Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Pass attempts were few and far between, until the 32-year-old laRocco started to put some pressure on Windham just past the halfway point. laRocco was relendess in his attacks and eventually made a dean pass on. Windham and settled into fourth. Just like he always does, LaRocco got stronger as the race wore on, and he even started to make some headway on thirdplaced Fonseca, but time ran out, and LaRocco could not mount a serious attack on Fonseca. "It took me a while to shake the dust off," LaRocco said of his late-race charge. "I still have some work to do. I was just dumsy. I don't really know why. I finally just kind of deaned it up, and then I started putting in some decent laps. I got right behind Ernie, but I started way too late. I mean, I was there. I was going Kevin's pace, and once I got around Kevin, I caught him [Fonseca],but there's nothing out there to make up time on." Carmichael, meanwhile, backed off considerably on the last lap and took the checkered flag about three seconds ahead of the impressive Byrne. Carmichael's lead was never more than about five seconds. "It was tough," Carmichael said of the race. "You know, 'Burner' kept me honest and Emesto kept him honest on the twostroke, so I had to keep going all night." Byrne impressed many by keeping Carmichael within his sights throughout the race. "I thought I rode reasonably well," Byrne said. "I tried to make as little mistakes as possible; the lapped riders were a bit of a pain sometimes. You'd catch them in the tunnel, where it was really one-lined. My nnechanic was giving me lap times, and Ricky kept pulling me a tenth, two-tenths here and there, and that's a lot over 25 laps. I just tried to ride as solidly and consistently as I could and race the docks and the lap times, and 18 OOOBER keep Ernesto off my tail, as well. It ended up being good." Fonseca rode well, too. "I'm happy that I got third," he said, "but . I'd like to do a little better tomorrow, hopefully. Mike [Byrne] was riding good, and I was just trying to get as dose to him as I could. It seemed like, as I got a litde doser, I would make a litde mistake. It was just tough; the track got super dry, and you had to be super precise and not gas it too much off the tums. There were a lot of lappers, and they really weren't getting out of the way very much." "Yeah, it· was tough," Byrne said. "The track got real dry and slick. You had to be patient and not rush it too much and not make any mistakes." SUPERCROSS: SAnJRDAY NIGHT - MOTa 2 For Carmichael, Saturday night went much like Friday night, but instead of Byrne chasing him the whole way, this time it was Windham. Carmichael nailed the holeshot again, with Windham settling into second. For Byrne, his fate was pretty much sealed right off the start. If he had any real chance of beating Carmichael and pocketing the $100,000, he needed to get a great start, but he didn't get a good drive off the gate and came around the first lap in fourth place, behind RC, Windham and Fonseca. "I thought I had a good gate, but just out in front of the gate, it was a litde higher than I would've liked," Byrne said. "But I didn't want to be too dose on the inside and get shot down, so I wanted to give myself a Iitde room. Luckily I did that, because I didn't get the jump. I was able to move around and sneak in on the inside, and came out right behind Emesto; it wasn't the holeshot I had in my heat race." Up front, Carmichael tried sprinting away, but Windham kept him honest for 19,2005 • CYCLE NEWS many laps. It wasn't until just after the halfway point that Carmichael started putting some real estate between himself and Windham. The Suzuki rider started slowly inching away from the Honda rider until he had opened up about a flve-second lead near the end. "I rode a lot better tonight," Windham said. "I was really frustrated after night one I went back to fifth, and I was bummed with that, for sure. Tonight I wanted to capitalize and come out strong. I was in a good position and was on Ricky's heels there for a while and kept him honest for the first 10 laps or so. I made a mistake here, a mistake there. I need to be more methodicai and get more robotic-like, like Ricky is. Whatever he can do, he can do it for the whole time. I felt strong, though. The race was really long, the laps were short, but 25 laps seemed like a lot longer race than a normal Supercross. Time sort of stood still for me a while." Carmichael ended up' cruising to his second win'of the weekend, but it didn't come without a scary moment when he nearly got taken out by a lapped rider. He wasn't too happy about it, either, though he did make light of the situation. "[Evidently] anybody can qualify for a Supercross these days, so maybe I'll just buy a NASCAR and qualify for the Daytona 500," he said of the Iapper that nearly cost him $100,000. "I think he went into the whoops and was downshifting, and I think he popped it into neutral and got up in the apex of the tum, and there was no power for him to pull out of it [and he started to tip over). I was right there to stop him from falling all the way down, and we hit. Luckily, I stayed up. It was a scare, for sure." Windham finished all alone in second, while Byrne, who never really got too dose to Windham, setded for third. Fonseca, who finished third the previous night, appeared to have a lock on fourth when he fell. He might've held the position, but when he was picking up his bike, he and Nick Wey got together, and both went down in a heap. Wey got back up and finished fifth, while Fonseca pulled off and cailed it a weekend. laRocco benefited from all this and inherited fourth, where he would finish out the moto. SUPERCROSS UTES: FRIDAY NIGHT - MOTa I Andrew Short looked like a sure bet to win the Supercross Lites main event on Friday night. After winning his earlier heat race, Short nailed the holeshot on his dualmuffler 2006 Honda CRF250R·and was stretching out his lead when, right around the halfway point of the 20-lap race, Short rolled to a stop, looked down at his bike, and then watched Brett Metcaife ride by and into the lead. The Australian had earlier passed Josh Hansen for second place. "I just had some problems with the motor," Short said. "It's better for it to happen here than at Anaheim. We're here just to get ready, and that's just part of racing. I just looked to make sure nothing funky was happening. Once I started the bike, I realized what happened and just went back to the pits to get her fixed." Short's loss was Metcaife's gain, as he now led with a small cushion over Hansen. A little ways behind him was AmsoiVChaparral/Honda's Billy Laninovich and Robert Kiniry. Holding down fifth, but well behind Kiniry, was Mike Brown, on his new Rockstar Energy-backed Suzuki RM-Z250. After Metcaife took the lead, the top riders were fairly well spread out,. and the Yamaha of Troy rider, on the new 2006 aluminum-frame Yamaha yz 125, took the win, his first major Supercross victory on American soil. "It's crazy," Metcaife said. "It seems like I've been trying forever to get a win. It's

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