Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Ryan Dungey has won the AMA West Coast Lites Supercross Championship after victory in Saturday night’s Salt Lake City round at Rice Eccles Stadium in Utah.
Dungey finished fourth in the 15-lap Main Event on his RM-Z250, but this was enough to give him a five-point win in the series over Jake Weimer (Kawasaki).
Said Dungey: “I want to thank my family and team for being there for me. I lost the battle but won the war tonight. There are so many people that helped me get to this point in my career and I want to thank them.”
En route to the 2009 title, Dungey won four SX Lites races and picked up an additional two podium positions. This championship marks Dungey’s first AMA Pro title.
In the Supercross class, Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Chad Reed celebrated another podium position at the Salt Lake City event. The two-time, defending AMA Supercross Champion got the holeshot and won his heat race and then got the holeshot in the 20-lap main event. Reed led multiple laps and was battling for the lead when he came together with another rider. In spite of the incident, he remounted and brought home second place.
Rockstar Makita Suzuki team mate Mike Alessi, unfortunately, had a tough night and did not make the Main Event and Michael Byrne remains injured and did not race. He hopes to be back racing again soon.
Ryan Dungey:
“Winning the championship feels good. It’s been a long time in the making - the past two years have been tough. This whole year, it was a fight. And in the middle of it all, we had that eight-week break to just sit and chill out and think about it. In the end, I’m just super-pumped that we’re sitting here with the number-one plate. We worked hard for it and the whole Rockstar Makita Suzuki team stuck by me and had faith in me. This is something I’ve worked hard for since I was a little kid and I did it from the heart. I think that every time we went out and had an opportunity, every advantage we took control of it. I feel like we gave it our all at every race and at every round we gave 100 per cent effort and did it with commitment and passion and love and faith - and it all came together in the end.”
Chad Reed:
“On the start, I tried to get down in there clean and sneak around the inside. I’ve been working hard on my starts, trying to watch my team mate Mike Alessi and see what he does. We’ve made a lot of changes to the Rockstar Makita Suzuki RM-Z450 to try to make the starts easier and better for me and it’s finally coming around. I got out front and I felt like I was riding good and in a good position. But James got by and I passed him back, but he got back by. I had a look around and felt good about where we were, but unfortunately I had a get-together with another rider and lost contact with James. He’s obviously riding really, really well and it was just difficult to get back up there. But it is what it is and we’ll come back next week at Las Vegas and give it all we’ve got.”
Rockstar Makita Suzuki Factory Racing will race next at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada for the final round this weekend.
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