Ricky James Takes on a New Challenge

Many of you know about the spinal cord injury suffered by Ricky James at the Spring Classic at Lake Whitney a couple years back that left the aspiring amateur motocrosser paralyzed from the waist down. You've probably also heard about how he hasn’t let that slow him down, doing things like competing in the Lake Elsinore GP on a quad, and how he later modified his Honda so that he can go out and still get his moto laps in.

Now he’s trying a new challenge, a spec series called the West Coast Pro Trucks, and his first race was last week on the paved track at Irwindale Speedway. He finished in the top half of the field out there, and his father, Rick, posted a report on his first night behind the wheel, and we thought you might find it interesting…

Ricky has only had two practice sessions before his first race totalling probably about 50 laps. In each practice session he was able to bettter his time on at least one of the laps. He really seems to have it down pretty good. A natural? I don't know, but all of his motocross experience helps in his line selection and how deep he can drive into the corners.

In his qualifying session he posted the 6th fastest time (.33 off the leader) and a couple of people said they thought it might have been the fastest qualifying time ever by a rookie in his class.

Main event: Ricky had to start in the second-to-last row because he's a rookie even though he had one of the top qualifying times. It was a rolling start which was new to him, bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph or so coming out of turn four towards the start finish line. In the first turn someone tried to go for the lead on cold tires and took out four or five trucks in the process. Well, here comes Ricky and the rest of the pack, trucks were scattered across the track and Ricky clipped one of them and tore both front fenders off and bounced of the outside wall doing some minor damage to the right front suspension (we haven't even made a lap yet $$$). Ricky was able to gather himself up and get lined back up in the field under a caution in 7th place, he quickly moved up to 5th when another truck spun out in front of him coming out of turn two and he had to slide his truck sideways to avoid another crash. This put him back a few spots for the restart. About 20 laps into the race he was back up to 4th when he misunderstood a command by his spotter and moved up on a guy that he had just passed. He was going about 90mph on the back straight when his right rear hit the guy’s left front and it slid Ricky's truck nose first along the wall, some how he managed to bring it around to the left, straighten it out and make it into turn three as if nothing happened (??)

Ricky managed to finish 5th overall, which was amazing!

The truck, that’s another story, he managed to bang up three of four corners of it and the right front suspension is history (bent lower control arm, bent upper A arm, bent shock, bent spindle). I don't know how he was able to turn that thing with one hand (his left hand is dedicated to the Throttle/Brake hand control) and he steers with his right hand, talk about arm pump.

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