The Stopwatch: Florida and Georgia

Whibs took the fastest lap and the win in Florida.

To put it simply, the Florida GNCC is a survival race. 3-hours of sand whoops, palmetto roots combined with the high temperatures certainly take their toll on both man and machine. I can pretty much guarantee that any rider in the XC1 Pro Class could’ve put in a lap much faster than we see in the chart below, but the price they would have paid for doing so would’ve been high. Looking at these lap times, I am for sure impressed by Whib’s ability to lay down a lap under the 28-minute mark as he’s not a guy that we typically associate with speed. But what separated Whibley and Charlie Mullins from the rest of the field is how close their worst laps are to their best laps. Yes, they were a good bit slower than their best laps but as the course gets insanely rough that is to be expected.

UK sprinted towards the front, catching some XC1 riders in the process, but couldn't hold on for the whole 3-hours.

I’ll admit right now that I had assumed that Jase Lewis would have the fastest lap in the XC2 Pro Lites class as he did his best to check out from the field early on in the race. A crash would ultimately force Lewis to drop out of the race, but looking at the lap times that Jason Thomas, Glenn Kearney, and Steward Baylor were able to put down I’m not convinced he would’ve been able to hang on for the 3rd-hour anyway. While he wasn’t able to finish the race, Jase Lewis still had an impact on the outcome in my opinion. Jason Thomas dropped the hammer on the 2nd lap to chase him down and then eventually would drop the anchor in the later laps of the race allowing Baylor, Robinson, and Kearney to move ahead of him. We’ve seen this happen to many a rider in Florida and with all the hype and build up for the first round it has to be hard to not go out and pin it early on.

Bobbitt looked really, really fast early on in Georgia.

After nearly ripping the holeshot and sliding out in the first turn, Russell Bobbitt sprinted away on lap 2 setting the fastest lap of the day, by a lot. It actually kind of reminds me of the old days when Mike Lafferty would destroy everyone on the first lap of a GNCC–using those Enduro trail-reading skills to go stupid fast on stuff no one had seen yet. Unfortunately for Dange-Russ, he got stuck in a mudhole and was dropped from the lead pack. He wouldn’t be the only rider to deal with that fate as the many bog holes in Georgia claimed numerous victims. While his fastest lap was nearly a minute slower than Bobbitt’s, Kailub Russell’s came on the 6th lap of the race as he broke away from Charlie Mullins and Paul Whibley securing a much-needed race win after struggling in Florida.

Proof that we had some awesome racing in the XC2 class is in the top 3 riders best lap times being separated by a mere four seconds all on the same lap. UK7 takes the top spot for the second race in a row with his fill-in teammate Glenn Kearney 2nd. One of the aforementioned mud holes claimed Kearney and dropped him from the pack, otherwise we could’ve seen a 3-way battle to the finish. Instead, Steward Baylor showed consistency instead of raw speed as he claimed his second victory of the year.