Fox Canada Presents Sand Del Lee Race Recap

As we’ve mentioned on a few occasions, whenever our National Series has visited the Sand Del Lee track, something exciting always seems to happen. We’ve witnessed some great battles on the track, as well as some adversity off of the track in the past and this year was no different.

Before I get into the results and how they came to fruition, it first has to be mentioned that every rider who lined up today is an absolute warrior. From the two MXTour classes, the WMX class, as well as the FXR Pre-Mix class, to race in temperatures that exceeded 40c with the humidex was truly remarkable. In fact, it was so hot that the MRC decided to shorten the final motos in each class by a few minutes.

In the 250 class, Dylan Wright once again proved that he’s the rider to beat in 2019 as he once again dominated both motos. Compared to last weekend, Dylan’s wins didn’t come quite as easy at Sand Del Lee as in the opening moto he was forced to battle from almost dead last after a first turn incident. Then in Moto 2, Dylan got off to a sixth place start and had to charge from behind again. When he got into second place Jess Pettis had a five second lead and was looking great in the lead. But, within a few laps Dylan was parked right on Pettis’s rear tire and not long after that he motored by for his fourth moto win in a row. The GDR Honda rider is on quite a roll now and after today’s win Wright extended his lead to 33 points over Jess Pettis.

The 450 class for once had a lot more drama today than the 250 class as both motos had some interesting things happen. In the opening moto while chasing the race leader Colton Facciotti, Phil Nicoletti crashed and Matt Goerke, who was right behind Phil, got collected up in the same crash. This allowed Facciotti to pull away and cruise to a solid moto win over Mike Alessi and Shawn Maffenbeier.

Cole Thompson grabbed the holeshot in Moto 2 but his time at the front didn’t last long as Matt Goerke quickly got by him. From there, Goerke rode strong to not only take his second moto win of 2019, but also his second overall victory. Considering Goerke didn’t finish either moto last weekend at Gopher Dunes, his big win today couldn’t have come at a better time. Facciotti’s late pass on Thompson for fourth tied him for the overall win with Goerke, but Goerke would win the tie breaker with his moto win. For Nicoletti, he was a man on a mission in Moto 2 as he came within a few seconds of passing Goerke on the last lap. Nicoletti put on a great charge for the entire moto and if it wasn’t for him getting run off the track by Alessi at one point, he could’ve won his first moto of 2019. Afterwards Nicoletti was clearly unhappy with Alessi and he let him know it at the podium. Colton Facciotti now leads Mike Alessi by 18 points after five rounds.

These last two weeks have been extremely difficult on all of the riders, so hopefully they can get some rest before they head to Round 6 next weekend in Moncton, NB. As I mentioned at the start of this race report, it was another great day of racing at Sand Del Lee and most certainly one of the toughest of the MXTour Series thus far.