WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 3, 2015 P67
battle between the two former
250 rivals.
"It really got heated there the
last few laps," Tomac said about
the battle with Roczen. "The
last three laps is where we really
started getting close to each
other. Almost made a move on
him after the finish line. There
was like two laps to go, didn't
quite get him. Then I finally made
it stick on the last lap there. It
was tough to really get guys
tonight and luckily I was able to
push all the way to the end."
Roczen finished a disappoint-
ing fourth ahead of Canard.
As for Canard, it was disap-
pointing also to finish fifth, but
he would take it.
"It's always disappointing
when you're in a good posi-
tion and don't capitalize on it,"
Canard said. "I just washed out
and never really got going. It was
a tough track. Tomac put a gap
on me and just kind of rode it in
at that point."
Making up for a poor start,
Discount Tire TwoTwo Motor-
sports Chad Reed worked his
way up from 10th to finish sixth.
Yoshimura Suzuki's Blake
250 DO-OVER
Just about everyone in the sta-
dium was caught by surprise when
the 250 main was red-flagged,
stopped and restarted five laps into
the race when everything seemed
to be going normally. As it turned
out, one of the individual starting
gates—Zach Osborne's—did not
drop when everyone else's did.
Osborne still reacted and mowed
down the gate, breaking it off its
mounts. But why did it take so long
for the AMA to throw the red flag?
With the elevated start, it was
difficult for the officials to see ex-
actly what had happened. Osborne
immediately threw up his hands
and his mechanic quickly notified
officials that his rider had been held
up by the faulty gate. Before the
officials could do anything, they first
had to verify Osborne's mechanic's
claim by getting ahold of video and
watching the start, which took some
time. Once they verified that the
gate had indeed failed to drop, they
stopped the race, but not until five
laps had past.
According to the rulebook,
anytime there is a malfunction with
the starting gate, the race must
be stopped and restarted from the
beginning.
"It [the starting gate] didn't move
and I was really frustrated in the first
five laps because I felt like it was
blatantly obvious that my gate didn't
drop," Osborne said.
On the last lap
Eli Tomac (3)
passed Ken
Roczen (94) to
take the last spot
on the podium.
250 DO-OVER
Zach Osborne (16) got left behind
due to a gate malfunction, which
later brought out the red flag for a
complete restart.
