VOL. 52 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 18, 2015 P53
Then, on the last lap, with
about six seconds to spare over
Martin, the unthinkable hap-
pened—for both Hampshire and
Musquin. Hampshire cross-rut-
ted going into the very last turn
of the race and swapped out,
going down and handing third
place in the moto two Martin.
That little mistake gave Martin
two points.
"Well, Pedro had on the board
I was fourth," Martin said. "And
then I'm like, 'Dude, I don't even
know, but I think it's a GEICO
guy in third.' But I didn't know
for sure, because he was pretty
far out front. And then I saw they
had the yellow flag out. And I'm
coming around the corner and I
got my hopes up! And then I saw
it said 'number 80 Hampshire!'
and I definitely made sure I got
on the gas pretty hard exiting
that corner because he was
picking the bike up. You don't
ever want to beat a guy like
that, but it was a gift. I got lucky
there."
In the end, Hampshire's mis-
take was the difference between
Musquin and Martin being tied
on points going into Indiana
(instead of two points apart),
as well as Martin pulling off the
overall victory in Utah.
The Champ Is Here
By clinching both 450cc titles in
2015, Dungey has, once again,
established himself as the man
to beat. And the difference be-
tween the Ryan Dungey of 2014
and the Ryan Dungey of 2015
the same as every weekend—try
my best and be smart because
you never know what can hap-
pen. We had some battles with
Cooper and, obviously, yeah,
sometimes I close the door on
him. Maybe sometimes it was
a little bit sketchy, but he never
went down because of me. So
he never did anything bad to
me, but Cooper is a special guy.
Once again, on the starting line
he was talking to me. I couldn't
really hear what he was saying,
but he was trying to mess with
my head right before the start.
So we'll see."
Could we see Ryan Dungey
step down to the 250cc class for
Indiana next weekend to help his
teammate out?
No, probably not. But wouldn't
that be interesting?
Gift From RJ
With Musquin out front in the
first 250cc moto, Martin was
forced to come through the
entire pack after he got caught
up in a first-turn crash. He put
in a Herculean effort to fight his
way into fourth place with only a
couple of laps to go, and GEICO
Honda's RJ Hampshire was
having the best moto of his pro
career—having led a good chunk
of the moto and then running
third behind Webb (second) and
Musquin (first).
maybe they try harder to hold me
up. But you know, that's the way
it is. That's racing.
"Last weekend in Unadilla,
Jessy Nelson fought really hard
to get fourth place, right in front
of Jeremy, so I feel like he was
thinking about me and trying to
get in front of Jeremy. I'm not
sure. They [the AMA] might talk
to Cooper for the last round, but
I don't know. My tactic is to do
Justin Barcia had his worst race
in a while. Despite grabbing the
holeshot in one moto, he went 5-3
for third overall.
