Just when it appeared Paul Whibley would sweep to his eighth consecutive victory in the Parts Unlimited Off-road Motorcycle and ATV Nationals, a little luck went the other way – in this case to his Team FMF/Suzuki Off-road teammate, Jimmy Jarrett.
Winless all season, unlike the previous four when he earned the number one plate, Jarrett finished the series up by stealing the lead from Whibley a little over a mile from the checkered flag to take the Moose Run, presented by Moose Racing.
“He had a blistering pace on the last lap,” Dunlop/RG3/Moose RM-Z450-mounted Jarrett noted. “I was about 30 seconds behind him at the end of the [first] lap – exactly where I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be right on him because I knew it was going to be fast [on the last lap].
“I just kept charging. I had a few mistakes and I almost gave up, but then I caught a glimpse of him in a field so I just kept pushing and finally I caught him so it was good; it was fun.”
Whibley acknowledged he didn’t push his Renthal/Works Connection/Zip-Ty Racing RM-Z450 quite as hard as he usually would due to a punctured radiator. “It still went all right, but I didn’t really want to damage the motor or anything or DNF the race,” he said.
Run over a 35-mile-long loop around Fenton, Illinois, the front-runners completed two tours of it in about three hours and 15 minutes, testament to the event’s multitude of technical sections which were separated by tapped-in-fifth sprints across recently harvested corn fields.
The pair of Suzuki factory racers gradually pulled away from the pack, with Adam Bonneur eventually ending up a solitary third, having lost the two leaders when he pitted at the end of the lap. With no quick-fill system on his Fastway/FMF/Moose-backed YZ450F, he could do nothing but watch “JJ” and “Whibs” ride away while he waited for a full load of fuel.
Storm Lake Honda.com’s Cooper Bailey shook off a brutal, bike-destroying crash on Saturday to claim fourth on his pieced-together Bachman Family Racing Team/Maxxis/Moose CRF450R, his best OMA finish to date. Aaron Wegner, who got the jump off the line before yielding to Whibley, ended up out-dueling fellow YZ250 rider Trey Verardo for fifth, while Shane Klimek claimed seventh on his trusty YZ250.
A-class racers rounded out the top 10 overall, with Open A winner Marty Michels earning eighth overall and top A honors followed by Lite A runners Kirk Foster and Keith Zaagman.
In dethroning Jarrett to earn his first American championship, Whibley put in a remarkably consistent series with a worst finish of second. His record read: 2-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2. (Jarrett’s card read: 3-4-2-2-2-11-DNS-2-3-1, good enough for second in final series points over Brian Garrahan, who missed the final round.) After a year of somewhat forgettable results, Whibley proved he could stick with it and adapt; he said, “I’m pretty happy I kind of learned enough to win the series.”
