WORCS Round One Race Report

One year ago Kyle Summers made his Valli Motorsports debut at round one of the 2009 WORCS calendar. He jumped out to an early lead and was en route to winning his first WORCS race while a charging Ricky Dietrich did everything possible to match the pace of the number six Honda that appeared untouchable. With only a few laps remaining in the two hour moto, sounds of concern began to spill out of Summers Honda and what would have been a season opening statement win ended up being a heavy hearted walk back to vendor row for Kyle.

Step forward to last weekend and the stage was set for redemption. I spoke with Kyle minutes before the gate drop and his confidence could not have been higher. Up against a solid class that included the likes of Ricky Dietrich, Mike Brown, Kurt Caselli, Bobby Bonds, Nathan Woods, Justin Soule, Timmy Weigand, Gary Sutherlin, Destry Abbott, Eli Tomac, Robby Bell, Colton Udall, Chris Johnson, Bobby Garrison, Ryan Reina, Jonathan Davis, Bruce Marada, Kody Bil, Bobby Hesse, Zebulen Armstrong, Ty Keenom, Chris Hay, Brett Pike, Brenden Ritzman, Trent Pugmire, Nick Brozovich and the hometown boy Taylor Robert that seemed to be the favorite heading into the new season.

Robert wrapped up the 2009 WORCS series with a win at the final round in Mesquite, Nevada. Taylor is new to Valli Motorsports team in 2010 and has earned the hype surrounding him as he proved to have what it takes to fend off recent WORCS  champions like Brown, Dietrich, and Bonds.

Taylor has been working closely with Steve Hatch and the combination of his physical and mental training has given birth to a monster, much like that of Kyle Summers who had been working with Hatch prior to his dominating round one ride in 2009.

As the class rounded the first corner, Robert jump out front followed by Weigand, Brozovich, Brown and twenty eight other hard charging pros. Kyle Summers headed into the woods section in 11th place and to be honest, I expected Summers to have his work cut out for him as he tried to fight his way to the front. However, by the second lap Summers had charged into the number two position and in doing so put in the fastest lap of the race with a 11.12.152, four seconds faster than his teammate Robert who put down a 11:16:90 on lap two. Summers steadily closed the gap on Robert and set the stage for what could of been the race of the season, but as fate would have it Summers ran into trouble on lap six when his bike ran out of fuel.

Taylor was now being chased by Brown and Summers was running his bike through the desert in hopes of grabbing more fuel and salvaging some points. Robert was going to be hard to beat and he proved it by holding off the efforts of a blazing fast Brown and a hard charging Caselli who had made his way into the third place position.

When all was said and done, Taylor Robert made a statement once again and set the stage for a championship run that will be incredibly fun to watch unfold. The KTM boys rounded out the podium, Summers fought his way to 17th place and earned four series points in doing so, Weigand clinched the number four spot and Destry had his hands full as the result of a brilliant youngster by the name Eli Tomac, who put in a very impressive sixth place finish behind the Kawasaki of Abbott.

For a complete list of results visit www.worcsracing.com and we look forward to bringing you a report from round two in Primm, Nevada on February 28th.