Division7/Star Racing/Yamaha Las Vegas Report
Las Vegas, NV - The AMA Supercross series rolled into sold out ,Sam Boyd stadium for the final round of 2009 and to close out the season in style with some epic racing action before 39,506 amped up fans. Division 7/Star Racing/Yamaha came equipped with our four standout riders for the Dave Coombs East/West shootout. #41 Matt Lemoine, #43 Broc Tickle, #159 Darryn Durham, and #164 Michael Hall all had a big task in front of them as they were set to do battle with the Top 20 riders from each region. Pre-qualifying went fairly well, with all the D7 boys keeping themselves in the mix of combined times of both east and west, fastest being Tickle in 10th and Lemoine taking 11th.
In the qualifying Heat for the west, Hall grabbed a less than stellar start and tipped over which left him to fight towards the front. Unfortunately Hall ran out of time, only rebounding to an eventual 14th place finish. The highly anticipated Lites east Heat got underway next in a more positive way. Once out of the gate, Lemoine and Tickle were both able to avoid any first lap carnage, in doing so they put their YZ 250F’s in the top nine positions. At times battling each other very hard, Lemoine was able to ride out the sprint race and finish 3rd, while Tickle stayed in tow coming away with 5th. Durham was not as lucky, starting poorly and not being able to find his speed until late in the race, he would end up joining Hall in the LCQ.
The LCQ blitzed out of the gate, with both Star riders circling the track upfront where it was crucial to be. Riding at the edge to make the main, Durham and Hall found themselves in a three way battle. With one lap remaining, a race amongst teammates relegated both Hall and Durham, to come away being two and three spots short of making the main.
Main event time came, and with that the final try in 2009 to turn some heads was upon us, on lap one Lemoine sat 10th, while Tickle held 16th. In the first half of the race, Tickle was struggling, leaving him to dig deeper to achieve any sort of good result. However, Lemoine kept putting fast laps down and pulled up to the 9th spot on and hung tough while dicing it out all the way through lap ten. The very next lap, Lemoine crashed in the whoops because of a fallen rider and had to hit the retire button on his night after having trouble restarting his motorcycle. In the meantime, Tickle finally took his speed in the whoops to a higher level and raced forward making substantial gains. With the closing laps in progress, Tickle had nailed down the 10th position, making a good outcome to all the struggles he incurred during the 15 lap race.
Star Racing thanks all these key backers for their quality service that helped make the 2009 Supercross season a success.
Division 7, Yamaha Motor Corp, No Fear, No Fear Energy, NCY , Bell, Easton, FOX Racing Shox, FMF, Smith, N-Style, Dunlop, Enzo, Vortex sprockets, DID, Yamalube, Ogio, Ride Engineering, Mechanix Wear, Twin Air, Lightspeed, ARC, Braking, MSD Ignitions, Cycra, CP pistons, Web Cams, ICW, JD Built, VP Gas, Orbea bicycles, Crank Works, Eibach, EVOMX fuel foam.
