The Amsoil Spring National at Muddy Creek Raceway kicked off round 2 of the Mtn. Dew ATV Motocross National Championship bright and early this morning with overcast skies. Track conditions were perfect and then over the hill about a third of the way into the first rotation of practice, a dark and ominous cloud began to appear with streaks of lightning to beautify the morning. Obviously things were halted and shortly after that the rain began to fall. The Victory Sports crew elected to wait it out and resume practice when it was safe and the rain had ceased. And at around 2:00 things started rolling once more.

The all new look to the Muddy Creek Raceway is without a doubt a welcome change to an already popular venue. The starting line and only a couple of jumps can be recognized from previous years and the flow of the track should lend itself to some of the best ATV MX racing we have ever seen here.

Before I get too far into this week’s contribution to Site Lap I want to apologize to Megan Manshack for calling her Michelle Manshack earlier this week in the last SL. I don’t know where my mind was when I was writing that because in my mind, Megan is what I was reading and writing in my mind and I have no idea how it came out Michelle. No matter my mistake, take nothing away from Megan, she is fast and she is ready to battle for a title in 2014 and I know the Root River Racing squad is super excited at the chances of this happening this season with as hard as Megan has been working this year. Her biggest obstacle is still Katie Mette and Katie will not go down without a fight. This is only the beginning of an epic battle in the Women class.

The fresh new season of racing brings some changes in the ATV MX Nationals. Though there are a few changes in the amateur program there seems to be a number of changes in some of the AMA Pro ATV Racing format. The obvious and big change is the 15 minutes plus 2 laps of racing rather than 20 minutes plus one like in the past. This has been discussed and debated since the subject first came up and right now the jury is still out on whether or not it will change the face of the battles or not but if round one is any indication, it looks like it may make for an exciting battle for the championship.

There are two other changes in the Pro ranks of racing besides times of motos and lengths of motos. They are the ATVRiders.com Fastest Qualifier Award and the SSi Decals Hole Shot Award. First the ATVRiders.com Fastest Qualifier: in the past this has been an award that after each day of qualifying a check was presented to the winner. Now it is going to be a points system that will be awarded to each top qualifier from each round. The rider with the most amounts of points at the end of the season will receive a check and be awarded the Fastest Qualifying Championship at the end of the season.

Second is the SSi Decals Hole Shot Award. This award will be won through a championship points system like the fastest qualifier. Moto one hole shot will receive one point and a moto two hole shot will receive two points. If a rider gets both hole shots on a particular day then they will receive a bonus point and the rider that has accumulated the most points at the end of the season will receive the SSi Decals Award and check for their efforts.

All in all it really is a nice addition to the championship and really gives a new perspective to look forward to and cheer for. It may not be as prestigious to win these championships but at the same time it will be a definite boost in the pocket and will be a lot of fun to see how intense it gets to win these awards. It should be a lot of fun for everyone involved.

That’s it for now. Next week we will look a little deeper into the amateur end of things and see just how things are starting to heat up for the New Year.

Till next time, God Bless Your Heart and All Your Vital Organs.