For weeks now we have been talking about the Yamaha LCQ Challenge put on by Steve Matthes. The race was supposed to happen the day before the 16th round of Monster Energy Supercross in Denver, but high winds in the area cancelled all track activity that day. Feld agreed to move the race to the Friday before the last round in Salt Lake. For the last few years Steve has been raising money for privateers via online raffle and distributing it to the riders who placed the highest in the 450SX LCQ’s throughout the year, without making the main event. This was the first year the privateers got to race for their money, you can check out the action here:
Entries to the race were determined by creating “point standings” based on finishes in the 450LCQs. Fifth in the LCQ (first rider not to make the main) pays the equivalent of a win, and sixth in an LCQ pays second-place points. Matthes got 17 riders into this event through those standings, then picked some wildcards to make the race a little crazier, with chaos being the goal. To that end, privateers who usually do make the main, Kyle Chisholm and Ryan Breece, were selected as wildcards but had to start on the second row on the starting gate. Well, that didn’t matter much, as Chiz and Breece rolled forward pretty quickly in the 6-minute race to grab podium spots.
The money for the riders was raised by raffling off a Yamaha YZ450F, provided by Yamaha. Really, though, this wasn’t just about the bike. Fans knew the money was going straight into privateer pockets, so they just kept donating and donating, and eventually the total purse zoomed from around 70k to almost double that in the final days before the race! In the end, the bike winner was Josh McCollumn from Clarksville, PA. He gets to enjoy a brand-new bike, while privateers throughout the series got to make a lot of money.
