Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128409
2005-06 FIM Amp'd Mobile World 5upercross GP Series plus for me. The results don't look so hot, but I feel good about it - got a decent start, I was up there, just didn't make it happen." When the checkered flag came out, pretty much all of the top positions had already been decided long ago, as there was very little racing left for positions at the end. Team Makita Suzuki's Ivan Tedesco, who, for the most part, looked good all night but struggled a bit in the whoops and nearly crashed in the first turn, finished fourth, almost 40 seconds behind Reed. He was the last rider not to get lapped by Stewart. Rounding out the top five - but a lap down - was Stewart's teammate Michael Byrne. Vuillemin finished out the race in sixth on the BooKoo/Holigan Racing Honda CR250R, but he proved that you can still get a good start on a two-stroke. Vuillemin got a third-place getaway behind Lewis and Stewart. He eventually settled into fifth and ran there for much of the race until getting passed by Byrne. Subway Honda's Jason Thomas finished seventh, followed by Unbound Energy/MDK's Nick Wey, Yamaha's Heath Voss and Subway's Jeff Gibson, who rounded out the top 10. In the Utes class, which does not pay points toward any series championship, the racing action was much better than it was in the Supercross (big-bike) class, even though Red Bull KTM's Nathan Ramsey led it from start to finish. It was Ramsey's second win in a row at the Vancouver race. Ramsey pulled the holeshot ahead of Samsung/SoBe/Honda's Bill Laninovich and Canada's Darcy Lange, while Toronto winner Davi Millsaps rounded the first turn almost in last place. "I felt like I had a decent start, then, when I came off the line, I kind of wheelied a bit and couldn't keep my front wheel down," Millsaps said. "I went into the first turn, and everyone just hit everybody, and I was in the back. They said I was like 18th or something." Up front, Laninovich kept Ramsey honest for a while but eventually lost touch with the KTM rider, yet he maintained a small cushion over third-place, WBR Yoshimura Suzuki's Ryan Sipes, who had earlier gotten around Lange. Meanwhile, Millsaps, who had earlier in the night won his heat race over Ramsey, was making good progress through the 22-rider field on his factory Honda. By the halfway point Millsaps had climbed up to fourth and was stalking Sipes. He got by the Suzuki rider when Sipes bobbled, and then he went after Laninovich, who was still a good dis- 22 JANUARY 4, 2006 • CYCLE NEWS tance ahead of him. "It was definitely hard going through the pack," Millsaps said of his comeback ride. "You have all the rocks, and the whoops are really chewed out, so there were only couple of really good lines, and if everybody was in that line, you had to take the crappy line, and it was hard to pass." With about four laps to go, though, the 17-year-old Millsaps had reeled in Laninovich and was right on his rear fender, and he soon passed him through a rhythm section. At this point, Millsaps had just one rider still ahead of him, Ramsey, but there was about five seconds between the two and only a few laps left. Millsaps managed to get a little closer, but this one was going to go to Ramsey, who took the checkered flag 4.004 seconds ahead of Millsaps. "I was just trying to make my way through the pack," Millsaps said. "I was swapping along the whoops this weekend and had to back it down towards the 10th or I Ith lap just to regroup. Then I started charging the last two laps, I think. But I ran out of time, and there was nothing I could do. "Everytime I saw Nathan, he was getting closer and closer to me," Millsaps said. ':And then I came to the last lap, and I was like, 'I'm just going to try as hard as I can this last lap.' When I came to the set of whoops section, I was just like, 'You got one turn left.' I couldn't do anything about it. I felt really