Round one winner, Steward Baylor Jr., would jump out to the early lead and looked as if he would make an attempt to run away. However, on the third lap Jordan Ashburn was able to find his way into the lead and suddenly there was a chance at a sixth different winner in six rounds. Ashburn is the defending GNCC Champion, so picking him as a sixth winner would not be too crazy. However, he would drop out of the lead with a freak mechanical issue after losing his oil drain plug, ultimately locking up his engine. This would put Baylor back into the lead, which he would stretch out to 37 seconds at one point. Then Johnny Girroir started putting on a charge.

Girroir would drop Baylor’s lead to just under two seconds, and then wrestle the lead away from Baylor coming into the final lap. Girroir would take white flag with Baylor about 36 seconds behind after running into an issue in a deep, rutted mud hole just before the finish line. The GNCC mud fleas would jump in and get Baylor back on track, and Baylor would cut that lead from 36 seconds to 17 seconds, but it would prove to be just a bit too little and too late. Girroir held on to become the sixth different winner in six rounds!

A rookie to the XC1 Pro Class, this would be Girroir’s first ever GNCC overall win. Not only has six different winners in six different races never happened before but the series has actually never seen six different riders claim overall wins in a single season! The odds are there that someone will break this streak, but one interesting fact is that there are still two XC1 competitors who are previous race winners and have not won in 2023. One of them is Ashburn. The next round is Ohio’s John Penton GNCC, which has been won by Monster Energy/Babbitt’s Kawasaki’s Josh Strang the last two years, and Strang has not claimed a win in 2023… Stay tuned!

Baylor would hold on for the second-place spot while Ben Kelley would end the day third place in the XC1 class, but actually fifth place overall. More on that next.

XC2 Drama

When conditions get tough, it’s not uncommon to see the XC2 (250) field work their way fairly high in the overall on adjusted time and this round would prove to be a prime example. Indiana’s own Mike Witkowski would jump out to the early lead, but on lap two Liam Draper took over the XC2 class lead and the overall lead on adjusted time. This would set forth a pretty intense battle between these two riders for the entire race.

Draper held onto this lead for the majority of the race but never could pull a sizable gap over Witkowski. At the white flag, Draper would lead by just a smidge over two seconds, and that was pretty much the largest lead he had! These two would continue to battle through the final lap, all the way down to the checkered flag and that’s when things got pretty interesting.

The same mud hole that grabbed Steward Baylor and claimed a lapped amateur rider just as these two XC2 leaders approached the finish line. Draper was too close and not able to just pop out of the footpeg deep rut. He was slowed up, while Witkowski had just one more second to react and exit the rut, ride around Draper and take the XC2 class win. It would prove to be an absolute heartbreaker for Draper, although he salvaged a second-place finish.

Witkowski would actually land on the overall podium with a solid third place overall, while Draper would take the fourth place spot overall. While these two battled throughout the race, Witkowski’s Phoenix Racing Honda teammates Cody Barnes and Ruy Barbosa would also battle to the final stages of the race for the final spot on the podium with Barnes ending up third, Barbosa fourth and Ryder Lafferty rounding out the top five.

Championship Points Battles

With the season halfway over at this point, these rounds really begin to play large factors in how championship battles shape up. While Kelley finished third place in the XC1 class, the championship is determined by the overall, so with Witkowski and Draper playing spoiler, a fifth place overall did not net him quite as many points.

Regardless, Kelley still holds the lead in the hunt for the GNCC National Championship. He’s five points ahead of second place rider, Craig Delong, while Steward Baylor climbed back to the third-place spot, just a total of six points out of the overall lead. These three currently have the closest shot at the championship and hold a fairly comfortable lead over Ricky Russell and Grant Baylor who round out the top five, at 44 and 45 points out of the lead… Which still isn’t a huge deficit!

In the XC2 class, things have been all over the place as there have been three different points leaders throughout the 2023 season. Barbosa still leads the way, sitting 13-points ahead of Barnes with Angus Riordan in third, just 16 points out of the overall lead. Lafferty holds the fourth-place spot just one point behind Riordan and 17 points out of the lead while Draper rounds out the top five just 20 points out of the lead. All five of these guys are still within striking distance of the championship, especially with half a season of racing left!