ELLIS RACES YFZ450 Alba/ATV Scene.com rider Kory Ellis showed up at Round 8 of the GNC series in Mt. Morris, PA aboard his new Pro-Production ride-a Yamaha YFZ450!
The pits were buzzing when Ellis rolled into the pits with his new machine. Almost every racer attending the event made their way over to check out hisYFZ-by far Ellis' pit was the most popular area of the track throughout the entire weekend!
With help from his sponsors, Ellis had the machine race-prepped and ready togo in record time. The machine was left relatively stock since Ellis and his crew had only a short time to prepare the machine for the race. To help get it race-ready, they added wider A-arms and axle (Lonestar Racing), shocks(PEP), and a slip-on pipe (a titanium GYTR unit). The engine (except for thepipe), was completely bone-stock.
When it came time to race, the Pro-Production crowd was met with horrible track conditions. It had been raining for quite some time leading up to the race, and the track was a total mudbog, and definitely "one-line".
When the gate dropped for the first moto, Ellis managed to get off to adecent start (fourth), but Tim Farr and Doug Gust were pulling away fromeveryone in first and second place. Ellis had to battle hard to get aroundJason Luburgh sitting in third, and eventually did around the halfway pointof the race. In the meantime, Farr and Gust had started to check out... Ellis did manage to put on a spirited ride though, and as the race wound down, he had closed in to within two seconds of the leaders. It would be a short-lived battle though as he got stuck on a mud-packed berm and lost his momentum. With the leaders gone again, Ellis would have to settle for third.
In the second moto, we saw much of the same, but for one moment, Ellis proved to be the hero of the race. A bad start saw Ellis sitting back in ninth place, but eventually he made his way up to third. Ellis wowed the crowd as he was the only rider to tackle the massive in-field step-up jump.
To put it into better perspective, most of the pros on a dry track weren't even attempting the same jump! In doing so though, Ellis bent his axle coming up inches short, and he also bruised his wrist. Still, he managed to finish third in the race, securing him a final spot on the podium.
Overall, after watching what Ellis could do on the relatively stock YFZ, we expect it won't be too long until we see it, and him, on top of the podium in the future!