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ALEX MARTIN
250 SX / 4TH
IMAGE / LANNAN WORDS / HARNISHFEGER DESIGN / WILSON
>> Alex Martin has had a massively up and down season in the 250 East Coast series. The Millville, Minnesota product has finished second, twenty-second and basi- cally everywhere in between. He has always struggled a bit with Supercross but this year his speed has been on par with the leaders. The main thing plaguing him is bad starts and crashes. He’s had a tough time putting together a complete main event but when he has, like in Atlanta, he has finished strong on the podium. He entered India- napolis starving for a consistent performance after a pair of less than stellar finishes at Daytona and Toronto.
Martin looked good in qualifying practice en route to setting the sixth fastest lap time. He had a nice flow going on the track and was ready for the night show to begin. The Red Bull Troy Lee KTM rider earned a solid fourth place start to kick off his heat race. It ended up being a quiet ride for Martin as he stayed in fourth all the way to the finish but an easy, consistent race like that might have been what he needed to set up a smooth main event.
Martin nailed an even better start in the main event rocketing into third place after
lap one. He tried setting a fast pace but was forced into double duty. He was trying
to chase down the leaders, Osborne and Savatgy, right in front of him while trying to fend off his teammate Jordon Smith. Smith hounded him lap after lap and it resulted in the two of them to close in just a bit on the leaders. Just when it looked like we might have a four-rider duel for the win, Martin got kicked sideways and highsided over a berm. Luckily, he was able to remount relatively quickly only losing one spot to Smith. He got going again in fourth directly in front of Cianciarulo and was forced to fend him off. He would do so successfully all the way to the finish despite some seri- ous pressure from the Monster Energy Kawasaki rider. The fourth-place finish marked his second best of the year and a return to the top five. But he must be leaving think- ing about the podium finish he left on the table when he went down over the berm.
40 GRITMOTO • MARCH 19, 2017