Brad King's 'Sea Otter' & 'Pro GRT' Port Angeles Race Report

The official beginning of the season has started off with the trip up to the annual Sea Otter Classic, I was excited to be there with my new team and have our pits set up so everyone can check it out. The Otter is the same thing every year pretty much but it's fun to go check things out, see everyone, and race a fun slalom and downhill. I raced my first slalom race at the otter and ended up doing poorly due to a mechanical in qualifying. After that, I was motivated to do well in the downhill and practiced all my lines through the mud pots and ruts trying to keep my speed. On Sunday, I started out in the beginning of the field and wanted to come down into the hot seat and thats what I did. I held it for a while until three guys came down to beat me and the end of the race so I ended up 4th out of about 60 guys. I was pretty happy with that because thats the first time I had a good result there. The first race with the whole team (minus Kieran Bennett) was a big success and I had a lot of fun.

The next weekend was the first Pro Gravity Tour in Port Angeles, Washington. This was the 2nd time Ive been here and it's awesome. Just a really fun, high speed track with your good dirt and some roots. Practice was really good all through the week and I was feeling really good. The team worked really well together all weekend and our mechanic Steve killed it making sure the bikes were dialed all weekend. In qualifying on Saturday I was on a good run hitting all my lines then at the bottom I got off line and hit a tree stump and went over the bars. I got shaken up a bit and pulled my calf muscle in my right leg and it never seemed to strech out again till I got home. On Sunday however I pulled out a good run but could have carried more speed in the tight corners but overall I was happy with it. I came down into the hot seat which I wanted to do after my bad qualifier the day before and ended up holding it until I got beat by two canadians. Overall good weekend with the team and results. Next up is the U.S. Open. See you guys there!

KIERAN BENNETT's Moto Report from NZ!

More two wheel racing, this time with a motor.

While everyone was at sea otter enjoying the awesome downhill track they have there every year I was stuck at home racing motor cross, poor me!

My race of choice for the sea otter weekend was the 2nd round of Suzuki New Zealand National cross country series which doubled as round one of the Nelson club series and was held about an hour from home so after some scrambling I got the top end rebuilt in my 08 RMZ250 and did a couple of motos the weekend before to get prepared having not ridden my moto since the start of january!

With over 100 people on the start a le mans start was hectic but spread the field out a bit over the long start straight, I got a horrible start and finally got off the line about half way through the pack but straight away started putting in passes to try make my way through everyone, that was until about 5 minutes in I got collected by a guy cutting from one side of the track to the other and thrown over the bars onto my head which left me sitting on the side of the track for a bit working what had happened and getting passed by about 40 people!

After getting myself back on track I tried to settle into a good pace that I could run for the next 3 hours of the race, I started making passes and was running a good pace until about the 2 hour when I got forced off the track again by a lapper who couldnt hold his line, this time though I stayed on but came out of it was a flat rear tire. To put it lightly I was pretty gutted especially after how good I had been feeling up until that point even though it was without a doubt a big bike track with huge 5th gear straights that lasted close to 5 minutes at least!

I got the flat fixed back in the pits but by that point I was out of the running for a good result so it was just back out on the track for a couple of fun laps.

Looking at the lap times after the race was good and bad, my lap times were under 2 minutes slower than the leaders which was cool to see considering the bulk of them were on bigger bikes. The gutting thing was realising if it hadnt been for the flat I would of podiumed for the club round and been top 20 for the national! But theres allways next time so hopefully ill be around next year to race it again and be a bit better prepared for it!

KB