GNCC Report: Takeaways from Camp Coker Bullet

Once Grant was in the lead, he still had to work for it as Delong would stay hot on his heels for the closing laps of the race. However, he would hold in to become the fifth different winner of the season while Delong would end the day in second. Round two winner, Ben Kelley, would end the day on the podium in third which would prove to be a welcomed relief to bounce back after finishing off the podium in the previous round (his only time off the podium all season).

Defending champion Jordan Ashburn keeps chugging away in a very similar fashion to what helped him earn the 2022 GNCC title. Ashburn continues to land consistent finishes with a fifth place overall and fourth place in the XC1 class while savvy veteran Josh Strang would round out the top five of the XC1 field with a sixth place overall.

XC2 ACTION

At the previous round, Ruy Barbosa was able to claim his first-ever XC2 class victory and then was able to back that up and make it two straight wins after leading wire-to-wire to take the round five XC2 victory. While Barbosa held a pretty comfortable lead for much of the race, there was an all-out war going on behind him for the second through, well, basically the entire top ten spots!

At one-point mid-race, the second through tenth place riders were all separated by less than 20 seconds or so! This truly left the door wide open for anybody to sneak in and land on the XC2 class podium. As the race wore on, that would eventually thin out to a couple of smaller battles for position but still exciting, nonetheless. Heading into the final laps of the race Barbosa still held a fair lead with Ryder Lafferty in second while Cody Barnes and Mason Semmens stayed close. Eventually, Barnes and Semmens would both find their way around Lafferty.

In the end, Barbosa would come away with the aforementioned win while Mason Semmens would finish a career best second place and Cody Barnes would round out the podium in third. Lafferty was still able to hold on for a fourth-place finish, rebounding from a grueling 17^th in the previous round and Angus Riordan, who held the XC2 points lead coming into the event, would round out the top five. 

POINTS CHASES BEGINNING TO TAKE SHAPE

With five rounds in, this is when the time comes to start taking a look at the big picture for the rest of the season. Championship battles really begin to start taking shape at this point in the season and this round shook those battles up a bit. Coming into round five, Steward Baylor held the championship points lead but a combination of an illness and a freak mechanical issue would leave Baylor scoring no points and drop from first to third.

Ben Kelley has now regained the championship points lead but sits just three points ahead of one of the most consistent guys out there, Craig Delong, while Baylor sits in third another 12 points behind Delong and 15 points out of the championship lead. With the round five win, Grant Baylor moved up to the fourth place position, 13 points behind Stu, while Jordan Ashburn rounds out the top five, just five points behind Grant Baylor.

In the XC2 class, Ruy Barbosa has been able to take over the points lead after two back-to-back wins. Barbosa leads the way 12-points ahead of Angus Riordan while Ryder Lafferty sits third, just three points behind Riordan and 15-points out of the XC2 lead. Lafferty actually won the opening two rounds, then had a pair of off days in rounds three and four before rebounding to land inside the top five at round five. These three guys very well could make this championship battle pretty interesting, but they’re not the only ones capable of XC2 podiums, or race wins for that matter.

Cody Barnes sits in fourth place, just one single point behind Lafferty while Liam Draper rounds out the top five. Both of these guys are previous XC2 race winners and have been on their fair share of XC2 podiums as well. Sixth place is currently Mason Semmens, who will put the motivation of a round five podium to work to seek out more, and seventh place is defending XC2 class champion, Lyndon Snodgrass, who also knows how to get the job done. Mike Witkowski, Evan Smith and Johnathan Johnson round out the top five of the XC2 class, and all three have been on the XC2 podium before, and Witkowski has several XC2 wins to his credit as well.

Overall, the talent pool is the deepest it’s been in both the XC1 and XC2 classes in quite some time. Both have a stacked field of riders who are capable of landing on podiums and contending for race wins. Time will tell exactly who will step up and be the next one to topple these guys, but these next four rounds before the series hits it’s summer break are going to be very exciting to watch unfold.