When
a rider wins two GNCC overall ATV Championships in a row, it's tempting to
think that he has it easy. But 2002 has proven that things are not always
so simple for Bill Ballance. The friendly pilot from Oakland, Kentucky has
encountered all sorts of obstacles in his attempt to nail down a
third-straight GNCC ATV title. His performance in spite of his setbacks is
showing what a true champion Bill is. Ballance has
overcome having his race trailer, including his race quads and parts,
stolen in Florida, and then he suffered brake problems at the last race.
Ballance was hoping the bad luck was behind him, and headed to one of the
most historic and popular stops on the GNCC circuit, Loretta Lynn's Dude
Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.  | Matt
Smiley was in the lead as the white flag came out, but
Bill Ballance was able to make a pass on an uphill. |
|  | Lap
traffic prevented Smiley from getting the pass back on
Ballance, and the champ held on to win by 11 seconds. |
|
When the green flag
waved on the Pro class, Matt Smiley and Bradley Page got off the line the
quickest, with Ballance, on a black quad, sliding into third. Yokley was
way back in nearly last, and he would have to dig his way through the pack
after that. Four pros, Ballance, Page, Smiley, and Chris Borich battled
for the lead "tooth and nail" for several laps. After two laps,
just ten seconds separated the four riders, and they swapped spots all the
way around the track. Borich eventually dropped off the pace, but Smiley,
Ballance and Page kept duke-ing it out. As Page began to tire, the race
boiled down to two men. "I wore down
big time," said Page. "We went back and forth all day.
There were some good passes out there." Ballance battled
with Smiley all the way to end before seizing the win, his second victory
of the '01 season.
"I was
expecting this from the beginning of the season," said the rider
of the LRD/Klotz/Maxxis/Axis/Moose-sponsored ATV. "I knew these
guys were going to be after me this year, and I would just have to step it
up with them." Smiley, the Team
Safari/Pro Parts Racing/ITP/Hyper Wheels/Axis rider, and Page, on the
Duncan/Roll/ITP/IMS/Temecula Motorsports-backed ATV, nailed down the
second and third spots. Series leader William Yokley finished fourth after
getting a horrid start. |  | Todd
Knippenberg |
|
Yokley, with three
wins, is still the series points leader with 96, but the consistent
Smiley, the only rider to hit the podium in every race so far, is just
four points back with 92. Chris Borich, sixth at Loretta's, is third,
while Ballance and Page are steadily making up ground after assorted DNFs
early in the year.
Of course, the GNCC points structure allows pro riders to throw out their
two worst scores at the end of the season, which means Ballance is by no
means out of the title hunt.
ProProduction Ballance wasn't the
only rider to rebound from a streak of bad luck at Loretta's. In the Pro
Production class, Greg Trew returned to his winning ways after taking the
class at the opening round of the season in Florida. Since then, Trew, a
Florida resident, has not had much luck.
Trew broke his frame when he hit a tree in Georgia, and damaged his quad
again over a creek crossing in South Carolina. This time, the CT
Racing/East Coast ATV/ITP/PRM/Klotz/Hinson rider finally stayed out of
trouble for an entire race, and held off a determined Chad Duvall and
Bryan Baker for the class win. Trew put his #15
Honda 400EX into the early lead in the Pro Production class. Baker started
well also, carving his way into third behind Crump at the end of lap one.
Duvall didn't get off the line so well and was back in seventh after the
first lap. Trew built up a lead of nearly two minutes after one lap, and
didn't lose much once the battling Baker and Duvall pushed into second and
third and stayed there. In a move of deja-vous, Trew survived a close
encounter with a tree, but this time managed to come out of it unscathed.  | "I
hooked up with Santo (Derisi) and we rode together all
day," said Trew. "Which is good because
he rides a really fast pace. We rode together until the
last lap, when I hit a tree and he got away." |
|  | "It
seemed like Baker and I were passing each other all day,"
said Duvall. "I had one crash when I flipped on
the first lap. You just had to be patient on the first
lap." |
|
The win is a big
help to Trew in the points standings, because Baker has been putting
together consistent rides and pulling away. Both riders have two wins, but
Baker has finished on the podium in every race, while Trew has the two
aforementioned DNFs to deal with. And then there's Duvall, who won the
class the first time he entered it (at the previous round at the Big Buck)
and finished second at Loretta's, making him a legitimate player in the
title chase.
Currently, Baker leads the points race with 96 points, while veteran
Yamaha rider Curtis Crump is second with 79. Trew, Brandon Ballance
(Bill's brother) and Mike Krachun, Matt Smiley's teammate with the Team
Safari crew, are in a three-way tie for third with 72 points.
| | "I
got a fifth place start, and I worked my way through
pretty well," said Baker. "I guess Trew
pulled away immediately. I never saw him all day. On the
last lap, I had to get some water dumped on me because I
was getting sick. I was starting to catch him again, but I
started to get sick again, so I figured I should just wait
back here." |
|  | The
Pro Production start saw an awesome hole-shot by Greg Trew.
"I needed
to get a good start and not have any problems,"
said Trew. He did that, and in fact he had so few problems
that he worked his way into fifth overall, the highest
finish yet for a Pro Production rider. |
|
Over 530 ATV riders
raced at Loretta's, making it one of the largest ATV fields in GNCC
history. The course was rough and the weather was hot, both standard
Loretta Lynn's conditions. "It was
brutal," said Page. "It got really whooped out, and there
was no place to rest."
The next round of the GNCC ATV Series comes up next weekend, May 4th, in
Sparta, Kentucky. ? Contact
Information and/or Related Articles |
|
