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Travis Pastrana held off a charging Kevin Eriksson to claim his first win of the 2023-24 Nitrocross season at Utah Motorsports Campus.
After both got their longer joker lap out of the way early, they engaged in a tense fight for the round win, but despite his best efforts, the elder Eriksson brother couldn’t get by the 2021 series champion.
While the joker was said to equate to a two-second deficit to the main lap, Pastrana grabbed an early lead. That came after Vermont SportsCar teammate Conner Martell led the field onto the main lap, but a mechanical issue brought him to a halt on the exit of Turn 1. That resulted in an accordion throughout the rest of the field which claimed Oliver Eriksson, who sustained heavy front-end damage after hitting Conor Daly.
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing JC RX Cartel driver Andreas Bakkerud would have been in the box seat to take the lap one lead were it not for the traffic — he jokered on the second lap and immediately set about hunting down the lead pair of Pastrana and Kevin Eriksson.
There was little to choose between the trio over the final two laps of the four-lap final, with Kevin Eriksson closing to within half a second heading onto the last lap. That gap continued to come down to the point where Eriksson was making contact with Pastrana heading into the last paved section of the track, but he couldn’t find a way past.
Bakkerud similarly held station for the second half of the race, coming home third, while Benito Guerra took his career-best finish in fourth, having mirrored Pastrana and Kevin Eriksson’s joker strategy.
Daly also took a best result to-date with fifth, matching the top four drivers’ lap times, and bettering them on the final lap of the race, despite starting the day by missing both practice sessions. Reigning champion Robin Larsson was a distant sixth after sustaining a puncture in the opening lap melee, while Martell was able to get going after his stoppage, but finished over a minute adrift of race winner Pastrana.
Martell’s disappointing final was a stark contrast to the rest of the day, where he looked set to claim a landmark result.
He started off with his first-ever Top Qualifier result, beating Kevin Eriksson and Bakkerud in the deciding race. He then won his semifinal, Pastrana and Larsson winning the other two.
Pre-event points leader Fraser McConnell had a torrid round, which started with him being excluded from his heat race for a technical infringement after winning on the road. After that, a second-place finish behind Martell in his semifinal wasn’t enough for a final berth, meaning he needed a strong result in his Last Chance Qualifier to make it. However, there he made contact with a wall and broke a driveshaft, leaving him on the sidelines for the main, along with XITE Energy Racing duo Tanner Foust and Oliver Bennett who were the other drivers who didn’t advance through the heats, semis, and LCQs.