Troy Lee Designs athlete Fredrik Noren arrived at the penultimate National round with the goal of reproducing his top-five Moto 1 ride from the Unadilla MX of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship series.
The track at Miller Motorsports Park featured some new sections to challenge the riders and Noren started the day off well posting some competitive times throughout the morning practice and qualifying rounds, good enough for the 13th seed heading to the line for Moto 1.
A top-10 start to the moto put Noren within striking distance of his goal. He would battle for the eighth position throughout most of the 18-lap moto. With the laps winding down, an untimely rock coming off a competitor’s tyre would hit one of Noren’s right knuckles, fracturing it. Unable to hold on, the Motosport.com/GPI/Honda rider’s race day came to an early end.
“I was starting to get into a groove and was really pushing the second half of the moto,” Noren said. “To have my day end like this is really unfortunate and obviously not what I wanted. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to line up next weekend as I would really like to end the season with a top result.”
Having completed 13 laps, Noren would be credited with 34th in Moto 1 and 40th in Moto 2, due to being unable to start. Despite his 38th overall result in Utah, he maintains his 10th place standing in the overall championship with one round remaining.
