Ryan Dungey raced to his sixth consecutive victory and increased his series lead at the AMA Motocross Championship in Millville, Minnesota at the weekend.
Rockstar Makita Suzuki RM-Z450-mounted Dungey claimed two straight race wins in front of his home crowd to open his Championship lead to 89 points.
Dungey was smooth, controlled, fast, and had the physical conditioning to outlast the competition. He went into the event with a 64-point lead in the and with winning both motos he has now stretched that.
“It was nice to pull a win off for Minnesota,” Dungey said after the race. “We can all celebrate it together now.”
“Today was awesome,” Team Manger Roger DeCoster said. “And Ryan has proved now that the tougher the conditions, the better it is for him. Today was really tough, really hot, and the humidity was I think the highest it’s been this season. It looked liked riders were struggling more here than they were in Texas. But Ryan put 40 seconds on second place in the second moto and he was smooth and riding clean. He’s doing awesome.”
After qualifying the fastest, the entire crowd at the track was cheering Dungey on at the start of the first moto. He shot out of the gate on his Suzuki fuel-injected RM-Z450 and into second place as the racers starting tackling the varying obstacles of the track. About 10 minutes into the race, Dungey made his move and took over the lead. With his superior physical conditioning and all the power he could ever need from this RM-Z, Dungey started putting time between him and the rest of the pack. By the end of the race, he had a 20-second lead and a decisive Moto 1 win.
In the second moto, Dungey came out of the gate near fifth place, but he certainly didn’t stay there for long. In one move, he put himself in third place and then kept working on the leaders. Eventually he found his way to the front and then, with the crowd voraciously cheering him on, he built a nearly 40-second lead by the moto end. With other racers succumbing to the intense heat and humidity, Dungey looked as fresh on the track at the end of Moto 2 as he did qualifying earlier in the day.
“To win here today and go 1-1 feels really great,” Dungey said. “I grew up here and I wanted to win, but even more than that I was just enjoying seeing everyone that I grew up with. The fans out here are really committed and they’re hardcore. To have people behind us like that is really cool, and not just for me but for our whole sport.”
Dungey’s team mate Matt Moss showed promise at the start of both motos, keeping himself in the top 10 for the first part of each race. But a nagging injury has haunted the Australian’s season, preventing him from staying up front for the entire 30-minute-plus motos. Moss finished 29th in moto 1 and 18th in the second race, putting him in 21st overall.
