Courtesy of RacerX

January 9, 2017 9:30am

by Jason Weigandt

Aldon Baker’s Baker’s Factory might be the best program to replicate race-day situations, as riders under his tutelage always come into the opener ready to go. From Ken Roczen and Jason Anderson going 1-2 under his watch in 2015, to Anderson and Dungey going 1-2 at the 2016 opener, Baker’s boys usually come out swinging from the first gate drop of the season. They did again this time, except for one problem: Roczen. The Honda man, no longer with the program, dominated the Anaheim proceedings. That left the current Baker’s Factory crew with 2-3-4 finishes from Dungey, Marvin Musquin, and Anderson.

Dungey and Musquin were happy to podium, though. Dungey was never a threat, speed-wise, to Roczen, but he was also too far back to even give it a run by the time he got into second.

“My race was pretty decent,” said Dungey. “I got off to I think about a fourth or fifth place start. Kind of needled my way through that first turn there. Kind of a lot going on there. A lot of good riders were trying to cut down and you didn’t want nobody underneath you. But overall I found myself in fourth. Marvin and Eli [Tomac] were right ahead of me. Kenny was obviously up front. From there I just tried to click away some laps and pretty soon I think Marvin and Eli started going at it. So I kind of caught up a little bit to them and so forth and was able to make the pass at some point on each of them and get in second. I could see where Kenny was and just tried to gauge where he was at. He had a decent size lead but for me I was more focused on not really making a crazy mistake. The track was kind of pretty tough tonight. It would reach out and bite you a little bit if you tried too hard. So I just tried to play it cool and just put my laps in and no mistakes and gauge where I was at and see where Marvin was. I tried to play around with that a little bit. But overall I’m happy with the race. It’s the first time back on the gate in a while so it’s nice to get things rolling again. But no excuses at all either though. So I’m happy with tonight’s performance.”

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RacerX 2017 Anaheim SX 450 Words