Page 94 - Issue43

FREDRIK NOREN
250 SX / 15TH
IMAGE / LANGSTON WORDS / HARNISHFEGER DESIGN / WILSON
>> Fredrik Noren kicked off his 2017 250 East Coast campaign strong with
a thirteenth and a career best eighth place finish. Since then however, he has struggled severely. He has not finished inside the top fifteen and failed to qualify for the main event last weekend in the Motor City. The rider hailing all the way from Sweden is not one to get down easily and is one of the happi- est guys in the pits so he has been staying the course and giving it his best shot every weekend. He entered St. Louis extra motivated after the DNQ in Detroit and was really hoping to get back to that early season success.
Noren looked excellent in qualifying practice earning the tenth fastest time in the field. He looked comfortable on the tight, technical course and aimed to use that to his advantage in the races. He would get out to a decent start in his heat race coming out of lap one in seventh place. He quickly picked up a spot to move into sixth but got bumped to seventh a lap later. From there he would keep it on two wheels, hold onto the spot, and transfer straight through to the main event which eluded him a week ago.
The main event did not go as planned for Noren beginning with him starting in thirteenth. He struggled on the opening lap and fell back a few spots to sixteenth place. He recovered and inched forward to twelfth around halfway before bobbling and dropping right back to sixteenth. His energy seemed to have left after his pair of setbacks as he was only able to make one more pass to finish in fifteenth position. He is leaving St. Louis happy to be back in the top fifteen but also bummed because he was possibly challenging for a top ten before his mid race mistake.
94 GRITMOTO • APRIL 2, 2017