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Phil Nicoletti put his JGR Yamaha just inside the top 20 in qualifying practice, finishing up 19th overall. Nicoletti would have been pleased with this result, because he considers himself more of a racer and has admitted to struggling massively with qualifying. With the way that Nicoletti and
JGR’s season has been going so far, they would have been happy with a night free of crashes.
Unfortunately, that’s not at all what happened. Phil pulled a decent start in his heat race and was bar-to-bar with his teammate for the majority of the first lap. On the very second lap, the deceivingly slick bowl turns caught him off guard and he washed the front end after the Supercross triple. He was able to work his way back up to 11th place behind Cade Clason. The JGR teammates found each other on the track again as they both started out front in semi 2 with Vince Friese between them. Nicoletti took the seldomly used outside line before the whoops section in order to get the drive around the outside of Friese and the two JGR Yamahas split Friese with Peick going into the lead and Nicoletti into 2nd. Reed was able to make the move on Nicoletti on the last lap, therefore putting Phil in the 3rd spot and giving him a decent gate pick in the main event. He was looking to emulate his start from the semi in the main event and was able to come out in 8th place with a second rate gate pick. He progressively lost spots to riders who got pinched off the start such as Peick, Roczen, Canard, and Bogle. Nicoletti found himself in 11th with two laps to go and was attempting to hold off a charging Cole Seely who fell on the first lap. Seely took him high after the whoops and forced him into another front end crash which led him to get lapped and finish in 14th position. It must have been disappointing to have an 11th placed, crash-free main event taken away from him with such little racing left to go. But, Nicoletti rode a smart, calculated race and he was one of the only riders consistently blitzing the first set of whoops. It was easily one of his best rides of the year.
words/LAKEKILPATRICK
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