Mark Kariya | January 16, 2017
2017 Adelanto Grand Prix Results: Last year, Blayne Thompson managed to hold off a persistent Dalton Shirey to kick the year off with a huge victory at the Adelanto Grand Prix. After leading the points through the first few rounds, he eventually settled for second in points at the end of 2016.
2017 Adelanto Grand Prix Results
Blayne Thompson was the big winner at the Adelanto Grand Prix. Photography by Mark Kariya
This year, the Fasthouse Honda rider proved to be on a completely different level from his competition as he ran away with the AMA Big 6 West Coast Grand Prix (WCGP) Series feature race at the increasingly popular season kickoff event, hosted once again by the So Cal Motorcycle Club at Adelanto Stadium, January 14-15. Last year’s WCGP
Pro II champ Trevor Stewart made his Pro-class debut for Johnny Campbell Racing (JCR) Honda an impressive one to claim the runner-up spot while Purvines DA8 Racing Yamaha’s Sutherlin took third.
“I had a bunch of competition out here, for sure, but I came out the King of Adelanto,” Thompson said. “This is my backyard, right behind my house so I had to make sure I kept [the title].” He also picked up $1900 of the $7500 total purse.
This year’s WCGP ended up being run in two parts due to the local medical team reportedly calling for the race to be red-flagged after three laps while treating JCR Honda’s Preston Campbell, who’d suffered a broken femur, scapula and ribs.
2017 Adelanto Grand Prix Results
AMA rules say if a race is red-flagged with less than half the laps run, it must be restarted, but by the time the track was cleared, there wasn’t enough daylight left so officials decided to run the race first thing on Sunday morning. Riders would start in the order they were running at the end of lap two and would be sent off at five-second intervals for a race of one hour plus a lap, making the combined times close to the normal 90 minutes.
That didn’t seem to bother Thompson at all as he repeated what he’d done the previous afternoon, though his Mom and Dad/Maxxis/Gaerne-backed CRF450R sort of dictated his strategy. Currently, there are no big fuel tanks for the 2017s so, he said, “Yesterday, we pushed so hard those first three laps to get the lead we did where we had the time to pit twice [without losing the lead] because I knew I was going to have to stop one more time than everybody else.
“When it came to the restart, they gave me a five-second lead. The first three laps, I did the same thing: pushed as hard as I could to get that gap back.
“I got the gap back to 38 seconds when I pitted. Then after that, I went three more laps halfway decent. I pitted one more time then I started cruising and had over a minute lead so I just rode my race and stayed on two wheels.”
Motocrosser Zach Bell ran a strong second aboard an Ox Motorsports Honda, but eventually he found himself unable to hold off first Stewart then Sutherlin.
“I think he kind of used all his gas; he maxed out with the first half of the race,” Lucas Oil/Pro Circuit/Fly Racing CRF450RX-mounted Stewart observed.
“Then, me and Gary were going at it pretty good. He ended up catching me.”
But when Sutherlin changed goggles, they fogged up so he tossed them. Between the cold and the sandy roost from Bell, he found himself unable to see well enough to keep his GPR Stabilizer/Maxima Oils/THOR YZ450FX ahead of Stewart who went from fourth to second before taking the white flag.
Bell held on for fourth place with Rocky Mountain ATV-MC/Precision Concepts Kawasaki’s Justin Seeds fifth.
In the Pro II class, Mad Jack Racing/Simi Valley Cycles/Fasthouse-sponsored Willy Simons, Jr., borrowed a YZ250 from John Langhammer and, like Thompson, commanded both segments for the $500 winner’s share. At the end, he had a 15-second lead over class runner-up Mitch Anderson’s CST KTM 250 XC while Clay Hengeveld rounded out the Pro II podium on his Northland Motorsports KX250F.
The WCGP Women Pro class saw Brandy Richards dominate both segments aboard her JM Racing YZ250F to earn the Queen of Adelanto crown and $495. Last year’s Queen, Tatum Sik, rode alone in second the whole way on her MMR Honda while Britney Gallegos moved into third about halfway through on her Motoffice KTM.
2017 Adelanto Grand Prix Results
Complete results can be found here.
