The Stopwatch: Unadilla GNCC

Jarrett and Kanney ate a lot of each other's roost on Sunday on their way to 1-2 finishes overall.

Given the insane, race-long battle between Nate Kanney and Jimmy Jarrett, it’s fitting that a mere second would separate the two for the fastest lap of the race. Kanney is always fast at Unadilla, so him setting the fastest lap with a blistering 21:44 isn’t really a big surprise. Jimmy Jarrett is an excellent motocross racer, and with this year’s Unadilla GNCC track utilizing a large portion of the main motocross track as well as the U2 amateur track, it shouldn’t be surprising that Jimmy set the 2nd fastest lap of the day, either. But, once you consider the shoulder injury Jarrett suffered in the first turn crash at the General GNCC in Georgia, along with the fact that he was hit by a car while cycling over the summer, it is definitely surprising that Jimmy was able to not only put down a fast lap in the early stages of the race, but keep laying down fast times, lap after lap, keeping Nate Kanney in check the entire race.

We’ve said before here in the Stopwatch that it’s not always the rider with the fastest lap that wins, but a lot of the time it’s the rider who puts down the fastest times in the later stages of the race, and that’s exactly what both Kanney and Jarrett did, laying down their fastest times on lap 7 of the 8 lap race. That means after 2+ hours of racing, with some of the worst lapper traffic in recent memory, these two riders put down times that were over 20-seconds faster than the rest of the field on that lap. Now that is impressive!

Thomas and Russell battled all race long with Russell taking the win, and Thomas setting the fastest lap of the entire race.

Not wanting to be outdone by XC1 class, Jason Thomas and Kailub Russell put on one hell of a show in the XC2 class at Unadilla. After suffering a dead-last start, Thomas put the hammer down with a 21:33 lap, which was the fastest lap out of both classes on the day, on lap two making up 26-seconds on Russell on that lap and closing within a second of him. A lot of people were wondering about UK7′s decision to switch a Husqvarna, many (myself included) thinking it was a bad idea. But Thomas rode the wheels off the bike to finish a close second in his first outing on the Italian machine. All four of the XC2 front runners, Russell, Thomas, Scotty Watkins, and Jesse Robinson all had big crashes during the race, which is a testament to the speed and aggression these young riders race with. As we said earlier in the race, the fastest riders don’t always win GNCCs, and you have to wonder if one of these guys would’ve backed it down a notch, would they have avoided that big crash and ended up with a win?