Welcome to Quick Fill. We’re battling Howard Stern!

 

Some of you may have heard of Leticia Cline. She is a model who we met through Racer X Illustrated. She is a nice girl (and nice looking) and did a great job as the Racer X Brand model for a few years. Then this summer we used her on the Racer X Motocross Shows on Motocross.com from the AMA/Toyota Motocross Championships. I got to hang out with her quite a bit doing those shows and she was always professional and showed up ready to work.

 

She did well enough that the GNCC TV crew started kicking around the idea of hiring her for next year’s GNCC TV shows. Leticia came to the Ironman GNCC just to check things out. Everything was fine. Then last week Leticia went on the Howard Stern Show, which is also fine. But then she got a little wild on there and did some, um, bad stuff. Now I didn’t personally find the stuff offensive, and no one else here did either. But keep in mind who works at this office: we’re mostly 20-year-old guys. Of course we didn’t mind!

 

But we have a duty to serve a wider audience than just 20 year old males, there are kids and families involved in this series and we just know someone is going to get upset about her appearing on the GNCC shows and representing the series. So the TV people called her and told her they have decided not to use her on next year’s GNCC shows after all.

 

It’s too bad because we’ve known Leticia for a while and she is very cool and nice and all of that good stuff. She is a friend to many of us. But, we’re a series based on families and we would definitely be taking heat for what she did on that show somewhere down the road””and if you haven’t heard the episode from last week you have no idea.

 

So we decided not to hire her for next year’s shows. But today she went back on Stern and talked about being fired””which technically isn’t true since she was never hired and wasn’t getting paid or anything. But hey, we would have done the same thing if we were her, so it’s okay. But what shocked me were the emails we got completely hating on us. I just couldn’t understand these emails. They were HARSH. Way worse than what we’re used to dealing with, even changes in rules or results don’t result in this kind of criticism. Ah but then I realized. These aren’t GNCC Racers who are emailing us, it’s just Howard Sternites and they will do anything to support their man and his causes.

 

Except this guy:

 

I'll keep this short and simple

I am disgusted with GNCC's hypocrisy in the firing of Leticia Cline
over her appearance on the Howard Stern Show.
From this point on I will not only refuse to support GNCC in any way
shape or form.
I am also going to discuss this with my fellow riders in a complete
boycott of GNCC.

 

Wow. I just don’t understand how this even involves this person. She wasn’t even ever a part of the races before! How could this effect or affect his life in any way shape or form? Why does he care this much?

 

So, I guess we won’t have Leticia around at the GNCCs next year. That’s too bad because she’s a cool girl, but we have to protect our rep. You may still see her on the Racer X show next year, I don’t think any decisions have been made there.

 

So onto the racing. Seems most people are set with their rides for 2008 and most of the other racing series are wrapped up. What’s left? Well, Red Bull’s Last Man Standing hits Texas this weekend. Our boy David Knight has won the event in its first two outings, he’s working on a three-peat now. I was given this list by Red Bull as a teaser of who is competing:  

 

 Russell Bobbit - Stephen Edmondson - David Knight - Chris Birch (From New Zealand, third in the Red Bull Romaniacs) - Colton Haaker (4^th in the EnduroCross on a trials bike) - Stephan Mueller (Germany) ”“ Kyle Redmond (He has done every Red Bull event this year, Romaniacs and Erzberg) - Justin Williamson (GNCC XC2 Champion)- TADDY BLAZUSIAK (Beat Knight at EnduroCross, has the best chance to run with him. He won Erzberg this year) - Wayne Baybrook (second at LMS last year).

 

So go Knighter and J Will! Hey, now that Knighter is in our series, we can always say a GNCC racer is in contention!

 

Knighter already has another win under his belt, he won the Indoor race at Barcelona over the weekend, round one of the Enduro World Cup Series.  

 

Knighter in Spain

 

Knighter wins 2007 Indoor Enduro World Cup opener in Barcelona

Red Bull KTM Off Road Race Team rider David Knight leads the ”˜07 FIM Indoor Enduro World Cup following three highly impressive performances at the opening round of the three-event series held in Barcelona, Spain. Reverting to two-stroke machinery having clinched the ”˜07 AMA Endurocross championship just a few weeks earlier aboard a 450cc four-stroke, Knight claimed two wins and a runner-up finish to take an early championship lead in the first ever FIM sanctioned indoor enduro series. Finishing behind David in the overall results was Finland’s Mika Ahola, who currently holds the runner-up spot in the championship, with Spain’s Xavi Galindo third.

David Knight: “It took me a while to get used to racing a two-stroke again, as I wasn’t revving the bike hard enough half the night, but things worked out great and it’s fantastic to have won the event and taken an early lead in the championship. My heat races went well. In the first one I got a good start and just got my head down and stayed ahead of Johnny Aubert. You had to watch some of the rocks because they were pretty unforgiving. In the second heat race the track started to get really tricky in places so after another good start I just made sure I kept out of trouble and moved through into the finals without too many problems at all.

”Â

           

Good on ya, Knighter.

 

Here’s a little ATV stuff:

 

Thought I would send you a picture of John Gallagher Sr. picking up one of his new Outlaws, last night Dec 4^th (his birthday non the less). How about winning the super senior 50+ class AGAIN when he’s in the 60 + age group (social security next year :) ) Way to go, John.

Big news on our end of it right now is the 2008 Rulebook. We have just posted the book here on GNCCRacing,com tomorrow, and we invite your comments. The goal is to post FINAL classes and rules next Friday, and we’ve been very happy to get all the suggestions and feedback on the classes that we posted last week. For racing at this level, everyone has been pretty civil, even disagreements with what we’ve done have been explained rationally and respectfully. Years ago I remember getting suggestions like, “You need a 43-44 year old class for 1998 Honda CR250s only” from a 43-year-old guy on a ’98 CR. This year things have been suggested for the greater good. Good!

 

Anyway, red the Rulebook if you’re interested and tell us what you think (you’ll notice most of the changes in the book were already mentioned last week when we announced the classes).

 

Two other tidbids. ATVRiders.com has a nice story on William Yokley’s machine. Click here.

 

 

And Paul Whibley just keeps on riding and winning back in New Zealand on his Suzuki RM-Z450. Click here.

 

 

And that’s all folks. Now, time to head out into the snow (it already hit us here in West Virginia).

The new Sport Class in the afternoon looks good so get ready for the possible resurgence of the 400EX!