Round
#5 - Glen Helen
Yamaha
/ ITP Quadcross - Links
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| Yoshimura's
Kory Ellis |
San Bernardino, CA (7/19/2007)
- Round 5 of the Yamaha ITP Quadcross Series
was held at Glen Helen, which is the first of three in
a row at the famous motocross track. With a packed June
schedule at Glen Helen, the Quadcross race was scheduled
on Saturday instead of typical Sunday event, so the normal
Saturday practice the day before the race was out.
I have been traveling so much lately for Yoshimura
that I haven’t had a chance to practice at all
since the last round in Taft, CA with the exception
of one day of testing that ended just about as fast
as it started. The only real day I would get any practice
would be on the Thursday before the race, and I was
informed by track manager, Lori Brant, there were few
changes made to the track.
I had not been there for nearly a month, so I was curious
to what changes were made to the track. As I made my
way around the track for the first lap there was definitely
some new changes to the track, and the biggest one was
a new whoop section that ran almost the entire length
of the front straight-away. I quickly realized this
was where I need to spend most of my day.
After putting in a couple of short motos and playing
some cat and mouse with Ritchie Owens (AMA outdoor MX
rider #80) I was ready to try to tackle the new whoop
section. After watching some dirt bikes and quads go
thru it, I gave it a couple of tries. I skimmed it in
fourth gear, but I was going so fast that I could not
make the corner. Then I tried to double thru them but
ended up one short at the end, so I knew I had to throw
a triple in there some where but the first whoop was
not a whoop at all, it was a jump. Attempting to triple
into the whoops would be a very hard landing, so a decided
not to go for it and triple some where in the middle
where they were beat down a little. I could tell every
one on an ATV was going to struggle thru the whoops
because Cyle Chislock was trying to get thru them on
his new Kawasaki KFX450, and he was having problems
at the end and stalling the quad in the corner. As I
went home for the day, I felt I had a pretty good grasp
on the track.
The next day I took my quad to Yoshimura with me and
took it to the race shop where the team mechanics were
working harder than ever, so they could try to take
there first weekend off in months. I worked till about
3PM that day and went across the street to the shop
to get working my LTR450 for the race the next day,
but when I got there, half my quad was striped. Doug
Gust’s Mechanic, Robert McClure, had the thing
in pieces. As soon as he saw me, he started yelling
at me, something about maintenance, but I could not
understand him he was so mad he started speaking to
me in Spanish. Robert ended up going thru the top end
and rebuilt the entire rear end. At about eleven that
night, I pulled out of the shop and started the hour
long drive home to load the rest of the van up for the
race before I went to bed.
On race day, I met up with Brant Russell and Robert
at Denny’s right by the track for breakfast. Robert
said after what he had seen on my bike that he was going
to come out on his day off and make sure every thing
went good. The day was one of the best days for weather
you could have, it was clear sunny and just warm enough.
The first lap of practice I took it easy to see what
they had changed on the track. The section they added
in was rough already along with the rest of the track,
which was a good thing to make it a better race track.
On the third lap, I came around and figured I would
try to triple into the whoops and see if it was any
faster than the line that I had already picked out.
Turns out the first one throws you higher than you think.
As I was coming down, I thought to myself this is going
to hurt. It took every thing I had to soak it up with
out crashing, but when I recovered my seat fell of half
way down the woops so I pulled over to put it back on
then as I was doing that the checkered flag came out
so I was done with practice.
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