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PHIL NICOLETTI
250 SX / 6TH
IMAGE / LANNAN WORDS / HARNISHFEGER DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> Phil Nicoletti has had a rough go of it here in the 250SX West Coast Championship series. The seasoned veteran has seen it all in his years in the sport from privateer efforts, factory support teams, to full factory teams, you name it, he’s done it. The past few seasons he has been happily aboard the Autotrader/JGR/Yoshimura Factory Suzuki team. He has had streaks of good fortune garnering great results but that has not been the case so far in 2018. Nicoletti only has two top tens, which are a pair of ninths, heading into the penultimate round in Salt Lake City. He has been plagued with crashes, bad starts, you name it. He has two twenty-second place nishes on the year to put into context how much misfortune he has had. After a couple weeks off, Nicoletti entered Utah determined to turn things around and nish the season strong and on a high note.
The slicky, rocky soil gave Nicoletti, an aggressive rider, some struggles in qualifying practice. Nicoletti likes to hang it out and ride a little ragged and this style of dirt didn’t mesh well with that. Nonetheless, he quali ed with the eleventh quickest time and was ready to jumpstart his day with a good start in his heat race.
Nicoletti didn’t necessarily get a good start but he got an average one in his heat race. He kept it steady throughout the rst lap in order to come out of lap one in sixth position. From that point for- ward, he led a pretty uneventful heat race. He maintained his position without much ght from anyone behind or ahead of him. He kept it steady and would ride right on through to nish in sixth and head straight to the main event.
Nicoletti, who has not been the best starter this year, kept up that bad habit and emerged from lap
one back in tenth place. Not the ideal starting point but he used some aggression to ght his way past three riders, Dylan Merriam, Blake Wharton and Kyle Chisholm, to take over seventh place on lap two. He looked good and active on his machine and this led him to pick up another spot during lap three, passing the defending champion Justin Hill. He fought quickly up to that sixth-place spot, but the top ve riders had had enough time to build a sizable gap. He was left to ride a quiet race in sixth again just like in his heat race. As I mentioned before, Nicoletti has struggled with crashes and mistakes all year but he executed a clean, impressive race all the way to the checkered ag nishing in sixth with ease. It was lonely ride once he got up there, but it was by far his best nish on the season. He will be looking to carry the momentum into the nal round in Las Vegas and then into the outdoors.
40 GRITMOTO • APRIL 29, 2018