New England Regional Championship 2007

Third Annual Factory Connection/ Dirt Wurx
New England Regional Championship.
September 1st-3rd 2007, Winchester NH

All images of the 2007 New England Regional Championship are courtesy Buckley Photos. http://www.buckleyphotos.com/

If you are into motocross in New England and don’t know about the New England Regional Championship I have one question. What kind of rock is it that you’ve been under?
For the third year now motocross racers from New England and points beyond descended on the rich loamy soil of Winchester Speedpark to throw down everything they have in the hopes of walking away with a championship. Track owners Dave and Suzanne Boisvert gave this year’s riders a new challenge with a freshly added sand whoop section along with throwing plenty of power robbing wood chips into the mix for the 3 day, 3 moto formats. This year saw special guests Ashley Fiolek and Travis Preston doing a little exhibition riding and signing autographs while Leticia Cline flew in to cameo on the 30 second board as well as hand out some huge trophies.

Kicking off the festivities as the sun set on Friday was an evening of pitbike racing on Winchesters challenging Supercross track, no holds barred racing with some of the usual mini-madness. The folks from Tucker Rocky broke out the T-Shirt gun…..a great time was had by all. Saturday morning dawned and it was back to business, racing fired off with the 125 Expert class and they did not disappoint the crowd lining the fences. Craig Dube got off the gate quickly, carved the inside line through the start and came away out front on his way to the win. Moto 2 was a typical strong showing for the Suzuki of Dowd taking the early lead and running the table from start to finish. The stage was set going into the final moto with Dube and Dowd having both posted a win only this time it Marshall coming out with the holeshot. Dowd was charging hard to overtake Marshall going into the sand whoop section on lap 3 when the unthinkable happened; Dowd’s left hand lost the bars sending him down hard and out of the race. From that point on all Dube had to do was run a smart second and he brought home the 125 Expert championship.

John Dowd holds off the attack of Robbie Marshall.

Craig Dube carving smooth lines.

One of the bigger classes of the weekend was the 125 amateur with heat races on the first 2 days and only the 40 best getting to run day three. Great thing about that is you can have 2 riders coming into the final moto with a perfect 1-1 and all the confidence in the world. Michael Hacia had returned for day 3 after a bone-jarring crash on day 2 in another class left him briefly out cold. While Drew Torrance pushed his Team Green ride out front briefly at the start by the time they completed the first lap Hacia had worked his Manchester Sportscenter Honda into the lead pulling away for the final win and the 125 B title.
New Englands own AJ Catanzaro and Jimmy DeCotis had a rude awakening for Rockstar Suzuki’s Nick Desiderio who made the trip down from his Jersey home. These three young riders spent the weekend in close quarters racing at the front of the pack in the 85-A, Supermini 12-15 and the Schoolboy 2-stroke classes. Catanzaro just couldn’t seem to find his groove on the starts and Desiderio had his share of bad luck in the Schoolboy class with moto 2 ending after his engine grenaded. It was DeCotis who was the picture of consistency guiding his Yamaha to a near perfect 8 wins out of 9 motos on his way to all three titles.

Jimmy DeCotis ran his #3 Yamaha at the top of the podium all weekend.

It seems like every year at the Regional we have seen at least one rider lay down an epic ride; there is just something about this level of competition that brings it out. This year it happened on day two for the Open A/B class. Justin Rando was on the gas into the first turn when he got collected in a small tangle up and found himself last. While people were still talking about the crash Rando had gotten on the gas and came across on lap 1 already running 16th. When he came around for lap 2 in 6th I thought that the trackside system must be wrong……but it wasn’t and Rando just kept charging. Heading into lap 5 there was Justin Rando cruising the 90 left hander over the finish line out in front on the way to the win after starting the race on the ground dead last. There is just something about this race that makes a rider raise the bar even within themselves, all for the wonderful but fleeting feeling of being the first one to see that checkered flag.

Photos by;

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