By

Joe Colombero

Taylor Robert took his time working his way to the front, but he was there when it counted, at the checkered flag, to win his first WORCS race of the season. Bobby Garrison took second place honors with Kyle Summers third.

Destry Abbott grabbed the holeshot on the dead-engine start, but he was quickly shouldered aside by Kurt Caselli who led for the first lap. Caselli and KTM teammate Mike Brown quickly pulled away with Gary Sutherlin in third. Former 2-time Havasau winner Ricky Dietrich was mired at the back of the pack, but quickly started moving forward.

Brown took over the lead on lap two displacing Caselli and now they were both being pursued by Kyle Summers and Taylor Robert. Dietrich had moved into 10^th following the charge of Garrison. Sutherlin tangled with Justin Soule and both riders went down, dropping out of the top five.

30 minutes into the hour-long race Dietrich took over the lead with Garrison and Robert on his tail. Then Dietrich started to smoke having broken a case on one of the many rocks. He pulled off and took a DNF for the day. Garrison took over and tried to gap Robert, but it appeared Robert had decided it was his turn to win as he made the pass and pulled away. Summers moved by the KTM’s of Brown and Caselli, but he was being hounded by Soule who was hungry for his first podium of 2011. With minutes to go Soule crashed yet again and gave up his chance to catch Summers.

They finished with Robert taking the win, Garrison second, Summers third, Caselli fourth, Brown fifth, Soule sixth, Robby Bell seventh, Colton Udall eighth, Jamie Lanza ninth, Ryan Abbatoye 10^th. Abbott, who got the holeshot finished 11^th, Dietrich took a DNF as did former WORCS Champion Bobby Bonds.

“I finally won one,” said Robert. “It feels good to get it out of the way and take one of these home. It was awesome; I had battles with everybody coming up. It was a fun race. The track got super rough, but the rougher it got the smoother I felt. It feels good to get a win. My plan for tomorrow is to finish in first and get a better start.”

Race 2 was even better, with another epic battle between Robert and Garrison. This time Bobby G got the holeshot and looked as though he was going to run away with the win. But Robert had other plans as he hunted down Garrison and the two did battle for most of the hour.  In the end Robert got the win with a 1-1 score for the weekend.

Mike Brown overcame his own arm-pump demons to get on the podium with a third place finish in race 2. This combined with his 5^th in race 1 gave him 5-3 for 3^rd overall, just ahead of Caselli with a 4-4 score for 4^th. Summers finished 5^th overall with Justin Soule 6^th, Robby Bell 7^th, Colton Udall 8^th, Ryan Abbatoye 9^th, and Gary Sutherlin 10^th.