John Penton GNCC
Last weekend I teamed up with Offcamber Racing Yamaha to race a 250 Yamaha in the XC2 class at the John Penton GNCC. I was really excited about the oportunity and looked forward to the weekend. On saturday I rode the bike in the paddock a little bit to see how it feels and than just went ahead and got ready for the 3 hour race on sunday. I got up sunday morning and it was allready crazy hot. Even through it´s my second year over here I still struggle when it gets really really hot like it did on sunday. At 1 o´clock it was time to go racing. It was the first time in my life that I started a race with a dead engine start and I lost a little bit of time right away.After a couple corners we went back in the woods and it was the first time that I saw the 11 mile long track. I was really suprised how rough the track was on the first lap. Lots of deep roughts and bumps and a lot of trees. I tried hard to stay with the Top guys in the XC 2 class but made a lot of mistakes and went into the trees twice. I realised that I won´t be fast enough to run with them and that it´s more important to finish my first GNCC and get some experience. After 30 minutes I finished my first lap. The second lap had a little different layout. After 2 miles we turned into the famous John Penton section which consists of a single trails, rock sections, creek crossings and steep uphills. I´ve never been on tight trails like that and I bounced of the trees left and right. A little bit into the trail I got smoother and found my rythm. I was feeling good until I came up to a steep hill climb. A couple riders crashed and got stuck on the hill. I tried a new line on the side of the hill hit some roughts crashed and stalled the bike. My bike was really hot from riding for an hour and I couldn´t get it started which made me run really hot. I decided to let the bike cool down a little bit so I could fire it up but I couldn´t get it done and had to DNF the race after 1 hour and 20 minutes. I wasn´t too happy about my DNF but it was just a tough day with the heat and having no woods experience didn´t help either. I will probably do another round of the GNCC series with Offcamber Racing later this year.
This weekend I will be back on my Kawasaki for round 1 of the Buckeye State MX Series. I´m really looking forward to racing this sunday and get some good results to kick the series off.
