For the second week in a row, we raced the famous Walton Raceway. The largest Canadian Amateur race, the GNC Transcan, was held this past week. This in turn resulted in having only one day of Pro racing on Sunday. All the teams stayed during the week and watched Canada’s best amateur racers to see who might be the next top contender.
As Saturday drew closer it seemed another mud race was going to be inevitable. Radars were showing huge storms coming in with the potential of 20-30mm of rain. As soon as the amateurs were done racing, the Walton track crew went to work and levelled the track. They made the necessary changes to run a different track layout and then packed the track hard. This paid off huge when on Sunday morning the skies opened up around 830am.
It was decided that most of the storm was going to pass by noon and we needed to save the track for racing, so it was decided that qualifying practice was cancelled, and gate positions for Moto 1 were used from series standings. Everyone headed out and was able to do a 10-minute practice.
The rain had stopped by the time the first 450 Moto was ready to go. The track was going to be muddy but we were going racing. So gate picks went as the series sat with Phil Nicolleti -P2, Shawn Maffenbeier -P5 and Sam Gaynor- P6.
When the gate dropped our Dasa race engines were out front. All 3 teammates were battling for the holeshot running 1-2-3. Phil would get the holeshot and put on an incredible charge and never looked back, leading from start to finish. Maffenbeier came down the straightaway in 2nd and also put in an incredible ride. Phil and Shawn finished 60 plus seconds ahead of the rest of the pack.
Gaynor followed the veterans around corner one, and worked hard to stay with the lead pack. Sam rode a solid race with a few tip overs but would never quit and battled his way to 6th at the checkers.
With little time between motos, it was a mad dash to clean the bikes, do mid day maintenance and prep to the bikes and make it to staging before it closed. It was all hands on deck to make it happen. All the crew worked extra hard in the difficult conditions and made it to staging with time to spare. With a second storm possible shortly after the gate drop everyone had lots of decisions to make. All of our guys once again lined up with the Pirelli FIM pro hard front tire and MX 32 Soft paddle rear tire. When the gate dropped, the boys once again were rockets out of the gate rounding turn one in 1-2-3 positions.
Shawn got the holeshot with Gaynor in second and Nicoletti in 3rd. It was a rough first corner for Phil after having slight rear break issues going into turn one and going wrecking ball on a few guys but he still managed to come out of it in 3rd position.
Within a few corners Nicoletti made the pass to the lead, which he would hold for a few laps before Dylan Wright would get by him and take the moto win.
Maffenbeier settled in with great speed. Maffenbeier had a big crash late in the moto after cross rutting on a straightaway. He remounted without losing any positions and finished 2nd. Gaynor would have to dig really deep this moto after a few crashes and he finished the race in 8th position.
The track was extremely tough on man and machine but running Motul 300V and Evans waterless coolant kept our bikes running cool.
Phil Nicolleti 1-2 1st overall
Shawn Maffenbeier 2-3 3rd overall
Sam Gaynor 6-8 6th overall
1st – DYLAN WRIGHT
#9 – COURTLAND, ON 1st 1st 2nd 193
2nd – PHIL NICOLETTI
#54 – AMARANTH, ON 2nd 3rd 1st 171 (-22)
3rd – MATT GOERKE
#2 – PANAMA CITY, FL 3rd 2nd 4th 153 (-40)
4th – TYLER MEDAGLIA
#5 – BROOKFIELD, NS 4th 4th 6th 145 (-48)
5th – SHAWN MAFFENBEIER
#3 – KAMLOOPS, BC 5th 6th 3rd 138 (-55)
6th – SAM GAYNOR
#28 – ERIN, ON 6th 9th 8th 111 (-82)
