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Eli Tomac pulled one of his better starts of the year in the first moto and put himself in position to overtake Justin Barcia and lead the pack into Millville’s famous sand whoops. He attempted to take a page out of Ken Roczen’s book and set the bar high on the opening laps, pulling out a gap of a couple seconds over Barcia
throughout the first lap. Roczen was able to move around Barcia for 2nd before the opening lap came to an end and Tomac led over the finish line by approximately three seconds over the young German. He struggled to match the pace of the charging Suzuki rider and the gap began to crumble by the second. Roczen forced him into a mistake early in the race in the rutted up switchbacks following Mt. Martin; Tomac carried too much speed into one of the off-camber corners and missed the rut, leaving the door wide open for Roczen in the process. The laps that followed seemed to be a struggle for Tomac as he was almost a full four seconds slower than his champion- ship rival on the sixth lap of the race. He made minor mistakes which disrupted his consistency and even allowed the third place rider, Marvin Musquin, to inch closer. At the ten minute mark, Tomac began to string together fast lap times and shrink Roczen’s gap at the
front a little bit at a time, but it was ultimately an infinite yo-yo effect between the two. Tomac tipped over on lap 11 which abruptly ended his late charge and forced him to take defensive lines in order to hold off an attack from Red Bull KTM’s Marvin Musquin. He got off to
a mediocre start in the second moto and pushed his way just inside the top ten throughout the opening stretch of the course. He found himself getting held up by a couple of slower riders in the first set of sand whoops as Roczen held it wide open and flew by him with rela- tive ease. Tomac tried to immediately retaliate, but there wasn’t much room to work with and he proceeded to push Roczen into the BTO KTM of Benny Bloss and only hinder his own progress instead. It took a couple of laps until the Colorado native was able to break into the top five; moving past Canard, Nicoletti, Bloss, and company by the end of the second lap. He worked his way past Andrew Short in 4th place shortly thereafter and used the outside line through the sand whoops to set himself up for the inside of the next corner at Chris- tophe Pourcel’s expense, promoting him to 3rd. He wasn’t able to make any immediate headway on the 2nd place of Marvin Musquin (Roczen was long gone at this point), until late in the moto when he began to find a second or two on the KTM rider per lap. He stinted his progress with another tip over on the 12th lap of the race and was forced to settle for the final step on the podium - something that would taste very bitter after the victory champagne a weekend prior in Southwick. Tomac took 3rd overall on the weekend and will be looking to regroup headed into Washougal next weekend.
words/LAKEKILPATRICK
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