Cycle News

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP VOL. 52 ISSUE 12 MARCH 24, 2015 P59 for a trio of stress-free wins. Detroit was different, though it started off similarly. The 2010 Supercross champ again took the early lead, passing Mon- ster Energy Kawasaki's Davi Millsaps first and then holeshot artist Andrew Short on the BTO Sports KTM, all before the end of the first rhythm section on Tomac stretched his lead with each lap, leading by seven sec- onds at the halfway mark and by over 11 seconds with two laps to go. In the end, Tomac crossed the finish with almost 12 seconds to spare over Dungey. "I definitely wanted to win," said Dungey. "But you have to see the big picture and be smart out there. Any time you go out there, you don't want to hold any- thing back, and I think in my posi- tion you have to let Eli go if he was going faster, which he was. I tried my best to hold him off, but he was riding good today. We got a heat race win in there on him, but we knew it was going to be a hard main event. But all in all, we gave it a good push and second isn't bad at all. As long as we're on the podium then we're mov- ing forward. We made up ground tonight with Canard getting hurt, but we have to keep our eyes on the championship." L O N G T I M E C O M I N G Ever since nabbing his first 450 win of his career at round two in Phoenix, Tomac has struggled to get that second win, but he got it this week—and he even made it look easy. He's been in position to win several times since Phoe- nix, but each time something would happen, usually a simple crash. But this time the Colorado native was on a mission and was solid every lap. It was the Tomac we have been expecting to see all season, like the one we saw in Arizona. Briefly... Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Factory Racing's Jason Anderson crashed out of the 450 main event. Anderson started in eighth but quickly moved into the top 10 by the second lap. He worked his way up to sixth by lap sev- en before getting his foot caught in a rut in the rhythm section, causing a dramatic crash. At that point, he called it a night and is now currently eighth overall in 450 point stand- ings. "After my toughest weekend of the year last weekend in Indy, I really wanted to rebound this weekend," said Anderson. "My practices were just average, but I felt really good when it was time to race. I qualified directly out of my heat race and felt like I was riding well. I got a decent start in the main and made my way into the top five. I thought I had at least a fourth in me, but then I went down hard in a rhythm section. I'm pretty beat up." Weston Peick surprised a few peo- ple by qualifying second fastest and was hoping to finish out the night on the 450 podium for the first time of his career, but the N-Fab/Autotrader.com/Toyota/JGR Yamaha team rider threw it away on lap five while running fifth and he too called it a night. Peick says he'll be ready to go next week at St. Louis. There was a quad section just be- fore a right-handed berm turn that was only executed by a few riders, Eli Tomac and Ryan Dungey being two of them. This is where Tomac made his pass on Dungey to take the lead in the main event, and it was a jump Tomac didn't do until the main event. "I never did it in practice, so it was something I had to pull during the night show, which is always a lit- continued on next page the opening lap. But instead of pulling away quickly as he's been doing, Tomac was soon on Dungey's rear tire and was turning up the heat. After passing Millsaps for second up Ford Field's "moun- tain" section, which carried the riders up into the stands and back down through a set of whoops, Tomac went after Dungey, who seemed to be doing everything in his power to keep Tomac at bay, but Tomac would match his every move. On lap five, Tomac executed a perfect quad into a right- handed berm turn and boxed Dungey out to take the lead. From that point on, the race for first was basically over, as

• Cover