2006 GNCC Series Round #5 - Loretta Lynn's - Live ATV Race Coverage

Hurricane Mills - After starting the season in Florida and working it way up the East Coast to the Carolinas, the GNCC Series now westward bound to the coal miner’s daughter, Loretta Lynn’s Ranch nestled in hills of Tennessee just over an hour west of, Country Music Capital, Nashville.

Last year, thunderstorms dumped buckets of rain on the track the night before the race, which turned most of the ranch into a lake as the river overflowed it banks, and this year, racers were created once again with rain as they arrived at the track with heavy rain moving in Thursday night prior to them arriving and lasting into Friday with scattered showers. Fortunately, the weather wasn’t as extreme as last year, and as of now there are only puddles and mud to deal with as river remains within its banks, which hopefully will remain the case especially this year because the area flooded last year is the main parking lot for the Pros and the vendors.

From how quickly the fields began filling up with vehicles is surely doesn’t look like the poor weather and ridiculously high gas prices have deterred many from making the trip to the oldest track on the GNCC schedule, which remains a favorite of many riders including six time champion, Bill Ballance.

When the Racer Production crew decided on layout for this year’s event, the area was bone dry, but the rains came and created miniature ponds down what was once the perfect spot for Pro Row, which had many reaching for their rubber boots as they parked a safe distance away from the actual track to avoid having their vehicles filled with water when the racers come through for the first lap in tomorrow’s race.

The rest of the track in the valley is littered with puddles, which surely have the Morning riders drenched after the first lap, but if the sun comes out as forecasted with temps near 80, the track should be in perfect condition for the Afternoon Race.

The start this year will be on the motocross track, which is almost completely grown over in grass.

At the end of the start straight away, the racers will go through a s-shape turn with a hard right almost immediately followed by a hard left, which heads into a high speed section on a small portion the motocross track before heading into the woods and along the river and finally back across the road and into the hills for some big hillclimbs and tight woods riding.

With any mud race, many racers will be forced to get a fresh set of tires to gain as much traction as possible in the slick and sloppy conditions, which meant the Tire Balls crew will be busy as well especially since Loretta Lynn’s is harder on tires than almost any of other track besides the Wisp with its sharp shale rocks slicing them up, so Tire Balls is a no brainier after spending hundreds of dollars in fuel to get to the race and risk a flat tire in the first lap, which could ruin your day and weekend.

Jeff Brest was setup in style this weekend with a Concept Haulers rig, which are appearing more and more at ATV racing events.

Checkout the 12’ toy box in the rear of the Concept Hauler, which eliminated the need to haul a trailer.

#14 Chris Bithell had a fresh set of Super Grip tires mounted with Tire Balls in hopes of working his way back onto the Podium this weekend as the Looney Tuned Racing Team has been really making a statement the past two races with Houston winning the Overall in Big Buck and Bithell rounding out the Podium at Steele Creek.

Pirelli's Bryan Cook is finally healed up from his collar bone injury he suffered in Florida while running in the top three overall, and with only 15 minutes of ride time since, he just going to focus on finishing the race and hopefully be back in the mix of things soon.

Stephanie Parton with umbrella in hand is looking for a repeat performance of last year when she took claimed the win over Angel Atwell followed by Traci Cecco. Last week at Big Buck, Stephanie Parton was in an intense battle for the lead with both Atwell and Cecco, but Angel Atwell was able to pull off the win followed by Parton as she appears to finally have her new Predator Outlaw ride dialed in.