Mark Kariya | February 3, 2021
Trystan Hart (FMF KTM) kicked off his hard enduro season with a convincing win at the All Balls Racing Group King of the Motos (KoM), Presented by Progressive, at Johnson Valley, California, February 2.
Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Colton Haaker and ShercoONE’s Cody Webb—the winner last year—rounded out the podium.
A standalone event on the calendar, KoM continues to tweak the course and operations. Riders still need to hit certain GPS waypoints and a short (six-ish miles) qualifying moto in the morning to determine who made it to the two-lap final moto that would decide the winner. Promoter Ultra4 Racing used the popular Chocolate Thunder canyon as the start/finish area for both motos. Jackhammer proved the main challenge in the qualifying moto while the 14-mile loop for the final moto included favorites like Speckled Canyon, Crossover, and Outer Limits.
Hart’s FMF KTM teammate Taylor Robert returned to the hard enduro scene after getting hurt at this race a couple of years ago and he blitzed the qualifier. At the start of the final, he and Hart scaled the rocky hill ahead of the pack, but as luck would have it, both went down.
“I hit a rock [while wheelying] and it spun me off to the side and I was like, ‘This is not good!’” Robert said. “Trystan was right beside me and I just let it go and ended up taking him out by accident, obviously. Then I had to spin my bike around and get going up the hill again. It was kind of hectic up there.”
AEO Powersports GasGas rider Max Gerston ended up the first to crest the summit followed by Webb, Hart, SRT Husqvarna-mounted Cory Graffunder, Haaker, Robert, and the rest of the field.
However, Robert said, “The crazy part was I lost probably 30 seconds with that tip-over, but we go over the backside of the hill and everybody was just kind of navigating. I kind of had my GPS dialed in, and I went from fifth to first in about 10 seconds! Everybody was riding around in circles, and I looked down and it was a straight line on my GPS.”
Hart completed the first lap in less than an hour aboard his Red Bull/Motorex/Thor-backed 300 XC-W, considerably faster than the estimate of an hour and 20 minutes posited by officials familiar with the course. Robert, Haaker, Webb, and Graffunder appeared next with FMF/Galfer/Fly Racing TX 300-mounted Haaker saying, “I expected it to be harder. It was a different kind of hard—it wasn’t the traditional hard enduro where you’re like, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to trials ride to really get up this ledge and find traction in this place,’ but the whole time [today] you were kind of fighting so it was kind of relentless. The speed was a bit higher, so you were bouncing through rocks and going with it and having a hard time keeping the bike going straight a lot.”
Webb agreed, the Red Bull/Kenda/FXR 300 SE-mounted defending champ saying, “I kind of thought it’d be nastier, longer, more aggressive so I went for a little bit harder tire, and I should’ve gone with a gummy tire, so I struggled a little bit first lap just by being impatient and my throttle control was a little off.
“This was insane how fast our pace was because normally the first lap we’re going back and forth,” he added. “I kept waiting for something hard to come up and it never really came.”
The deciding moment came late on the final lap in a tricky, rocky downhill with Hart leading, Robert, and Haaker right behind.
However, Robert took an awkward tumble on his Renthal/Dunlop/Alpinestars 300 XC-W, possibly breaking his thumb and inadvertently blocking the line so Haaker had to wait. “Trystan got away right there,” Haaker said. “I tried to reel him in, but the dust kept me at a disadvantage.
“I felt like I rode really well, actually. I rode really clean—I didn’t even have a dent on my pipe. I didn’t have any moments too much. I think I just didn’t get into position at the right spots.”
Hart completed the two-lap tour in one hour, 41 minutes and 46 seconds, giving him a cushion of 2:26 over Haaker with Webb a further 2:45 back.
“I wasn’t riding a ton in January to prepare for this because of winter back home in Canada,” Hart said. “I was just skiing and snowmobiling—time off the bike, which isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes it’s a good thing.
“I came down four or five days early. Today was my sixth day in a row riding so I was used to the desert by now. I was riding with Taylor almost every day. He’s really good out here—he was impressing me—so I knew he was going to be good, especially if the loop was fast, which it was. He was hauling the mail all day, but he was also crashing all day.
“On the last lap it came down to me and Colton. I said, ‘I’ve gotta go, dude!’ and I just went as hard as I could to try to break him down and I think it worked.”
Robert salvaged fourth with Graffunder a strong fifth ahead of FMF/Maxxis/RPM Racing KTM’s Will Riordan, Gerston, Riordan’s teammate Cooper Abbott, Keith Sweeten and Dustin McCarthy. CN
KING OF THE MOTOS
RESULTS (Top 5)
1 |
Trystan Hart |
(KTM) |
2 |
Colton Haaker |
(Hus) |
3 |
Cody Webb |
(She) |
4 |
Taylor Robert |
(KTM) |
5 |
Cory Graffunder |
(Hus) |