Vital Buzz 6/4/07

It's been just over nine months since VitalMX.com went live, and we’re looking for some additional staff here. You can check out the ad we posted here, and if you think you have what it takes to join our small but dedicated crew, let us know at jobs@vitalmx.com.

To answer a couple of the questions we’ve seen, yes, we’re looking for someone immediately. And yes, the job is based in So. Cal.

Grant Langston.

While it was an off weekend for the AMA National series competitors, quite a few of them were already in the sandbox at Southwick to polish their sand skills before next weekend's National Series event, and the results looked like this...

MX1

MX2...er, Motocross Lites

Some of the Round two of the CMRC Motocross National Championship was held last weekend at the Gopher Dunes track in Courtland, Ontario, and like round one, the MX 1 overall went to Monster Cernics Kawasaki’s Paul Carpenter.

Paul had holeshot the first moto before the race was red-flagged due to a first-turn pileup. After the restart, he had to work his way through the pack from fifth place. Paul had made his way to second, when Jean Sebastien Roy (Toyota Yamaha BlackfootDirect.com Fox Racing) ran out of gas on the last lap, handing the lead to Carpenter.

In moto two it was all Carpenter, though Roy was challenging him throughout. In the end it was Carpenter’s 1-1 ahead of Honda-mounted Chuck Mesley’s 2-7, as well as Marco Dubé (KTM) and his 6-4 tally.

Gopher Dunes MX1 Results

In MX2 action, Tim Tremblay (Royal Distributing Stoneridge KTM) passed early leader Chris Pugrab to take the first moto win. Though he crashed out of 3rd early in the moto, Michael Willard remounted and charged back to third place.

For the second moto, Willard (who’d won the previous round at Ste. Julie), took the win ahead of Tremblay, though Tremblay’s 1-2 was good for the overall win. Willard’s 3-1 was good for second overall, and Pugrab took third with a 2-8 score.

Gopher Dunes MX2 Results

Their next round is in two weeks (June 17, 2007) at Morden, Manitoba at Shadow Valley Raceway. Need more info? Check out www.cmrcracing.com.

The second round of the AMA Supermoto Championship was last weekend in Englishtown, NJ, and Graves Yamaha swept two of the divisions, with wins by Brandon Currie and Mark Burkhart.  The Supermoto Unlimited division was won by Ben Carlson aboard an Aprilia RXV550. Actually, that’s one of the interesting items of note from Englishtown…the diversity in bikes being used. Sure, there were the usual slate of CRFs, YZFs, KXFs, RM-Zs, and SX-Fs, but there were also a few Huskys (both 250 and 450), along with Yamaha WRs, Honda CRF450Xs, and a sprinkling of Aprilias.

It was interesting to see Tyler Evans score a ninth-place finish aboard his Suzuki, which was an improvement from the 14th that he carded at the first round. We’re guessing he won’t be ripping off his leathers and tossing them into the crowd, though.

Also notable was Jessica Patterson trying out the Supermoto class. She finished 24th, though she did qualify 21st out of 26 with a 01:10.639 lap time, which was only about six seconds off the fastest time laid down by Mark Burkhart (01:04.456).

Supermoto Lites

Supermoto

Supermoto Unlimited

If you want to check out some photos from Englishtown, Scott Lukaitis (who's a Vital MX member) posted a gallery here.

South of the border, it was the weekend for the Tecate Score Baja 500. The winning team consisted of Honda-mounted, Robby Bell, Kendall Norman, and Steve Hengeveld, who won by 27 minutes.

KTM's Baja 690.

KTM also used the race to debut their new prototype Baja 690, which uses a new LC4 engine and a tube frame, and it was ridden by Cyril Despres, Chris Blais, and David Pearson to second place in Class 22 despite problems like broken brake levers and running into a cactus.

One of our friends mounted a privateer KTM effort, and came home with this tale…

Hey guys… Just got home a bit ago. Long story short, I had four front flats yesterday, which really screwed me, time wise. I lost almost six hours due to that. I got my first flat a mile marker 10 and had to ride to Ojos. My race radio wouldn’t work, so I waited for two hours before finally getting it fixed. By then my race was over but I kept going. After three more flats, it was almost 4:00 pm and I was only at mile 235. I hit the beach at dusk, and got back to Santo Tomas at 9:15 pm.

Then I went for the last 80 miles through Urapan and back to Ojos. Well then my light decides to quit working. So I’m out in the middle of nowhere, with no lights. I nursed it to a camp next to the racecourse. A guy gave me a small flashlight. So I duct taped that on, and slowly made my way to my last pit. I could only do 5-10 MPH so it took me forever to do 30 miles. I made it to the pit, and they had a 12V spotlight that they hooked up and duct taped to my fender. I made it in with that (thank God), and I crossed the finish line at 3:15 am Sunday morning! There where many times I wanted to quit, but I stuck it out. So now I can officially say I Ironmanned the Baja 500. Needless to say I’m completely wasted right now, so I’m off to bed.

Also, Ricky James finished his portion of the race, and his dad posted up an update, saying, “Ricky (Bike 120X) finished his leg of the race from the start to race mile 120 in 4 hours, he said it was the gnarliest thing he's ever done.”

Ricky just keeps amazing us all.

The race does sound like as much an adventure as anything else, though it does have its dangers. A four-wheeled competitor was killed over the weekend after the race vehicle he’d hitched a ride in rolled down an embankment. (He’d been walking to the next pit after his own vehicle had broken.) Listening to the drama unfold, as well as the rest of the weekend’s action over the Weatherman channel was riveting, to say the least. When the Baja 1000 runs in November, we’d suggest checking in at www.race-dezert.com to find where to tune. (The downloadable stream file played flawlessly in iTunes for us all weekend.)

Occasionally with every Buzz, there must be some sad news, like when we heard that Jan de Groot, the Kawasaki GP team manager, passed away over the weekend. According to a Team Kawasaki press release, It is with great sadness that Kawasaki must announce that on the morning of the 4th June 2007 Kawasaki Racing Team Manager and Team Green bastion Jan de Groot passed away after succumbing to a serious illness which had hospitalized him for more than a week.

You can check out more on Jan’s long career in motocross via his bio at Kawasaki’s web site.

Godspeed, Jan.

A bigger buzzkill is the news that Amp’d Mobile (the primary sponsor for the AMA and World Supercross Series') has filed for bankruptcy. You can check out their positive spin on it in an official press release on the Amp’d Mobile web site, get more solid news from Information Week, check out the TechCrunch Dead Pool, or if you’d like, you can see part of the filing via .pdf from www.moconews.net.

Okay, we can’t let this end on a downer, so let’s do a quick giveaway. Tony Alessi passed along one of Mike’s Alessi 800 hats, and we figured it’d be cool item for an Alessi fan to sport. If you’d like a shot at this one, send a message to GuyB via his profile with your name and address. If you've already got a profile of your own, don't forget to hop it up with some photos and text, and if you haven't yet signed up a profile (required to send the message to GuyB as an entry), it's fast, free, and easy. Click here to jump to the registration page.

Send a message, get a chance at winning a hat. Easy!

We’ll pick a winner at the end of the week, and ship it out to you.

That’s it for this week, but be sure to stop back and see what else we’ve got in our bag of tricks at VitalMX.com.