Jess Pettis could only watch in disgust as white smoke spewed from the mud that caked his stalled bike.
Just two turns away from wrapping up second place in the first moto of the 250cc pro class Saturday at the Rockstar Energy MX National event, Pettis’s Yamaha sputtered and stalled and down he went into the dirt at Blackwater Motocross Park.
It was an agonizing moment for Pettis, who returned to his hometown course as the Triple Crown points leader. He had to sit on a dead bike while 33 riders leaped ahead of him in the order of finish while Ottawa’s Dylan Wright grabbed the spotlight with his first moto win of the season.
The pea-soup track conditions from the day’s downpours dried up a bit when the clouds lifted and the sun came out in the afternoon but it remained chilly and breezy when the 250cc gate dropped on Moto 2. Tanner Ward got the hole shot but Hayden Halstead took advantage of Ward’s wipeout to assume the early lead.
It didn’t last long. Wright had his Honda in overdrive and got up front while Pettis slipped into second place, which set the stage for a two-rider battle. Pettis tried to keep pace with the easterner but Wright was having no part of that. He increased the gap to as much as 10 seconds and could afford to lay off the throttle a bit in the final few laps to claim his second win of the day on the slick and rutty Blackwater course.
“It started out pretty muddy in practice this morning and I ended up going down pretty hard in that first practice and I qualified fifth,” said the 20-year-old Wright. “I was running second and Joey (Crown) made a few mistakes and I ended up getting the lead and was able to just ride my race and won that one. The second one... I had to pick my way through a few guys, but I got in the lead, pulled a nice gap and got around lappers and ended up on top.”
Josh Osby of Valparaiso, Ind., was second in both 250 motos and second overall while Crown, of Matamora, Mich., placed third overall (2nd-5th).
“(Pettis) obviously knows this track fairly well and as soon as I got up quite a bit on him I could just ride my own race and I knew I had a buffer with a few laps to go to slow down and just stay on the bike because it’s pretty rutty and you don’t want to push it too hard and go down,” said Wright. “I like it when the track get gnarly, that’s kind of when I excel.”
After qualifying second-quickest, Pettis (34th-2nd) placed 10th overall Saturday and lost his points lead, dropping into third place with 144 points, seven back of Shawn Maffenbeier, a native of Swift Current, Sask., and six behind Osby. Now in his 13th season of racing, the 21-year-old Pettis has had his share of mechanical failures, but none quite so dramatic, so close to the finish line. He’d won three of the four previous motos in the series.
“It’s a crappy situation, two corners to go and my bike quit, but it’s part of racing and we have six weekends to go so we’ll keep our heads down and get that points lead back,” said Pettis. “I think the engine just got too hot. It’s pretty muddy here today and that’s hard on bikes. With about four or five laps to go it started really slowing down and I ended up slowing down just to save my bike but unfortunately it didn’t make it to the end and I went down.
“The second moto I kind of cruised and got second place. Dylan was riding well and I didn’t feel too comfortable today. I wanted to get out of here safe with some decent points and you can’t win them all. I’ve never seen the track this gnarly, it rained for the last day and it was pretty crazy. The track crew did a great job all week, they worked their butts off and they definitely made the track a lot better – the best in the series.”
In the 450cc pro class, Kaven Benoit of Bon Conseil, Que., and Tyler Medaglia of Brooksfields, N.S., renewed a rivalry that dates back to when they were tykes racing mini bikes, which made for riveting showdown in the second moto of the day.
