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Again struggling with starts, Fredrick Noren was deep in the field as moto one got underway, with Fredrik holding onto 19th as lap two began. Knowing his worth, Fredrick put in hard work early, moving into 16th in
the first five minutes. Once there, something went wrong for the Swede, as he ended up falling back to 30th before he was able to stop the bleed. Moving back towards the front of the pack, Noren put his head down and
eliminated all distractions. The focus led Fredrik to pick up four spots in one lap to reach 26th. Two more laps, three more spots into 23rd and Fast Freddie was cooking. Continuing the push upwards over the course of the next ten minutes, Fredrick reached 19th. As the race hit the five minutes left mark, Noren moved into 18th behind Arizona native Cole Martinez. The two worked well together, making progress on 16th but Cole wasn’t enough to maintain the consistent charge of Noren and Fredrick moved into 17th with three to go. As a result of a race ending crash of top five rider Christophe Pourcel, Noren found himself in 16th on the same lap and was able to move into 15th by the finish.
The solid recovery in moto one led to some added motivation for Noren who got out of the gate way more fluid and in a good enough position to hold down 10th at the start of lap two. The race was on for the Swede. Within a few minutes Noren was hungry and devoured Bowers to move into 9th. Stuck there and off the pace of the top eight, Noren was passed by Pourcel after the first several minutes. Holding 10th for the majority of the moto, it wasn’t until the final ten minutes that Brayton bobbled in the finish-line whoop section and went over
the bars which allowed Fredrik into 9th and then into 8th as he got by a fading Dean Wilson. With less than eight minutes left, Noren was locked in for his best finish of the year. And, as luck would have it, Fredrik was able to hold off Big Benny Bloss to 9th to solidify Noren’s first top ten moto and first 10th place overall of the season. A job well done for the Swedish sensation and quite possibly the breakthrough performance of the year.
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words/BRENTECKERT