From the desk of•TEAM SUZUKI’S OFF-ROAD MIKE WEBB:

WORCS-MESQUITE Round 2

Round 2 of the 2008 WORCS season is now in the books, and unfortunately our title hopes took a hit when our number one rider Nathan Woods crashed heavily half way through the 2-hour event. The weekend started off great with Nathan racing the unclassified on Saturday morning and then the pro practice on the same afternoon. We made some small adjustments to get him comfortable and afterwards Nathan was happy with everything and the bike was working great. He seemed a little edgy, but hey, I like to see my riders chomping to get out there.

Woody still in one piece

Our 250 four stroke riders Jonathan Davis and Blake Savage both raced with Davis winning the 250 four stroke expert class on Saturday and Blake finishing in the top ten in his class. Blake’s performance was excellent considering this is his first race back after breaking his hip in the pre season.

In the pro main on Sunday, Nathan gated inside the top ten and started moving up quickly. He looked a little tight, suffered from a couple of small tip overs and after the gas stop he finally found his rhythm. But the racetrack was brutally rough and Nathan said this race was about getting it to the edge -but not stepping over that point. Unfortunately Nathan was skirting the edge of the whoops (big suckers) at speed when his front wheel clipped an unseen object, tucked and then the rear end totally swapped. Nathan was ejected at speed and came down heavily on his shoulder.

He broke his collarbone and has already been to several surgeons seeing if surgery can help move up the healing process. It can’t, the break is in a place where there’s little room for installing hardware so Nathan’s recovery will be the standard 4-6 weeks and then he will be back. Although our early season plan has been affected, our goal is to now come back healthy and win races, and then what ever happens, happens. Nathan has had to overcome early season injuries in the past, so we know he can do it, we will be ready.

A big thanks goes out to Ty Davis’s hard work. The man is a genius and was able to morph our ’07 big tank onto the ’08 bike and it worked great. We got the needed size to run additional laps and Ty did this with a surgical grafting of parts from the ’07 (radiators, shrouds). We will run this set up while we wait for IMS to finish the ’08 big tank.

Jonathan Davis was able to come back from a dead last start to 4th overall in the Pro 2 class, awesome job.

I’ve been in this game a long time and this was with out doubt one of the toughest tracks I’ve ever seen. Endless sand whoops waist high, gnarly!!!!!!!! Word has it that half the pro class DNF’d.

Cheers

Mike Webb