COHEN’S CORNER

by Adam Cohen

Man oh man did it feel good to knock the rust off! It’s been quite sometime since we have been able to do some hare scramble racing, and the first round did not disappoint. First and foremost the hosting club Central Florida Trail Riders did a fantastic job. You would think with it being the first race of the season and rapid growth that FTR has seen that it would be a little difficult to keep everything on time but as usual the club crushed it all weekend long.

As a series we race several times throughout the season in Bartow, at a few different properties.The Bartow rounds are very unique compared to the rest of the series. Most people just assume that if you’re racing in Florida it’s deep sand and palmettos but these Bartow rounds prove otherwise. It seemed like half of the property had a very hard clay base while the other was our normal Florida sand.

The Saturday track was mainly on the sandier side of the property so it seemed like most racers were really feeling at home and picking up where they had left off at the end of last season. Sunday was really where a lot of people were caught off guard. That Morning dew and the The Sunday loop taking us onto the clay side really made for a combo that many of us were not used to. I quickly realized in practice that throttle control and modulating your braking was going to be extremely important. I think most racers would agree with me in saying that the track was awesome and extremely fun. It was nice to have to ride really smart instead of blowing out sand corners and smashing whoops for two hours. I hope everyone had a safe and successful start to the season. We have two really fun events coming up with Round 2 of the enduro series at the Orange State Enduro and Round 2 of the hare scramble series at Hog Waller. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Photo by Tyler Miller

RIDER: Jack Sigismondi PHOTO: Tyler Miller