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KYLE PETERS
250 SX / 3RD
IMAGE / KILPATRICK WORDS / HARNISHFEGER DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> What a wild and wacky seven days it has been for Autotrader/Yoshimura Suzuki rider Kyle Peters. During the vicious snowstorm one week ago at the race in Minneapolis, he slid and crashed on a patch of ice heading into the stadium and tore his ACL and MCL. He initially didn’t know the extent of the injury and tried to give the race a shot but ultimately realized his knee just would not be able to hold up. He went back home to North Carolina and was told the speci cs of the injury. He shrugged them off as he was determined to line back up with the rest of the 250SX East Coast riders at Foxboro. So just one week off an ACL and MCL tear, Peters was going to defy the odds and go racing in New England.
Peters gritted it out in the morning qualifying practice sessions. He was clearly laboring with that gnarly injury put he was de ant on making it work. Despite qualifying fteenth, far from where he usually quali- es, he was going to line up for the heat race. All eyes were on him as many were eager to see if he could step up to the plate and perform well.
If he wanted to make things easier on himself, Peters would have ripped a holeshot, but he failed to do so. Peters came around the rst lap buried in tenth position. He had his work cut out for him if he wanted to go straight through to the main event. Over the course of the rst few laps, Peters bounced around all over the place. He’d move back to eleventh, then up to ninth, eighth place, then back to ninth again. He was up in a transfer spot but would run into problems on the following lap. He’d got tangled up and make mistake resulting in him sliding back to twelfth. With just a few laps to go, he did not have enough time
to surge forward to get back in the top nine and he nished a disheartening tenth place. Not only did he nish one spot away from a direct transfer, he also had to put his knee through a few more laps than he’d like to. However, Peters took care of business in the LCQ and grabbed the easy win. He was onto the main event.
After qualifying through the LCQ, Peters surprisingly nailed a good start in the main. He slipped through the rst turn to escape with the fourth-place spot. He put himself in perfect position early and he was determined to make it pay off. He started stringing together clean laps while gritting through the pain of his knee injury. Midway through the race, he had gotten into such a rhythm that he was gaining on third place, held by rookie Sean Cantrell. He began to apply pressure to him and it worked as Cantrell would end up crashing, allowing Peters to take the position. From there it was all about maintaining the position for Peters. He had a sizable gap on fourth position, that is until the nal lap. Jeremy Martin was on an absolute charge on the last lap, but Peters was riding just fast enough to fend him off and Martin was not able to get close to try anything. Peters would hold on to nish third place... with a torn ACL and MCL!
It was a quite the valiant performance and it was good enough to earn him his best nish since 2013. A fascinating ride from the North Carolina native who says he is going to tough it out and nish the season racing in Las Vegas.
34 GRITMOTO • APRIL 22, 2018