A great weekend for Rieju USA, as riders Quinn Wentzel, Hayden Mosa, and Mason George finish 1, 2, and 3 at the final round of the US Hard Enduro Series. After a quick but very hard 5 rounds, Quinn grabbed the championship, while Hayden and Mason wrapped up the podium giving Rieju the top 3 riders of the Series.
QUINN WENTZEL [P1] Today was good. I got off to an okay start, probably about fourth [place] or so. Today was a “go slow to go fast,” “slow and steady wins the race” type of day out there. I went slow and steady and picked my way to first [place] pretty quick. I was just trying to stay calm out there and not push too hard. It was really tough - tons of slick rocks - and if you’re pushing too hard, mistakes will jump up at you pretty quick. I kept the mistakes to a minimum and put in a solid four hours. I came home with a pretty solid win, so I was stoked on that. I ended up getting the championship, too, so that was good.Obviously, I’m a competitor first, but I was able to help out this year with the Fall Series promoting a round and it kind of turned into this US Hard Enduro Fall Series thing. I was committed to it already, so I hosted round one. It went really well and I was really happy to do that, but I was also kind of bummed that I was starting off with zero points in the five-race series, so I was like “well, I’ll just put my head down and go out and try to win all the other races.” I got three wins and one second out of the last four races, and that was enough to snag the championship by a couple points.
HAYDEN MOSA [P2] Overall, it was a good day. I had some clutch problems on lap two; the clutch kept completely going out, then it would just come back. So that had me pretty frustrated. I just want to say sorry to anyone that I may or may not have agitated when I was up here in the pits causing a scene. Other than that, it was a good day. The track was awesome. JoJo [Toole] did a really really good job. It was relentless hard stuff, one section after another, no breaks, just how I like it. I’m really happy. I’m a bit under the weather still; I ended up getting a cold/flu last week, but thankfully, it didn’t seem to bother me too much today.
MASON GEORGE [P3] Today went decent. I didn’t have the best luck today. I was kinda on the struggle bus today, didn’t get much sleep yesterday. I felt like I rode decent. The course was really good. I think it was an actual hard enduro this time; it was pretty tough. Lots of rocks. There was a pretty hard section towards the end of the race after checkpoint three that was pretty challenging. The lappers weren’t too bad this race because there were so many different lines [to choose from]. I feel like I did good [in the overall Fall Series]. I’m hoping next year I can be a lot better than this year, and do more training.