Vigilant Vet Racing Race Report from Rd 1 and 2
Tuesday, March 25, 2014 | 3:40 PM
Some of you may read this report and wonder who we are and why a group of mostly “C” riders spend their time and money in the highly competitive world of the GNCC. However, take a peek into life at the new Veteran’s Pit Stop and the not-so-obvious story there quickly overshadows all the awards and podium celebrations we could imagine.
Finally, the 2014 AMSOIL GNCC season is in full swing, which means we are back to racing and hopefully on our way out of what’s been a very long winter. The first 2 Rounds were only a week apart and unfortunately, most of Team VVR fell victim to mechanical issues so we’re going to combine both events into one, Pulitzer Prize-worthy Race Report!
Vigilant Vet Racing had a rough start to our 10-day journey into the Deep South as about an hour into our trip the VVR race trailer experienced its first-ever flat tire. Actually, as you can see below “flat tire” is putting it kind of mildly. It had been an extremely long and exhausting week leading up to Round 1 so it’s only natural that something like this would happen. All was well, however, once we finally arrived at the first venue of the 2014 GNCC race season and were back in the presence of the GNCC Racing Family.
Round 1 took us Bunnell, FL for the inaugural 2014 Moose Racing Mud Mucker GNCC. This was a pretty big event for GNCC and the sport of XC racing as the location of the track is only 30 minutes north of Daytona where Bike Week had just kicked off AND the Monster Energy Supercross was in town. Several big-name vendors, sponsors and rider reps showed up at the Mud Mucker to see what GNCC racing is all about. In fact, this aligning of the stars gave VVR the opportunity to shake the hand of one of our biggest supporters, Bevo Forti of 100% Goggles. 100% is the official goggle of Team VVR and they supply the goggles and other swag that we present to select Veterans during the Vigilant Vet/100% Goggle Giveaway prior to the start of each 1pm Pro ATV event. They have been behind us from the beginning and their continued support is invaluable.
Round 1 was also the first time that some of the members of Team VVR got to meet and work with each other. Seven teammates showed up to blow off some steam on the track, have fun and raise PTSD awareness. While Sam Lamp, Wesley Smith, Mitchell Bonicelli, Allen Carpenter and Richard Little all finished in the top 10 in their class, all of us experienced some sort of mechanical or technical failure, which prevented most of us from completing the number of laps we are used to.
One very short week following the Florida event and we were gearing up for Round 2, the Maxxis General. The General is held at Aonia Pass MX Park in Washington, GA where the infamous red Georgia clay abounds. The same 7 members of Team VVR showed up to give Round 2’s track their best. The first two rounds of the season typically present a unique situation due to the short amount of time between the races. As a result, most of us do not have the luxury going home to fix equipment issues.
Once again, the entire team experienced some type of mechanical issue in Florida and did not have access to the tools and parts to properly fix our bikes. Zhorne and Little’s quad both took a huge gulp of Florida sand that made it’s way into the carbs on their machines. Sam Lamp was experiencing some significant electrical difficulties on his YFZ and was forced to bow out of the afternoon race on the first lap. All in all, the race results were pretty similar to Florida however this time only Wesley Smith and Richard Little finished in the top 10 in their class.