Cycle News

LUCAS OIL PRO MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP VOL. 51 ISSUE 21 MAY 28, 2014 P51 moto and am happy to finish the day with fourth, but not satisfied. We learned a lot today and look forward to progressing." ROUGH START FOR JS7 Yoshimura Suzuki's James Stew- art had a rough start to the out- door season. After qualifying fourth (but still almost within a half second of the fastest qualifi- er, Dungey), Stewart just couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. "It was a rough day," said Stewart. "It was a very rough day. In the first moto, I got a bad start but I made my way up to fourth and ended up running into the back of a guy. I don't know if he stalled it or if he went to switch lines, but he basically stopped in the corner and I hit him. But I picked the bike back up and got up in 13th and made my way back up to sixth. "In the second moto I got a good jump off the start," said Stewart. "I don't know what hap- pened, but I got tangled with another rider and I almost went down. So I steadily worked my way up and was catching up to fifth. But I made a couple of mis- takes and some guys got around me. Then I almost lost it and took about 30 fans out and went into the fence, but I saved it. "We'll salvage the points from this race and we'll be back next week. We've got the first race out of the way. We know how the series is, things don't start really kicking in until round three or four." Stewart ended up going 6-6 for sixth overall. CHAIN BREAKERS Two of the 450 class' top stars — Justin Barcia and Andrew Short — suffered disappointing DNFs in the first moto, and both were knocked out for the same rea- son: broken chains. And both chains broke at the same place on the track and on the same lap. On the 12 th lap, with Barcia running fourth and Short sev- enth, their chains snapped after landing from the same jump, a large single jump that had them touching down hard on flat, soft ground with full power. Barcia, on the Honda Muscle Milk 450, came back and finished fourth in the second moto for 13 th overall, while Short, on the BTO Motorsports KTM, didn't have much better luck. He started off 19 th , worked his way up to 11 th , be- fore crashing and dropping back to 19 th again. He earned just two points for his effort. 250 NATIONAL HOLESHOT KING One of the reasons Jeremy Mar- tin was so dominate in the 250 class was because of his mas- tery of the starts. He holeshot both 250 motos as well as one of the motos that was red-flagged because of a multi-rider crash in the first turn. Not too many riders can say that they holeshot three National motos in one day, but Martin can. "My starts were really good today," Martin said. "Zach Bell and I were pretty much 1-2 off the start in the first moto. It was kind of funny, in the second moto, he lined up on the outside of me and I was kind of, 'this guy's pretty good at the starts,' so I had to be really on my game. We got out there and we were banging el- bows about 10 feet past the gate. I was able to get a good start and you need that because these guys don't mess around and they are in good shape. I was able to set my pace and ride like I know how to." Despite the incredibly stacked class, Martin simply rode away from everyone, opening up a quick big lead and maintaining it all the way to the finish in both motos. Martin didn't look particu- larly flashy fast, but he was sim- ply riding super smooth, hitting his lines and wasn't making any mistakes. The closest thing to a real mistake he made all day was casing a triple jump that few were attempting, but he didn't let that spook him. After doubling it the next lap, he went back to tripling it again and again. "When you're out front, I just wanted to keep moving forward," Martin said. "I wanted to keep improving and learn while I was out there. I cased that jump and it gave me a little scare, but I need- ed to do it again, I figured they were doing it too. Bobby Regan (Martin's team boss) told me in Supercross that you have to do every rhythm every lap, so that's what I did."

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