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JEFF COX
theGRIT
Mike Alessi was struggling a little bit with the tricky conditions that were present in the shortened
qualifying program at Gillette Stadium this past weekend. The track was extremely greasy, to the point where the 450 A group just rolled through the whoops in no attempt to skim them whatsoever. That particular section bit Alessi and he went down in the middle of the whoops, but he regrouped in the second practice in order to qualify in a solid 15th place, almost 4 seconds behind Ryan Dungey. The MotoConcepts rider was involved in a bit of controversy after getting stuck in the gate in his heat race, but fortunate- ly for him they marked it down to a gate malfunction and the race was restarted. Alessi got a pretty decent jump out of the gate in the second start of his heat race, but he was roughed up in the first corner. It was an even longer double apex right hander this weekend at Foxborough as opposed to St. Louis, which allowed lots of time for bar banging before they actually had to square off the corner for the first rhythm section. Alessi lost out in the first corner carnage and found himself rolling into the first rhythm in about 8th place. He held that position for most of the race, losing a spot to Broc Tickle towards the end but also taking advantage of a mistake by Seely in the middle of the race. In the semi, Alessi used the same line into the first corner and was able to hold the throttle on around the outside
to burst into the first rhythm section in 3rd position behind Grant and Schmidt. Alessi made the pass for 2nd after lunging up the inside of Schmidt following the triple before the whoops. Alessi made a couple small mistakes, but he was able to hold onto a podium, only surrendering a position to Chad Reed with a couple of laps to go. The main event didn’t go nearly the way that Alessi would have visu- alized it sitting on the gate. He was involved in a pile up on the 3rd lap where he unavoidably ran over Jake Weimer in the middle of a rhythm section and was sent flying from his bike. From that point on, it was just damage control for the MotoConcepts rider and he was able to claw his way back to a respectable 13th place finish on the day. It’s not what he would have set out to accomplish, but there are many positives that can be taken from the weekend for Alessi and his team.
words/LAKEKILPATRICK WWW.GRITMOTO.COM
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