For the second week in a row, we raced the famous Walton Raceway. As Saturday drew closer it seemed another mud race was going to be inevitable. Radars were showing huge storms coming in with the potential of 20-30mm of rain. As soon as the amateurs were done racing, the Walton track crew went to work and levelled the track. They made the necessary changes to run a different track layout and then packed the track hard. This paid off huge when on Sunday morning the skies opened up around 8:30am.
It was decided that most of the storm was going to pass by noon and we needed to save the track for racing, so it was decided that qualifying practice was cancelled, and gate positions for Moto 1 were used from series standings. Everyone headed out and was able to do a 10-minute practice.
The rain had stopped by the time the first 450 Moto was ready to go. The track was going to be muddy but we were going racing. So gate picks went as the series sat with Sam Gaynor - P6.
When the gate dropped Gaynor followed the veterans around corner one and worked hard to stay with the lead pack. Sam rode a solid race with a few tip overs but would never quit and battled his way to 6th at the checkers.
With little time between motos, it was a mad dash to clean the bikes, do mid-day maintenance and prep to the bikes and make it to staging before it closed. It was all hands on deck to make it happen. All the crew worked extra hard in the difficult conditions and made it to staging with time to spare.
With a second storm possible shortly after the gate drop everyone had lots of decisions to make. When the gate dropped, Sam once again were rockets out of the gate rounding turn in second. Gaynor would have to dig really deep this moto after a few crashes and he finished the race in 8th position.
Moto Scores
Sam Gaynor 6-8 6th Overall
1. Dylan Wright #9 1-1-2 (193)
2. Phil Nicoletti #54 2-3-1 (171) -22
3. Matt Goerke #2 3-2-4 (153) -40
4. Tyler Medaglia #5 4-4-6 (145) -48
5. Shawn Maffenbeier #3 5-6-3 (138) -55
6. Sam Gaynor #28 6-9-8 (111) -82