Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Ryan Dungey raced back to a podium position by taking second place at Saturday night’s AMA/ FIM World Championship sixth round at Houston in Texas.
After gating fifth, the Florida rider moved to second and closed on leader Trey Canard (Honda) half-way into the 20-lap Main Event, held in front of a packed audience of almost 46,000: The pair ran wheel-to-wheel, but Canard kept the advantage to the flag.
“Overall, we had a real solid day,” said Dungey. “The bike felt great all day. I really owe a lot to Team Rockstar Makita Suzuki because they worked hard. We need to keep pushing and start winning these races. I’m really thankful for the day – coming off of last weekend was a real tough one for the whole team and myself, but this is a step in the right direction and we’ll keep building from here. It will be good to get a good solid week in and show up in San Diego with my RM-Z450 ready to go.”
Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Brett Metcalfe rode a solid practice and carried that momentum into his heat race with a fourth-place finish. A strong start in the Main Event put him into third place on the first lap. He rode a consistent race and maintained a top-five position until the last lap when a small mistake put him on the ground in the first whoops section, but he remounted to finish in eighth place.
“I’m happy with the way I rode tonight,” said Metcalfe. “The team made some good changes this week. We made some big improvements to the engine and I have to thank Yoshimura for all their help and everybody on the team. I think myself and Ryan both got great starts. I came out strong in the heat race and the Main Event was going good right until the end. I made a couple mistakes; a couple guys got me at the end there and I threw it away in the whoops trying to get a position back on the last lap. I’m happy for next week because San Diego is close to home. I should have a good week riding and each week my riding has been improving. We just need to improve the result.”
The 2011 Rockstar Makita Suzuki team’s next event is Saturday, February 19th, at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California.
Supercross results: 1. Trey Canard (Honda); 2. Ryan Dungey (Rockstar Makita Suzuki); 3. Ryan Villopoto (Kawasaki); 4. Davi Millsaps (Yamaha); 5. Andrew Short (KTM); 6. Chad Reed (Honda); 7. Ken Roczen (KTM); 8. Brett Metcalfe (Rockstar Makita Suzuki); 9. Ivan Tedesco (Kawasaki); 10. Mike Alessi (KTM).
