by: Jared Bolton
Thursday, November 5, 2015 | 11:05 AM
Welcome to Quick Fill.
This week’s edition of Quick Fill, for me at least, comes to you all the way from Japan. I made the trek over for the final round of the Japan National Cross Country season and we have a number of familiar faces who also made the trip. Chris Bach was GNCC Racing’s selection for this year’s JNCC trip along with his mechanic Eric Siraton, but Josh Strang is also making the trip, as is N-Fab AmPro Yamaha team owner Randy Hawkins. So, we’ve got a full-fledged GNCC invasion going on over here and it looks like Sunday is going to be a great day full of racing!
The time change has been a tough battle for me, and while I’m typing this around 11PM Thursday night in Japan, it’s only around 9am back home in the eastern United States. Regardless, I’m extremely excited to be here and will be posting some photos later in addition to all sorts of media goodies coming your way when we return. I can’t thank Racer Productions and the JNCC crew enough for giving me the opportunity to come experience this first hand!
Of course, while that’s the happenings here, back in the USA the GNCC Nation is winding down from an excellent season of racing and there’s no doubt that the Ironman was a great ending to that season. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the course and we lucked out and got just the right amount of rain to keep the dust down and also keep from making everything too wet as well. Overall it was one of the most primo Ironman courses ever, and while it’s always sad to see the season end, there’s not a more fitting place to end the season than Ironman.
Weekly Updates (Chelsea Taylor)
Well I don’t know about you, but I am just not ready to accept that the season is over! I think we went out with a bang though, because this past weekend was great! There’s just something about Ironman that makes for an awesome event weekend.
As most of you know, we had a total of five motorcycles stolen this weekend. My heart breaks for all the people affected because I know how much money and effort that everyone has put into their machines. Racer Productions is offering an award to anyone who can help return these bikes to their rightful owners. Please click HERE to find out all the details!
Don’t forget that we have the banquet coming up in a little over a month! Don’t forget to reserve your hotel room and your seat! Get all the information HERE.
Nick is going to talk about this later, but make sure to come out and join us at the 2nd Annual Rich Mackey Charity Ride this weekend. We are all so excited to be able to get out and ride and support a great cause!
That’s all the updates for me this week, hopefully I’ll see you on Saturday! Make sure to check out my other section below on Allie and Mike Bradshaw!
That’s a Wrap, 2015! (Jared Bolton)
The 2015 GNCC Racing season has officially come to a close and what an amazing season it was. We saw history made in many ways, and a lot of excellent racing along the way. It seems like we say that each year has produced one of the greatest GNCC Racing seasons yet, but there’s no doubt that 2015 truly was one of the best.
On the bike side, Kailub Russell would become the first back-to-back-to-back champion since Scott Summers went 3 in a row from 1990-1992. He also backed that up with a National Enduro championship, which would make him the first rider to ever claim a GNCC and National Enduro championship in the same season and also, along with his dad, Jeff, would become the first father-son duo to hold National Enduro championships.
Husqvarna returned to the GNCC Racing game in a big way with Josh Strang’s Unadilla win marking the brand’s first GNCC win in 27 years. The success would continue from there as Thad Duvall would claim the win at Mountain Ridge, and Strang would snag 2 more wins at Powerline Park and Ironman. That makes a Husqvarna sweep of the final-four GNCC rounds. That’s pretty significant for a brand that hadn’t won in 27 years!
As Rodney mentioned, 2015 also saw a changing of the guard in the ATV ranks with Walker Fowler claiming the 2015 championship, thus becoming only the 4th rider to claim a GNCC ATV National Championship in the past 22 years, and only the 8th rider in the history of GNCC Racing to claim a GNCC ATV National Championship. Walker also becomes the first rider to work their way up from the youth ATV ranks to claim the National Championship.
The racing throughout the 2015 season was undoubtedly some of the best we’ve seen throughout the history of the sport. If this is any indication of what we have to look forward to in the future, then the 2016 season is looking very promising. No matter what happens, we all know that GNCC Racing continues to grow more and more each year. With record breaking rider entries, history making moments and much more, it’s been an amazing year of GNCC Racing and I know I can’t wait for next season.
2nd Annual Rich Mackey Charity Ride (Nick Koester)
The off-season is officially underway, but that doesn’t mean you need to put you bikes away just yet! The 2nd Annual Rich Mackey Charity Ride is taking place this Saturday in Waynesburg, PA. This is a charity ride that the GNCC Racin’ Nation can definitely get behind. The namesake of the event is the late Rich Mackey, husband of long-time Racer Productions accountant, Jerri Mackey. Jerri along with her daughter Tyler and son, Kaleb Williams who finished 3rd in the 200 B class, will be hosting the ride at a family friend’s property at 164 Quiet Valley Rd, Waynesburg, PA all day Saturday.
$10 donation at the gate gets you in for a full day of riding trails and small moto track on both bikes and ATVs. This year’s beneficiary is none other than Team Faith. GNCC Chaplain, racer, commentator extraordinaire Chuck Lemaster, who married Mack and Jerri at the 2014 Snowshoe GNCC, is raising funds to help Team Faith get to the races in 2016. For those unable to make it, you can donate in memory of Rich Mackey to: Gofundme.com/teamfaithgncc
Myself and a crew from the office will be out at the track so make sure you come out and look for the Racer Productions and Racer X posse! The inaugural event last year was a great time and we all look forward to putting the clipboards and laptops away and getting a chance to ride!
Click HERE for more info!
A New Era Begins (Rodney Tomblin)
The 2015 AMSOIL Ironman GNCC will forever mark the end of an era in XC1 ATV racing. It's hard to believe it but it just happened, a new champion has been crowned. Walker Fowler has finally completed the task. It's as if he may have gone full circle from capturing the modern day youth ATV win at the Ironman in 2004. It was eleven years in the making, but that first win on a 90cc has lead to his first Pro championship and ten years since he captured the first youth national championship.
One may say that Walker has ushered in the beginning of two new decades of racing and with the new decades he brings a new era. He is the first ATV youth racer to work through all the ranks of GNCC and the first to take it to a championship. Many knew Walker would some day achieve win the title and it was more of a matter of when not if. Few have been given this kind of expectations on the four wheeled side of things and as good as Walker is, can he stop the monster he may have helped create.
Along with the monster he has created he has many obstacles to face now. Next season Chris Borich will be back for blood. It's not certain whether he will be able to draw it but he will be a certain force to reckon with. It's not hard to imagine that losing this title is not really sitting well with Chris and acts as a major fuel to fire him up to train this off season even harder than ever. It's not hard to imagine that Adam McGill is fired up himself. He came so close to see it all slip away and it's likely not sitting as well with him as he may be portraying.
There will be many challenges like Jarrod McClure who is finding his speed and consistency. He may be as much a title contender as anyone honestly. Two of the season’s biggest wins of the year were claimed by Cobra, which indicates that this may be the beginning of his threat. Winning at Snowshoe and at Ironman both give him long periods of time to think about those wins and gain confidence that may give him the edge to be competitive for the title.
Possibly the one rider that many may not be looking so much at to be a threat but should recognize that 2016 may bring him to the forefront in a big way and that is Brycen Neal. Neal was another rider that was part of the inaugural youth GNCC. He finished fourth overall and third in his class which was 90cc Youth Limited 8-15. Neal won a fierce battle in the Pro Am class in 2013 before stepping up to XC1 in 2014. He hasn't captured his first overall yet but that may be just matter of time and maybe not as much time as you may think. This kid is programmed to win. He knows where he is going and he is focused on bringing things together. He took a big gamble as a sophomore in the class and made a near total program change and saw nothing but huge success. Imagine if you will Brycen Neal with a little experience on the bike and with the program and it’s not hard to imagine him capturing a few wins.
The proof of a new era in GNCC is a simple as looking at the starting line up heading into round one. Names like Chris Bithell and Kevin Yoho will be fading from the lineup as names like Cole Richardson and Cody Collier take their spots. They will be followed soon by names like Levi Cohen, Westley Wolfe, Hunter Hart and Kenny Shick who will fill the void of other great names that will soon be vacating their places on the front row. It's not mutiny by any means but simple evolution. Our sport continues to evolve and so do the players.
Will the new era bring a dominate champion that reigns for the better part of the next ten years or will we begin to see a fluctuation of champions and contenders? Time has those answers but something tells me it's not going to be so easy to dominate like in the past. The reason is that the era brings not only Walker but also an entire generation of ATV GNCC racers that were raised in heated competition. Ready or not, it's coming.
Two Is Greater Than One (Chelsea Taylor)
I was honored this past weekend to experience one of my good friends, Allie Bradshaw win the Women’s Amateur Championship. However, her win came with even more excitement as her dad, Mike Bradshaw also clinched the championship in the Masters A (50+) division!
Even though she didn’t start racing until 2011, you can still refer to her as the ultimate motocross lover. When Allie isn’t racing you can probably find her at the practice track or hitting the trails on her mountain bike, just anything she can do to better her racing game. Mike has pretty much rode his whole life, so when Allie found her passion for woods racing, then he also got back into racing! This way they could race together, and by race together, I mean they are both in the 10 a.m. race on Sunday at the same time!
Allie’s home track and one of her favorites is Steele Creek, where she had one of the best races this season. She ended up making a last minute pass right before the finish line to win, but had to fight the entire two hours against three other ladies all wanting the big win.
The championship wouldn’t come easy for Allie as she had some tough competition with Sarah Redel. But that’s the awesome part about being a girl in this male-dominated sport is that majority of us are friends off the track! But don’t get me wrong, the competition is just as stiff as the boys on the track. Allie said that it makes racing more fun knowing that you are going up against one of your good friends, and that she and Sarah always talk to each other after the race no matter who ended up coming out on top.
With the pressure of the undecided championship heading into the last round, Allie said this was one of her best memories this season. When she crossed the finish line she had no idea what place her dad came in, but as soon as she crossed the finish line and saw her family’s excitement she knew that they had both won their championships.
“I don’t even know how to describe how much it means to me that we were able to do this. It has always been special and meant a lot to me that my dad and I ride and race together. I will always be grateful that he was able to introduce me to this sport, and that I have grown to share this passion with him,” said Allie when asked about what these dual father/daughter championships mean to her. “The idea of chasing a championship together is pretty much how we ended up running the series. After both of us winning Steele Creek and Big Buck we got the idea of winning Championships together. We knew it wouldn’t be easy and that we both had a lot of competition, but the competition and competitive racing is what we both loved.”
Not only is Allie a beast on the track, but she also excels in school. She will be graduating high school a semester early this December. Next year will not only be her second year racing the whole GNCC circuit, but she will also move up to the WXC class. She said she is going to work even harder to improve during the off season in order to make her transition to the women’s premier class as smooth as it can be.
What's New on RacerTV.com?
Couldn't make it to a GNCC this year? Or want to see if you made it onto the show? Check out the archived videos on RacerTV.com from every GNCC this year! The NBCSN Shows are also archived on the site as soon as they are available.
News from GNCC, Riders and Sponsors
Thor just released the Sentry Series, uniquely designed to naturally fit every rider. Armor Up and Fear Down! Check out the video below and visit Thor for more.
2016 Rider Support Opportunities
As we head into the off-season and start looking towards the 2016 race season, rider support and sponsorship is important to start planning. Click HERE to learn more about the companies that not only support GNCC Racing, but the dedicated racers that compete!
Congratulations to Mike Allen from series partner, ALCO Cleaning Products, for clinching the closely contested Masters C (50+) class championship at Ironman! Look for Mike and the ALCO team at the banquets and learn more about ALCO Cleaners HERE.
