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Near the beginning of the night, Rodriguez was seen waiting on the start line as he witnessed his teammate Justin Starling finish 9th in heat 1, and was pressured into punching his own ticket to the main.
Interestingly enough, the heat went very similar for the #48 rider. In one of the only clean starts of all the action-packed races, 250 heat #2 began rather smoothly, allowing Rodriguez to come across lap 1 in 9th. With the leaders setting blistering laps out front, Rodriguez felt good enough to make a pass for 8th on lap 2, settling-in some 15 seconds back at the start of lap 3. Another two laps down and Anthony’s in 7th, creating a nice trend moving into the last two laps. Passed by the #167 of Bloss on the last lap, though, Rodriguez took his 8th place back to the truck to rest up for whatever madness the night would bring later.
A granola bar, a blink and a splash of water to the face, the lites bikes were already headed back down the start straight for the 15-lap showdown. A-Rod got a great jump and, with the bad luck of some other riders, crossed lap 1 of the main in 9th. With the hard charging 250’s, Rodriguez dropped a spot back to 10th on Lap 3. On lap 4, previous points leader Martin Davalos goes down, allowing the Kawasaki back into 9th, as if the swap never happened. With factory riders RJ Hampshire and Tyler Bowers pushing hard early on, lap 5 saw Rodriguez move two spots back to 11th where he would stay for the last 9 laps.
It might not have been the top 10 he and his team were shooting for, although it definitely shows they’re headed in the right direction. With the rocks and dust of Detroit already cleaned out of the stadium that hosted Saturday night’s event, Rodriguez and his Kawasaki left his year’s best effort on a course that claimed many. The team will look to Indy for the next opportunity to minimize the space between the #48 and the front of the pack.
words/BRENTECKERT
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