VOL. 50 ISSUE 27 JULY 9, 2013
OPOTO
AKS AWAY
tos, he can pretty much coast to
his second 450 outdoor title.
After claiming a maximum
50 points on the day in Michigan while demolishing the field
both times out, Villopoto padded his championship lead to
42, which, by the way he rode
at RedBud – winning the first
moto by over 20 seconds and
the second moto by over 30
seconds - could very well be insurmountable. But as you very
well know, this is motocross
and anything can happen.
P47
Briefly...
In the 250 class, though,
things couldn't be much different. The race for the 2013 title is
still very much up in the air with
only seven points separating the
top two riders – Ken Roczen and
Eli Tomac. The momentum, however, is in Roczen's court after
the former MX2 World Champion
came away with the overall win at
RedBud. Unfortunately for him,
Tomac matched him on points for
the day with both riders posting
1-2 moto finishes, so the gap still
stands at seven.
Ryan Villopoto
was in a league
of his own
at RedBud,
winning both
motos by huge
margins.
Ryan Villopoto said after the race
that he and his team made some
setup changes on his bike before
the Southwick race which helped
at RedBud, as well. "We did some
testing before Hangtown and we
started the season in very good
position as far as the bike is concerned, but we kind of got away
from that," said Villopoto. "I think it
was a matter of the tracks getting
a little rougher and everyone else
picking up the pace, so we wanted to get back to that original feel
and I think we did that last week at
Southwick and it paid off here at
RedBud. I think we're kind of back
in the sweet spot again, but there's
always work to be done, but for it to
work as well as it did on a track like
this one, which was really rough, it
is pretty promising."
Jeremy Martin's third place performance came on the heels of a
few changes to his program. "Last
week I changed a lot of stuff,"
Martin said. "I changed a lot of
stuff with my riding coach, I really
worked hard on my technique and
I just kept plugging away. I'm trying
to become a little bit more solid on
the bike. You have to be in control
to go consistently fast and I was
just working on that and it's nice to
see it paying off."
For sure, the RedBud course was
rougher than usual due to deep
ruts that formed over the recently
retreated surface. "It was super
deep, and when they disk it deep
like that, it just makes it more technical, and that favors the better and
stronger riders," said Eli Tomac of
the track. "There's more lines to
pass on so you don't get stuck in
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