Beau Baron Race Report from Clay Peeks MX in Payette, Idaho

Posted on June 16, 2011

Beau Baron in his Polaris RZR XP

By Beau Baron, Photo by Jamie Johnson

This was my first time at Clay Peeks MX in Payette, ID and I was a little unsure as to what to expect. The track provided a great combination of many different obstacles and dirt types. With lap times over twelve minutes, the track included an uphill start, and it had rocky downhills, challenging uphills, some extremely high-speed straights, a rough sand section, lots of off camber portions and a small technical endurocross section. The dirt ranged from hard packed, blue-groove to very fine beach sand. Race day was warm and dusty.

On Saturday, I pulled the holeshot on a stock Polaris RZR XP 900 in the SxS Class 1 and never looked back. I knew once I hit a long canyon with all kinds of powdery dust the guys following me would not be able to see and I would be able to create a large gap between me and second place. At some points, the dust was so thick drivers could not see their own front ends. The SxS race is always a lot of fun and this is my second win in a row so I hope I can continue to race this class for the remainder of the season. The only change I have made to the RZR is a set of Maxxis Big Horn 2.0 tires. This change was a good choice to make because they are lighter than the stock tires and they noticeably improved cornering ability.

On Sunday in the Pro ATV race, the gate dropped and my teammate Davi Haagsma got a huge holeshot. Unfortunately, I hit a muddy spot and it spun me out a little bit and decreased my drive at the large uphill start which left me all the way back in 7th. I knew I needed to make a few passes right away in order to prevent the leaders from pulling too far away and leave me struggling to see in their dust. I was able to get past Josh Row and Dillon Zimmerman just a few turns into the race and I finished the first lap in 5th place. A little bit of bad luck struck three of the four guys in front of me and I was able to catch them with less effort than I was predicting. Haagsma lost his seat and ended up right in front of me. I quickly got tired of his dust and had to sneak to the inside and make an aggressive pass in a big right-hand turn. Then, through the endurocross section both Dustin Nelson and Josh Fredrick were stuck allowing me to pass them both and get into 2nd place. At this point, Jeremie Warnia was out front with over a one minute lead.

I charged as hard as I could in efforts to both catch Warnia and also increase the gap between myself and 3rd place. Warnia’s lead was too much to overcome in the remaining time, although I did gain over 30 seconds on him cutting his lead in half by the end of the race. Fortunately, no one was able to catch me either and I ended up 2nd for the day.

If you haven’t checked out at WORCS event you’re really missing out. Hope to see you at the races.

Beau Baron Sponsors
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