Destry’s WORCS / AMA Hare Scramble Olympia, WA story

 

August 2, 2009

Race:

I’ve really been looking forward to racing up in the northwest, because it’s usually more technical then the other rounds. This WORCS round was in conjunction with the AMA Hare Scramble series and was supposed to be a three hour race (I’ll get to that later). It was a dead engine start, and I felt pretty confident I was going to get a good start. When Homer waved the flag, I kicked and was gone. I was second to the corner right behind Charlie Mullins. I followed him into the woods, and just tried to ride a good smooth pace. It was pretty rough and had some pretty tough uphills that started to get bad. After the first lap, I was about 15-seconds back with Jamie Lanza about the same distance behind me. The next lap is where is got interesting! A little less than halfway through, I came up to a big pack of riders trying to get up one of the hills. I worked my way through, and started to pin it up the hill, when I saw Charlie down in between two big trees. He had some of the WORCS crew helping him out. I was trying to find a way around, but there wasn’t one. Next thing I knew, there were about 60 riders packing up behind us. The WORCS crew did the right thing, and said they were going to have to restart the race without this section. It really was just a bad deal, and really wasn’t the WORCS guys’ fault. I know they tried to reroute us, before we got there, but ran out of time.

The Restart:

I was really bummed to know I was up front and had to start over again. Then they told us that we were going to start based on how we were running after the first lap (5-seconds between each rider). I actually thought this was the best, and most fair, way to do it. It was supposed to be close to a three hour race, but since we had already raced for a little while they changed it to a two hour race. It was actually nice to get some rest before starting over. When I took off again I tried to get by Charlie early, but couldn’t do it. I was about 10-seconds back after the first lap. The next lap I went down a couple times and was struggling, but luckily no one was able to get by each time I picked up the bike. Then on the third lap, I got into a nice groove and caught up to Charlie and made the pass. I stopped for a quick pit on the next lap, and when I pulled out I saw that Caselli wasn’t far behind me. At this point, I pretty much just kept riding a good, smooth pace and wasn’t doing anything dumb. Kurt wasn’t too far back, but this time he had to stop for gas and that gave me some breathing room. At one point I had built up a 35-second lead (with three laps to go). However Ricky was charging, from the back of the pack, and had moved into second (about 15-seconds back). I only had two laps left, and really wanted this win, but towards the end of the lap he caught me and was on the gas! He went around me and I had to back off, because it was dusty in this section. Going out on the white flag, I was 15-seconds back with Kurt about the same behind me. I was still determined to get back to RD and I was trying to focus more on him then Kurt, but the 2 ½ hours of racing started to catch up to me. I wasn’t as smooth and the course was hammered at this point. Finally coming back down the last hill I could see I wasn’t going to be able to catch RD, but had enough of a gap to finish 2nd. I was happy to get back on the podium, and take the top two spots for Monster Kawasaki!

Overall Summary:

I was pretty happy with my performance today. I had a couple crashes, but I think just about everyone did during the race. My speed was good and I really felt like the KX450 worked awesome! Towards the end, Ricky put on a good charge and passed me just before the white flag. He was definitely the fastest guy today and I just didn’t have much for him towards the end.

Top 15 Pro:

1st Ricky Dietrich

2nd Destry Abbott (22-seconds back)

3rd Kurt Caselli

4th Charlie Mullins

5th Mike Brown

6th Justin Soule

7th Glenn Kearney

8th Brenden Ritzman

9th Brain Garrahan

10th Jamie Lanza

11th Kevin Urquhart

12th Tim Weigand

13th Damon Huffman

14th Nick Brozovich

15th Ryan Powell

Other Notes:

It was an awesome feeling to be leading a WORCS race again. It’s been a while, but I still know I have it in me to be up front! I had a lot of people really cheering me on (some from other teams) and want to thank them all. It’s a nice feeling to have so many people rooting for me. Hopefully I can pull one off again here soon!!!

It was pretty cool to see Ricky, Kurt and myself on the podium today (half of this year’s ISDE Trophy team). I feel really good about our teams chances over in Portugal (in October)!

Speaking of ISDE’s! I just finished my ISDE t-shirts and will have them for sale on my site, hopefully next week. I’m also doing my fundraiser September 13th and hope to see a lot of you there. For more info you can visit my updated site or my message board. Thanks for everyone’s support!

I’m staying up here in Washington this week and might do the MX race they have here on Wednesday. They’re also going to have a WORCS cross on Friday night, then the pro WORCS race on Sunday.

Best Wishes,
Destry
www.destryabbott.com
2009 Sponsors: Monster Kawasaki Racing, Thor, Dunlop, GPR stablilzers, Shoei, Pro Circuit, Stephen Gall Training, SIDI, IMS, Zip-Ty,HoyFox.com, Motion Pro, BRP, Braking, Works Connection, Concept2, CTI2, Maxima, Kicker, O’GIO, Steahly, RK/Excel, Renthal, Bent, Hinson, Jonre Multimedia, dragonfireracing.com, Scott, Cyto Sport, N-Style, UNI, Parkway Chiropractic, Tire-Balls, and ZLT.