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IMAGE/JACKEDWARDS
Justin Hill returned to racing at the season opener in Hangtown after missing the end of the East Coast supercross series. He got things kicked off in Nor Cal by clocking in the sixteenth fastest lap time in practice. Not where many expected Hill to be speed wise but he could still be feeling
the effects of the concussion that knocked him out of supercross.
Hill tried to shake off the bad qualifying sessions come race time but he would suffer a bad start in moto number one and get stuck mired in the pack. He rounded lap one in eighteenth and knew he had to make some moves. But before he could really get settled in, a trio of Osborne, Harrison and Cianciarulo worked around pushing Hill back outside of the top twenty into twenty first. Not where he wanted to be at all to kick off the series. He began to stabilize himself in twentieth at the ten-minute mark but would get passed by Craig knocking him back to twenty first. He would hover right around that position the rest of the moto going back and forth with Arnaud Tonus at the end but would ultimately end up remaining and finishing outside points paying position in that twenty first position. A rebound was much needed for moto number two.
Hill would get his second moto going with another eighteenth place start. However unlike the previous moto, Hill decided he was going to move forward instead of back. Little by little he continuously moved his way up the field getting up to fifteenth at the halfway point. He would stay there for a while but that doesn’t mean he quit charging. He slowly caught Jordon Smith and rookie Tristan Charboneau and muscled his way by them both in the final laps. He ended up finishing a much better thirteenth in the moto making it 21-13 moto scores on the day. Certainly not the start to the season he would have hoped for but he showed valuable resilience by charging the entire second moto.
words/SETHHARNISHFEGER
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