After a great opening round last week at Fox Raceway, the WMX returned to action today at Hangtown. And, just like last week, we saw some dominating rides. In the first moto Kyleigh Stallings rocketed down Hangtown’s long start stretch to take over the lead, but Charli Cannon, intent on making moves early, sliced by Stallings to take over the lead. LaLa Turner wasn’t about to let Cannon check out though and put her head down and whacked open the throttle. She was absolutely charging and was quickly able to maneuver her Yamaha around Stallings, then Cannon, and checked out for the moto win. Credit to Cannon, who had surgery on a broken finger less than two weeks ago. The injury is limiting her output, but she looked like she had more speed than she did last week at Fox Raceway.
Last week’s winner, Mikayla Nielsen, was fast but a less-than-stellar start hampered her results. Once she’d gotten into third Turner and Cannon were long gone, relegating Nielsen to third on the moto.
There was a big crash on the opening lap when Jordan Jarvis was forced to double an uphill triple and got landed on when a rider tripled behind her. She DNF’d the moto but would manage to return for the second moto later in the day.
In the second moto Stallings shot out to another holeshot but Turner was all over her and about three-quarters of the way through the first lap Turner made the move into first. From that point the race for the lead was over, as Turner flat out disappeared. Behind her Nielsen did her best to give chase, moving around Stallings into second after one lap, but Turner was just already gone. It may not have mattered if she didn’t have a big lead yet either, because she was still putting time on Nielsen as the laps progressed.
Cannon didn’t get the start she needed in this one and ran about seventh place early. She was able to battle to third, but Turner and Nielsen were already in another zip code by that point.
Huge credit to Jarvis for even lining up in this one. After getting landed on in the first moto and sustaining huge hematomas on her back, gashes on her face, and cuts to her finger, which looked mangled, she took sixth in the moto after battling her way around Sophie Phelps and Lilly-Ann Pettus. When she pulled her helmet off at the end of the moto her face was contorted in what looked like intense pain.
Due to concerns regarding high heat this moto was shortened from 15 minutes to ten, although it likely didn’t make a difference in the results up front. Except for Pettus and Phelps, all the girls were pretty spaced out by the time they finished.
