Cooper Webb won a race he had no right to win in Atlanta but he still got the job done to leave Ricky Carmichael calling the turnaround miraculous!
Ken Roczen was putting on another riding clinic having pulled away from Webb who was left battling early race leader Plessinger and had Tomac on his tail for second once they both got by the stubborn Plessinger. But by that time Roczen had worked into a 12 second lead and was making it look easy when he suddenly went down in the whoops and still got up with a six second lead!
But the crash spooked Roczen in the whoops and he started jumping through them reversing the edge he had on Webb all night as Webb smelt blood and went for the kill. Roczen, feeling the pressure, inexplicably went wide and Webb had an easy pass up the inside then blitzed the whoops ,even nearly going down but refusing to back off, as he had the win and the title in his sight.
Ricky Carmichael was imploring Roczen to attack Webb and lay it all on the line realising how vital it was for the championship, but nothing could help the German find the extra killer instinct Webb had and that he needed to find a way to re-pass the championship leader.
Webb, who is now 16 points ahead with just two to go when it looked like it would be ten or less until Roczen’s crash, said: “I was making so many mistakes, I saw blood in the water, I was just wanting to win.”
A disappointed Roczen said: “My bars were a little bent but I gave it all I got. Those mistakes are costly, it was my race. It is what it is.”
The 250 main event was chaos and Cameron McAdoo was once again at the centre of it. After his big crash in practice, McAdoo made the main event only to get squirrely on lap one and landed on by Chris Bloss with Bloss going over the bars and the red flag coming out to attend the stricken and unfortunate Bloss. McAdoo somehow remounted to line up again much to the anguish of his girlfriend and mum.
Then in the restart, McAdoo ended up on the ground two more times! The first caused by teammate Seth Hammaker getting it wrong in the whoops and McAdoo having nowhere to go then, as he was coming through the field, Garrett Marchbanks just completely cleaned McAdoo out for no apparent reason as McAdoo unbelievably was forced to come from off the ground again to eventually get 13th.
“I’m disappointed, it’s hard not to be,” conceded McAdoo. “Today was really hard. Tonight was tough, three big crashes in the main event. We are going to keep digging.”
Nate Thrasher took another astounding win coming from the LCQ with Justin Cooper taking a big second place to almost clinch the championship. Hunter Lawrence was fourth after crashing trying to avoid a wayward Cameron McAdoo but rode great to get back to fourth to still have a slim shot at the title. Lawrence is now 20 points behind Cooper with McAdoo 22 back headed into the final round.
Report: Jonathan McCready