ATVMX Round 4 Ironman MX
Beautiful Ironman MX Raceway was the scene of round 4 of the 2024 ATVMX National Championship. Families, fans and athletes from all over the county packed the pits this weekend for a few days of racing and fun. The weather was absolutely perfect with sun and upper 70s temps. So far Joel Hetrick has been perfect in the first three rounds of the series and everyone is looking to see if anyone can step up and give him a challenge on a weekend as it looks like he is on cruise control so far for the year.
In unfortunate news, Nicholas Gennusa had a weird incident in the second qualifying round landing weirdly and injuring his wrist/hand and was not able to ride normally in the main motos. He did participate in both motos trying to preserve some point by safely rolling around the track the best his condition would allow.
ATV Pro Moto 1
As the gate dropped in the first moto we saw that Hetrick did not get the best jump off the gate and entered the first corner around fourth place. The holeshot winner was Bryce Ford and he went on to lead for almost half of the moto. Joel had moved into second place after two laps and then took a handful more to overtake Byrce for the lead around the midway point of the moto. It was good to see Ford get a good start and handle the constant pressure from Hetrick for multiple laps before losing the lead. The gap of victory for Joel ended up being just over 18 seconds by the checkered flag showing he did have plenty of speed.
Moto 1 Results
Joel Hetrick
Bryce Ford
Jeffrey Rastrelli
ATV Pro Moto 2
In the second moto we saw Hetrick get a much better start and have early control over the moto and manage the lead all the way to the checkered flag. Bryce Ford showed he was still second fastest on the day with another second place finish and Brandon Hoag had a good moto with the third place finish. The time gaps were a bit closer between the podium finishers in this moto than the first one which was probably just Hetrick managing the lead and his effort as there was not much consistent pressure on him.
Moto 2 Results
Joel Hetrick
Bryce Ford
Brandon Hoag
Overall finishing positions are shown below. A consistent 4-4 on the day allowed Max Lindquist to finish third overall while Hetrick and Ford occupied the top two steps on the podium.
All photo credit: N. Suhr