike's setup, the only major change being to the seat, According to Honda's Greg Wright. "Chad [Watts, Carmichael's tunerl has made up three different seats for Ricky - three different foam densities. Otherwise, he's happy with the engine and the bike, He said that the track felt. a little 'arenacrossy' - on the brakes, on the gas, on the brake, on the Team Solitaire's Ryan Clark (below) was the top-finishing privateer in the 250cc main event. The Yamaha YZ250 pilot. who basically owns and runs the two-rider squad, placed seventh, finishing ahead of a number of factory riders. He also wore one of the two helmet cams used through out the evening. (Michael Byrne wore the other.l ranked in the top lain the AMA series (in this case, last year's final top· to riders) must ride the preliminaries. Word has it that neither Reed nor Langston was too pleased about having to race in the afternoon. gas. He also said that you have to have good lines and be a Red Bull KTM's Joaquim Rodrigues (below) made his U.S, Supercross debut, and the young rider from Portugal was surprisingly fast. Rodrigues was one of the first to master one of the track's tricky jump sections in practice and showed that he has the speed to be a threat. but it appeared that Rodrigues ran out of gas physically as the night progressed, The KTM rider ran up front for a while in the heat races but Finished one spot out of a transfer bulldog and that you need the start, because the track is hard to make up time on," in the last· chance qualifier, For that dubious honor, though, Rodrigues picked up the $750 Racer X Gas Card. Rodrigues admitted that he felt a little tense and nervous in his first super- It appears that Team Honda's Nathan Ramsey, who broke his femur during the off-season, will be out of action through the Daytona Supercross (early Marchl at least. The injury, however, has not relegated the former 125cc West Coast SX champ to the couch, as he's already training in the pool. Ramsey has been swimming the last three weeks and has just started doing light cross race. work on a stationary bicycle. Sort of filling in for Ramsey at Anaheim I was West Coast AMA Four-Stroke MX Champion Paul Carpenter. Carpenter, riding in his first supercross race, did not pit out of the factory Honda pits but instead right next to the factory team in the White Brothers pits. Carpenter rode a White Brothers-clad Honda CRF450R and qualified for the evening's program through one of the day's preliminary heats. Despite looking quite fast throughout the day and in the evening's qualifiers, Carpenter did not make it into the final. Kenny Germain, Ernesto Fonseca's tuner at Team Honda. came to Anaheim I with his left arm in a sling, but that didn't keep him from working on Fonseca's factory CR250R, "I had surgery on my shoulder," Germain said, "It's an old injury that kept flaring up, and I had to get it fixed. Goose [Mike Gosselaar, one of the team's technicians and the father of Amsoil/Chaparral/Honda's Chris Gosselaar] has been doing all of the lifting and helping me out." All of Germain and Gosselaar's efforts paid off, as their rider finished out the main event in sixth. After crashing and getting center-punched by Travis Pastrana in the main event. Mike LaRocco left the stadium with a large hematoma (bruise) on his thigh. "He'll be all right," Fred Bram- Apparently, the transition from Honda to Suzuki has been a relatively easy one for SoBe Suzuki's Sebastian Tortelli. According to Tortelli's tuner Tony Berlutti, the former 250cc World Champion likes his new ride. "He says the bike is easier to ride and more forgiving (than the Hondal," BerluW said. "We've been playing around with the suspension a little bit, but he's seems really happy with the bike." MotoworldRacing,com's David Pingree and Team Pro Circuit/Chevy Trucks Kawasaki's Mike Brown came away from Despite being ranked among the top five after two rounds of the FIM's THQ World Supercross GP Series (which is also a part of the THQ AMA Supercross Series), the AMA stuck by its rules and forced Chad Reed and Grant Langston to compete in the the Anaheim I SX a little richer, Both riders snared the SXGP.com Holeshot Award in their respective classes - Pingree the 125cc main and Brown the 250cc main. Pingree earned $tOOO and Brown $1500, afternoon preliminary heats. which are used to seed riders Kit Palmer into the evening's program. According to AMA rules, riders not AMA 1 25cc Western Regional Supercross Series Round 1 : Edison International Field • raVI6 00 Preston steps up while Stewart still can't win at Anaheim... yet By STEVE COX PHOTOS BY STEVE BRUHN ANAHEIM, CA, JAN, 4 ravis Preston doesn't want to be "the other Travis" any more, While everyone seemed to be talking about James Stewart Jr. and how he was going to dominate this 125cc series, there was a quiet rider with a number-one plate on his CR 125R just sitting back and enjoying it all, "I'm trying to be my own Travis all by myself," said the often-hysterical giant in the class, "And I'm just trying to work as hard as I can, and it's starting to payoff a little bit." He doesn't seem to mind being a dark horse of sorts, either, "For some reason, nobody even takes pictures T Number-one underdog: Travis Preston put together 15 solid laps to win the 125cc main event over the heavily favored James Stewart Jr. cue I e n e _ s JANUARY 15, 2003 13

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