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Adam Cianciarulo had a decent start to the day at Glen Helen, clocking the 10th fastest overall time in qualifying. He matched his qualifying time off the start in the first moto and ended up rounding the first corner right around 10th place. Cianciarulo made his way around Alex Frye on the first lap and crossed
the finish line for the first time in 9th place just behind Martin Davalos. He was able to lay down a pretty fast pace early, setting lap times barely one second off the leaders, which allowed him to move past Davalos and take advantage of some early race mayhem to move up to 7th place. On the 3rd lap, Cianciarulo made a mistake which demoted him back to 8th, and he lost a good chunk of time to Plessinger and Charboneau who were just in front of him. At this point, it seemed like he got thrown out of his rhythm and his
lap times started to drop a couple seconds off of the lead pace. He was able to regroup and mount a charge on Tristan Charboneau for
7th place, but a big mistake on lap 9 cost him almost 20 seconds. This put him in an all green battle with his Pro Circuit teammates, Joey Savatgy and Arnaud Tonus, and the three of them battled it out late in the race. Cianciarulo lost out to his teammates; Savatgy was able to get around him in the treacherous supercross style section after the finish line, and Tonus was able to hold him off until the checkered flag. The second moto was slightly worse, starting somewhere around the top 10 and finding himself in 15th place across the finish line on the first lap. Adam is probably one of the tallest riders in the 250 class which could potentially be hindering his starts this year, especially on the fifth gear start straight at Glen Helen. The track was extremely beat up compared to the first moto, which made line choice paramount, especially during the opening laps of the race. Cianciarulo made his way past Tonus and Charboneau to move into 13th and immediately worked his way into a battle with Mitchell Oldenburg. On the 3rd lap, he moved into 12th position past Oldenburg and put himself in a similar position as the first moto right behind Rockstar Husqvarna’s Martin Davalos. He gained a couple positions, but he wasn’t able to make his way around the Husky and eventually found himself bombarded by Davalos’ teammate, Zach Osborne, who worked his way past Cianciarulo for 10th place. Subsequently, Cianciarulo’s lap times began to drop off dramatically at the end of the race and he finished down in 14th, just in front of his teammate Arnaud Tonus. Although it wasn’t the Glen Helen that Cianciarulo was hoping for, he still isn’t far off of the top ten which is an achievement of it’s own in a 250 class overflowing with prospects.
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