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BRANDON HARTRANFT
250 SX / 8TH
IMAGE / KILPATRICK WORDS / WARNER DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> After a tough start to his 2018 AMA Monster Energy Supercross 250SX East Cam- paign Brandon Hartranft seems to be nding his stride. Starting the season with a nineteenth place nish in Arlington and failing to qualify for the main event in Tampa by crashing in the last corner. Brandon has found some consistency the past two weeks by nishing ninth last weekend in Atlanta and following up with an eighth this weekend in Daytona. The Cycletrader.com/Rock River Yamaha racer now sits fourteenth in points despite only racing three of four main events this season. Brandon started his day by qualifying seventh. Previous events this season this would have most likely placed him with one or two seconds of the rider at pole position, but the track at Daytona Interna- tional Speedway, unlike any other Supercross track on the circuit would create a wide- spread amount of qualifying times, rst through tenth being separated by over three seconds. Seventh in qualifying would land Brandon in Heat Two with title contenders such as Jordan Smith and Austin Forkner as well as the always fast Martin Davalos. Off the gate his jump was not the greatest, but being the rst rider to the right of starting gate doghouse would bene t him greatly as the center of the start straight would be free of bunching riders allowing Brandon to leave the gas on and sweep around a majority of riders who started on the left side towards the inside of turn one. Rounding turn one in about the center of the corner Brandon crossed the stripe in sixth. His momentum, how- ever, would carry him all the way up to third by turn two and with an aggressive pass on Sean Cantrell, he could see the lead only one pass away. Pushing hard to try and catch Jordan Smith out front Brandon would fall to Davalos on lap two and Forkner on lap four. He kept himself together though and went on to nish his heat in fourth only losing to
the riders who had topped him in qualifying earlier in the day. Even after having to run it in deeper in turn one during the Main Event compared to his Heat Race Brandon again found himself sixth across the stripe. With not quite the drive down the rst straightaway as he had earlier in the night to make some quick passes he would come over the nish line fth after lap one. Holding his ground for lap two he began to slip losing spots to Kyle Peters and Sean Cantrell on lap three and Zach Osborne on and four. Not waver- ing though Brandon gathered himself and rode smooth and consistent in eighth for the remainder of the race nishing one position better than last weekend.
56 GRITMOTO • MARCH 11, 2018