ATVA ITP Moose Racing National Motocross Series Round #9 - Muddy Creek Blountville, TN June 30th - July 1st, 2007

Photos By: Kenny Hill

The crew at Victory Sports became friends with ATVs, re-facing the jumps and widening out the turns, but the track tightened back up after the steady rain rolled in Friday and again on Saturday.

"Victory Sports did an awesome job considering what they had to work with," Byrd said from the podium. "Mother Nature narrowed up the track quite a bit for us. The holeshot was very important this weekend, and I just got lucky and pulled a couple of them."

Byrd opted out of the Saturday morning practice. Come race day, Byrd had first gate pick as the series point's leader. (The AMA is working on revamping the rule so that the fastest practice time picks first.)

In Moto 1, Byrd led Brown and Lawson through the first turn rhythm section, with Byrd pulling a look-back over the downhill table. The top two tightened the gap as Lawson held off momentarily. Brown was battling hard to get around Byrd, while Lawson waited it out. On lap two, Brown was 0.26 seconds off Byrd's pace, the closest recorded.

Moto 1 saw the epic battle between Byrd, Brown and Lawson

Once Brown had backed off behind the leader, Lawson turned on the charge, taking the inside away from Brown over the downhill double. Inspired, Lawson leapt on, closing on Byrd for another attack. Lawson made contact with the leader going into the horseshoe. The two riders came to a halt when Byrd was knocked sideways.

"[Lawson] just went in hard into the turn," Byrd said. "Rubbing's racing. You're going to do that. You're not going to be out there with a tape measure saying, 'Oh, that's two inches too close.' I overturned-well, braked too hard in the turn. He went in deep and that's just racing. I just looked at him, and waited for him to back up, so I could go on. Nothing was said. That's just part of racing and I wouldn't expect anything less."

With Byrd and Lawson tangled up, Brown had no problems slipping into the leading position

Right away, Brown caught the leader's pace, and the top three checked out from Justin Bres and Travis Spader inside top 5.

"When you come to the race, everybody kicks it up a notch," Brown said. "Even I beat my own fastest lap time by two seconds when it came to the main. The Pro class out here, we're all going to ride on that edge and we're going to be following each other close because every millisecond's the difference. If he makes a mistake, and he's that much closer, it's that much easier to go around."