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Beasley Claims 3rd Straight Win While Swift
Takes a Spot on The Podium
Morganton, North Carolina
(March 30, 2008) – Mud was once again the
name of the game at Steel Creek this past
weekend, but that did not put a damper on events
for the Warnert Racing/Can-Am team. Cliff
Beasley took his 3rd consecutive win in the 4x4
Lites classes and 4x4 Limited class racer,
Michael Swift’s win Landed him an impressive 3rd
overall in the A.M. races.
Beasley’s win did not come easy for him.
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” he stated in
regards to his last place holeshot, “But I guess
sometimes it’s better to work your way up from
the back.” The track conditions were rough and
only deteriorated as the day wore on, but that
seemed to work to Beasley’s advantage, as he is
known for his skills in being able to negotiate
unfavorable terrain that usually slows down
other racers. “It was rough, but everything went
really well out there!” he said. Cliff’s #206
Can-Am Outlander 500 claimed a time of 02:02:13,
which earned him a 6th place overall for the
day.
Michael Swift had a much better start than
Beasley. Taking 2nd in the holeshot, Swift
caught up to and passed all the riders in the
class in front of him by the time he reached
mile marker 6 on his first lap. “After I got
past the other class, I just kind of checked
out,” he said. Beasley’s run went well and he
managed to avoid most of the bottlenecks that
occurred, which earned him an overall time of
2:01:58, which was only 27 seconds off of 2nd
place. Beasley is hoping to take his 3rd win of
the season in 4x4 Ltd. at the next round in
Union, SC, where he also won last year.
Scott Kilby claimed an impressive 2nd place in
the 4x4 Open class aboard his Can-Am Outlander
800 H.O, which is his best finish so far this
season. Kilby finished with a time of 2:07:55,
which earned him a 14th place overall.
Rick Cecco, who placed 1st in round 1 and 2nd in
round 2, had an unfortunate encounter with some
tree roots in his 1st lap, which blew one of his
tires off the rim and bent his steering stem,
causing him to limp his quad back to the pits
for repairs. Cecco managed to salvage points by
working his way back up to 10th place with a
time of 2:31:08. According to Cecco, he and the
Warnert crew will be doing some suspension
testing on his Can-Am Renegade 800 before the
next round. Everything has been working really
good so far and this should make it even
better,” said Cecco, who is looking forward to
testing out the changes.
Despite Rick Cecco’s incident, the morning
classes went well for the Warnert team; however,
the afternoon XC1 class seemed to encounter a
few more problems. Chris Jenks and Chris Bithell,
who had done fairly well in the first two
rounds, encountered their fair share of problems
out on the track. Jenks, who had been running
strong in 5th place his first lap, ran into
problems on the track and began to fall back,
and ultimately ended things early for him in his
3rd lap.
Meanwhile, the #03 bike of Chris Bithell was
T-boned in the 2nd corner, which put him back to
16th place. The impact from his crash is also
the suspected culprit in his 3rd lap engine
failure. “After I got hit, the bike started
making funny noises and was blowing out oil,”
said Bithell, who is hoping for a better go of
things in South Carolina.
The Warnert/Can-Am team will be heading to
Big Buck in Union, South Carolina for round #4
on April 12th, where it hopes to see its racers
dominating in their respective classes.
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