Press Release

Honda of Houston - Houston SX

ocscottie
2/17/2011 1:15pm

Lance Vincent and Braken Hall raced their first professional super cross
this past weekend at the Reliant Stadium in Houston Texas.
Lance has been riding for the Honda of Houston Amateur Race team for 4 years
so it was about as good as it can get that his first race was in Houston. He
is also from Youngsville, Louisiana which is only about three hours east so
that meant that his whole family was in attendance. All this made for a
great atmosphere for Lance's first race; he was relaxed and surrounded by a
great group of people.

Braken struggled some in his first practice but he was jumping everything
and getting to know the track. Unfortunately he crashed in the first timed
practice and suffered a concussion forcing him to sit out the remainder of
the night.

Lance's first practice was a little tough but he got all the obstacles down
right away. He was struggling a little in the whoops but the team made some
slight adjustments when he got back to the truck. His second practice was
the first timed one and he did really well getting more comfortable each
time he was on the track. He came back to the truck; Naveen made a couple
more adjustments and talked about some sections that Lance could make up
some time in. His was the fastest in the practice at several times besting
Gannon Audette and Malcolm Stewart. The second timed practice he had a great
rhythm and was really getting the whoops down as well as changing up his
lines in the rhythm sections. The only real bummer is that there were yellow
flags in the rhythm section after the finish for the whole practice so he
was not able to improve his lap time from the first timed practice. But he
did make it into the night show with the 22nd fastest lap time.

Lance was in heat one, gate position was very important because the start
was super tight. Starting on the outside was tough, as he quickly found out.
He was pushed off the track and tried to go around the carnage only to crash
on the side of the track. He rode well and came back to 11th but that didn't
get him in the show. On to the LCQ!

Fortunately he had a great gate pick in the LCQ and that proved how
important gate position is. He used all the power of the motor Naveen built
and nailed the Holeshot! He went on the lead every lap of the LCQ with Alex
Martin right on his tail the whole moto.

Going into the main he did not have a good at gate pick, but went in with a
plan. Just like we thought, everybody bunched up going into the first turn.
Lance was last going over the first triple, and then he calmly worked his
way past riders and came through the first lap in 9th! He was riding
extremely well and caught and passed Nico Izzi and Jason Anderson on lap 8.
On lap 9 it all went south in the whoops! He crashed at the end of the first
set of whoops, but in his typical fashion got up quick picked up his bike
and took off with his clutch lever pointing up. He was passed by a couple
riders but worked his way back into 8th by lap 11 and held on to that
position till the end even with some huge pressure from Matt Lemoine.

Lance was the highest placing privateer and third of the true rookies!

All in all it was a great learning experience and Lance and the team have a
perfect building block in place. Lance's first comment was, "Doing this good
just makes me want to go and work harder for the next race".

Next week he will also be in the seeded practice so that he will be
practicing with a faster group. That should lead to a better qualifying time
and a better gate position.

Thanks for everybody's support, there is no way that he would do this well
with out the support from the industry.

0 comments