Welcome to Quick Fill. 

And welcome to 2023! We’re wide-open rolling towards the start of the 2023 GNCC Racing season which is now just six weeks away. At this point, things are going to fly by faster than the winter break already has and before we know what hit us, we’re going to be getting the ball rolling at Big Buck. Don’t panic just yet, there’s still time cross your T’s and dot your I’s but don’t loaf either or you just may find yourself scratching your head and saying, “uh oh!” 

Speaking of Big Buck, if you’re not already aware, we are running the adjusted schedule at Big Buck. The adjusted schedule I’m talking about is the one we’ve used at Ironman the last couple of years where the Youth ATV race will move back to 8am, AM ATVs at 10am, PM ATVs at 1PM and the Youth Bikes will move to Saturday afternoon at 4pm. This means the Bike Micros will race at 8:30am on Saturday and the ATV Micros at 9:15am on Saturday. Sunday we will split the AM bike race into 2 races with the first at 8am and the second at 10am. We are only doing this for Big Buck and will do it again at Ironman to end the season due to the large turnouts for those events. All other events will run the normal schedule. 

The rules and classes are final as posted online. We know some folks were concerned with some of the Youth ATV classes, but I’ll give brief explanation for allowing aftermarket engine internals in those Limited classes. That is not to allow “built” motors because the bore and stroke must remain the same. Given the fact that these models have not been produced for several years, the goal is to NOT force people to have to find OEM parts for these machines. I’m sure everyone knows it’s much easier to find a, say, Wiseco piston available for a 2012 Raptor 250 instead of trying to find the OEM one. 

Additionally, there were a large number of entries in that 250 class, so it was split to allow everyone to be a bit more competitive, even if you don’t have a full-blown stock machine. This keeps some of the younger 250 riders in the Youth ranks and doesn’t force them into the AM race. As always, we will take a look at everything as the season progresses and if we need to make changes in 2024, we gladly will. We understand the concerns that people have and appreciate everyone’s input. Feel free to keep us updated on your experiences throughout the season and like I said already, if it needs to be changed next year, we can make adjustments. 

There were also a few concerns with the number of races required for championships. Quite a few folks were in favor of adjusting that number given that we are racing one less event in 2023, but there were actually more people in favor of leaving it as is. Again, this is something we can look at adjusting in 2024, or we could possibly be back at 13 events in 2024. We’ll know more as the season progresses and we’ll keep an eye on championship attendance as well. 

Moving on, you could possibly be seeing a lot of other changes in 2023. Not necessarily regarding rules, classes, events, or anything of that sort but the overall look, colorways, logos and such could be looking very different in 2023. Fingers crossed we have some really cool news to share with everyone soon, but I can’t say much more than that right now. Keep your eyes and ears open!

The next task up is the location for that TBA event in South Carolina. We’re still working on finalizing all the details but should have some information for you soon. If we for sure do not make a return to Big Buck, it will still be in that same general area, possibly just a bit closer to the town of Union? Again, I don’t want to give away too many details yet but that is another thing we hope to give you all the details on soon, so stay tuned! 

With a new year, I’d really like to spice up Quick Fill a bit as well. I’ve mentioned this in the past but I went back and found some of Jason Weigandt’s original Quick Fill articles back when this whole thing started in 2007 or so and man those were good. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia or maybe it’s just because Weege has a gift of gab (that’s does translate into writing as well) that not everyone has, or maybe it was just the random stuff he threw into a post. Whatever it was, those old Quick Fill articles were really, really good. 

Quick Fill was in existence for about three years before I started working with the series, but I know for sure I read every single edition each week. Occasionally I would write in something random, and after I had been working with the series for a while this became a little more frequent and eventually a weekly contributor. Then eventually it turned into “hey, you just do the whole thing” and I’ve “just done the whole thing” for almost eight years now. That’s roughly over 600 Quick Fill articles I’ve contributed to and 400 I’ve done the whole thing. 

Honestly, that gets a little monotonous and it’s hard to keep coming up with funky, uh, stuff every single day as Snoop says. I feel like a lot of these are the same thing week to week and I feel like I’ve said this exact same thing in the past, but hopefully in the New Year we can make things a little more entertaining in these articles. It does get tough on the race weeks with everything else going on, and don’t forget that even non-GNCC race weeks are still some sort of race week for us. But, with that said, if you have any cool idea to make things better in upcoming editions of Quick Fill, just give me a shout a [email protected]. Or, if you ever want to write something up yourself, feel free to send it over. 

I did manage to spice things up there for a while with the “Random Photo of the Week” we were including. Unfortunately, it’s not possible every week because at some point I’m going to use up all the relevant photos I’ve got the share, but we’ll be sure to do it as much as possible. This was always pretty cool and was either some sort of behind-the-scenes photo or something cool we found/saw, or just something plain old random! We’ll kick that back off this week and if that’s something you want to share as well, feel free to send it my way at [email protected]. 

Well, that’s actually going to do it for this week’s edition of Quick Fill and the first Quick Fill of 2023. We hope you enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you back here next week!

Random Photo of the Week