RACE REPORT: 2016 WORCS #4 | Havasu

By Precision Concepts | March 27, 2016

BELL AND SEEDS BATTLE HARD AT TOUGHEST HAVASU IN YEARS

Lake Havasu City, AZ (March 27th, 2016) –

The consensus through the pro pits was that this year’s Lake Havasu WORCS course was the nastiest it’s been in quite a few years. The brutally rough, and slower-speed, racecourse was coupled with temperatures in the upper eighties, which took its toll on each of the riders during the two-hour pro main event on Sunday afternoon.

Rocky Mountain ATV/MC, Precision Concepts, Maxxis Racing’s Justin Seeds was coming off a season-best second place finish at the previous round at South Point, but his hopes of continuing that momentum took a bit of a ding when his bike was slow to fire for the dead-engine start. Seeds later said, “I think I used up all of my excellent dead-engine starts on Saturday during practice, but once I got going I paced myself through the motocross section [known for being littered with golfball- and softball-sized rocks] to not get annihilated with roost. Once we got into the off-road sections, the track was a lot different than I was expecting. I pumped up right away and totally forgot to breath [well], which is tough enough on that track to begin with.”

Justin battled just outside of the top ten early in the race and then, as he worked through the arm pump, began making some moves to get inside the top ten positions. Said Justin, “The lead guys pulled away early, and it took me over half the race to finally kind of settle in to some sort of a good pace, but by the time that happened the heat started to kick in and I think it got to me a bit more than I was expecting.”

Though Justin was starting to feel the effects of both the heat and the tough track conditions late in the race, he was making time on those ahead of him, passing his way into seventh place with just a couple laps to go, and making a late-race charge for sixth position, which came up just short. “I think, if the pits were set up a little different to where I could have come in each lap and had water poured on me it might have helped,” said Seeds, “but it is what it is. I made it out healthy and I’m fourth in points, just a handful of points out of second. I’ll be going into the next race ready to go.”

Justin’s Rocky Mountain ATV/MC stablemate, Robby Bell, had a decent start to the pro main, rounding the first turn in seventh, and was able to pass into the lead on the second lap. Robby summed up the early part of the race, “It was interesting. I felt like everybody was really pacing themselves and I was able to push through the pack pretty quickly. I didn’t think I was riding overly hard, but by halfway I had stretched out nearly a minute on everyone.”

That’s when Robby’s race took a bit of a turn as his body started to show signs of serious fatigue. “The first red flag popped up when my right calf cramped up just past the hour mark.” Bell later remarked, “There was still so much time to go, so to get a cramp that early got me a little nervous. Then, lap after lap, my body was beginning to slow down and run out of energy. It got to the point where I decided to pull into the pits, I think four laps in-a-row, to get water poured over me and take in more fluids, but the damage was done and I was simply surviving.”

Robby ended up falling to fourth place by the end of the race, but was quick to look at the positives afterward, stating, “If I had to have a race go somewhat poorly, this turned out to be the one as the guys around me in the points didn’t have the best weekend either, so I was still actually able to extend my lead slightly. I’m hoping this was just leftover from that nasty virus I had recently, as I’m not used to hitting the wall and throwing out the anchor like that, at least not in recent years. I’ll definitely regroup and get things figured out for the next round.”

Robby and Justin are back in action this weekend at the fourth round of the BIG 6 Grand Prix series in Twentynine Palms, while their teammate Justin Morgan will compete at the second round of the National Hare and Hound series in Murphy, ID.