Cycle News

VOLUME 57 ISSUE 47 NOVEMBER 24, 2020 P25 ever here," Samuels said. "It was very technical, and they added some new stuff to it. You had to have good equipment and good riders to go, perform and win it, and luckily we do have that. We've built that over the years. For a SCORE Baja 1000, that was very brutal, tough and long, and I'm glad to be the first one here." Morgan said, "It was a really long, technical and physically demanding course for us on the bike. We just stayed steady, and it ran great all night and got us here with no problems. It's a super big deal and we don't take it for granted. We had help from a lot of people and we really ap- preciate it." "This one was tough for me," admitted Jones. "It was my first SCORE Baja 1000 back since a knee injury and it kicked my butt. To be honest, I wasn't ready for it, but I gave my best. It definitely wasn't my best SCORE Baja 1000, but I kept it together, stayed off the ground, got the bike going and let my team- mates bring it home. It ended up great." Yorba finished up for the runner-up Husqvarna team. "It was a cool course," he said. "They threw us in some new stuff and there were portions that we hadn't run in a long time. We had a good battle with Mark Samuels' (1x) team and even got the physi- cal lead at one point, but we ran into some bike problems around mile 250 and that just set us back, which was unfortunate. I felt we were here to make it hap- pen. It was just bad luck, but it's part of racing. There were plenty of times when we could have called it quits and just saved the bike, but we figured we got to do everything we could to get in here. I'm glad we're here, we're all in one piece and we'll live to fight another day." Third overall was the winning Pro Moto 30 (riders over 30 years old) team made up of Fran- cisco Septien, Shane Esposito and Justin Shultz. The team completed the race in 24:32.19 (36.61 mph). Esposito said, "Half the day went okay, but then we had to replace the front brake system three times. Justin was a last- minute rider with us and didn't get down here until Wednesday to pre-run. He got lost down in San Felipe and that's when Jano Montoya's (325x) bike passed us. I was worried about the is- sues we had tonight, so I'm glad we finished it safely." Fourth overall and second in the Pro Moto 30 class was the Jano Montoya team made up of Montoya, Alberto Ruiz, Bryce Stavron, Bryce Ocley, Kyle Tichenor and Jesse Canepa (KTM 450 EXC-F). The trio finished just nine minutes behind the Septien, Esposito, Shultz team. "We had a lot of mishaps," Stavron said. "We've been leak- ing oil since noon and we've been literally just filling it up with oil every pit. We lost the connec- tion to our lightning system and there were a couple crashes, too. We even had to replace a battery at one point. We had a lot to go up against, but we never keeled over, we just wanted it." The Gorge Ramirez, Sergio Garza, Kadin Guard, Jason Alosi and Daniel Reynoso team (Husqvarna FE35) rounded out the top five overall in Pro Moto Unlimited. Sixth overall was the winning Pro Moto 40 team of Alejandro de Mazo, Pablo Guillen, Ber- nardo Segura, Gerardo Rojas, Pablo Guillen, Luis Fallel and Patrick Goeters. Next was the top Pro Moto Limited team headed by Fer- nando Beltran, followed by the top Pro Moto 50 team (Vance Kennedy, Dennis Belingheri, Dave Mayer, Eric Zite and Steve Hatch). The top Pro Moto Ironman (solo) was Bolivian Juan Carlos Salvatierra. "This victory is for Bolivia," he said. "I know a lot of people were watching and sending mes- sages in my country. I knew it would be a long race, but there were more rocky sections than I anticipated, and it was a very technical course and that kept the race at a very slow pace. That made it even more difficult, but I'm thankful I got to the finish line in good shape. I still can't understand all that happened in the last 33 hours." CN

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