Race Report Saturday and Sunday, Saturday 2/22/14 Laughlin Nevada Best in the Desert, Laughlin Hare Scrambles Race started Saturday morning and Nick's regular team mate Justin Morrow had the flu so team member Axel Pearson filled in. The fastest Pro teams had drawn start times which were starting position 1, 2 and 3. Team Kawasaki Precision Concepts racing Ricky Brabec and Ryan Abbatoye were first to leave the starting gate. The pros are started on one minute intervals. Team Purvines/Beta were 2nd Nick Burson and Axel Pearson and the 3rd was another Kawasaki team THR racing David Pearson and Mat Gosnell. With the top three teams starting up front this was going to make for some close racing. Soil conditions were fair, dry soil so very dusty. Weather was awesome T-shirt weather. The course was divided into two loops so the first rider would go out and do his loop and return to the pits and racers would exchange and the second racer would do his loop. Each would do their loop three times. Axel started for Purvines racing/Beta and brought the bike back to the pits, after completing his 15 mile loop, still in 2nd place. Nick did his loop and brought the bike in right on the heels of Kawasaki's Ryan Abbatoye. So on adjusted time we were in first place. As Nick rode into the pits he was yelling get a 14mm wrench. Then he said I tagged a rock and it loosened the banjo Bolton on the brake line to the rear brakes. We tighten the banjo bolt and sent Axel out on his loop hoping there would be enough fluid left and the brakes would pump back up. But as Axel was returning after completing his loop he had lost time and was in third place due to no rear brakes. We were ready to do complete rear brake change with taking the master cylinder, hose and brake caliper off another bike. The switch was done in four minutes and Nick was off but now we were six minutes down to the leaders. Nick push hard and made up three minutes when he handed the bike off to Axel for his finale turn on the bike. Axel brought the bike back to Nick and we were four minutes down to the leaders. Nick decided to just ride smooth and not push it. This was his last lap and he knew the lost time was impossible to make up with this being his finale loop. So we finished third and for some reason our bad luck continues in the Best of the West series. Sunday 2/23/14 Lucerne Valley District 37 Desert Series Checkers MC Hare Scrambles After Saturday's race in Laughlin we drove back to Barstow and spent the night in a motel near the outlet mall. Got up Sunday morning at 5 AM drove to Lucerne and Nick signed up for the race. We located the pits and set up our pit. I checked the bike over and Nick took it out to practice the bomb run (start area). He came back I went over the bike one more time and topped off the gas tank. At 9 AM Nick rode out to the start line and waited for the 9:30 start. The banner dropped and Nick got his Beta 498RR started quickly and bolted out into the lead. The course was 39 miles long and the Checkers motor cycle club is notorious for putting on a very technical and hard course for the racers. In one hour and three minutes you could see the leader's dust coming out of the mountains and heading towards the pits. Soon I could tell it was Nick wearing his red Klim gear and the red Beta motorcycle. He went through the scoring Shute (home Check) and drove to us. We refueled his bike and off he went to do his second lap on the same loop. After another hour we could see him coming down the race course to the scoring Shute. Second place came in 5 minutes later. It was 1st Nick Burson, 2nd Ryan Kudla and 3rd Brad pace all open experts. Next race 3/2/14 Glen Helen, Big Six GP David Burson
