2023 AMA IRC Motoclimb Super Series Round 1 Results

Cycle News Staff | July 5, 2023

The 2023 AMA IRC Motoclimb Super Series (MSS) kicked off at the Express Pros Brick Mine in Walhalla, North Dakota, July 1-2.

Logan Cipala at 2023 AMA IRC Motoclimb Round 1 — **Logan Cipala was a double winner at the AMA Motoclimb Super Series opener in North Dakota.**

Photos by Jack Maki

There has been a lot of conversation during the off season regarding the new class structure the MSS is implementing this year. While the Open class remains unchanged, the previous 450 Extended class was split into two classes, the Pro Stock and Pro Modified. The Pro Modified class will be a new Championship and feature bikes from 450cc-700cc, with no fuel, length, or tire limits. The Pro Stock class is stock-length two-strokes and four-strokes from 250cc-450cc, featuring qualifying and a main event, which is formatted in a traditional top-32 tournament bracket. This class is meant to attract manufacturers and athletes from other disciplines to grow the sport of Motoclimb, and the Brick Mine on Saturday provided some merit to this theory with several new racers joining the action.

The Eagle Ridge Motorcycle Club set up the 750-foot-long Brick Mine hill with some technical lines for the Pro Mod and Open classes and opened the hill up for the Pro Stock class to give racers a better shot at cresting this very steep and technical hill. This was the first motoclimb race for Rockstar Husqvarna Factory Off-Road Team’s Ryder LeBlond, Bonecutter Off-Road’s Thorn Devlin, and HTR GasGas’ Gauge Key.

In the Pro Modified class, Devlin hopped on a Dakota Cat Motorsports GasGas MC450F with swingarm extensions for the first time and set the fastest time with a 17.514-second run in the first round. During the second round, MSS regular Logan Mead’s run was 0.03 of a second off Devlin’s, but it was Montana’s Payton Reimers who won the class with a 17.455-second run on his Hi-Tech Motorsports KTM 450 SX-F. This was Reimer’s first Pro-class win.

In the prestigious Open class, the hill course changed, and the conditions began to erode as the top three earned their best times on their first run. Wisconsin’s Logan Cipala, three-time Motoclimb Super Series Champion, came out swinging on his first run and set the fastest time with a 17.552 second ride on his Buell 1190 HCR. Austin Teyler sent his Suzuki RM-Z1000 up the hill in his typical spectacular fashion, barely missing Cipala’s time by 0.05 seconds. Reimers finished in third on his KZ1428. Mead finished fourth on his KTM 1290, and Chad Jelinek finished fifth on his Yamaha R1.

Ryder LeBlond at 2023 AMA IRC Motoclimb Round 1 — **Off-road racer Ryder LeBlond (513) competed and fought for victory in the new Pro Stock class.**

The Pro Stock Qualifier was the most nerve-wracking class for the athletes, but the most exciting for the spectators. Being the most challenging stock-length hill on the MSS circuit, there was a lot of doubt as to whether it could be crested on a stock-length bike or not. LeBlond was early in the qualifier and was the first one to make it over on his Husqvarna TE300i. This feat was a sigh of relief for the racers and became a trend as eight of the 38 competitors made it over the top, while the remainder received footage scores based on where they stopped. Cipalla won the qualifier on his GasGas MC450F with a 20.704-second ride. LeBlond’s time held for second, while Thorn Devlin had a great ride on his GasGas MC350F for a third-place seed.

The Pro Stock main featured the top-32 racers from the Qualifier in a single-elimination tournament-style bracket, starting on metal start gates. Cipala and LeBlond won their races after some stiff competition, eventually facing off in the final round. Logan Mead, on his GasGas MC450F, was seeded 13th, but pushed his way into the third-place runoff against Austin Teyler on his Suzuki RM-Z450. Teyler edged out Mead for the final podium spot.

In the final round of racing, Cipala had a good jump where LeBlond started off a bit behind, which was unlike his previous holeshots from the day, but Cipala ran away from the hard enduro star and won the first-ever Pro Stock main event.

With a win in the Open class and Pro Stock main, Cipala earned 50 points and won the overall of the Brick Mine. Teyler finished second overall with 42 points, and Mead finished third overall with 36 points.