Price native Robbie Mitchell snagged a second place finish on Feb. 27 at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas during Round 3 of the World Off-Road Championship.
For Mitchell, Las Vegas was a different type of venue for quad racing.
“The track was really short and about half of it was indoors,” he said. “It was a fun change from the normal 5th gear wide-open stuff we usually see. The tight and technical tracks have always been my favorite though, so I came into this race more excited than some I’m sure.”
After practicing on the track Saturday evening, Mitchell made a minor adjustment to his quad and got ready to race that night, instead of on Sunday, as is the norm for WORCS events.
“This was awesome because I have always liked racing under the lights and I also like doing indoor races,” Mitchell described.
Luck was on his side as he shot out of the gate and grabbed the holeshot. Mitchell led the race with a gap of nearly 13 seconds between him and second by the midway point of the race.
“But that’s when the trouble started,” he said.
Mitchell said as soon he caught up to lapped riders, none of them would get out of the way, slowing him to allow the other riders to cut into his 13-second lead.
“There were no blue flags to tell the lapped riders to move out of the way so none of them did,” he said. “They are supposed to give the leaders a clean line past them as soon as possible, but instead, they just started racing me.”
Within three laps the other riders on the lead lap had narrowed the gap on Mitchell. With just three laps to go and fighting his way around another lapped rider, Mitchell lost the lead.
“I ended up finishing a very disappointing and frustrating second place,” he said. “This was supposed to be my win but people not realizing that there was a race behind them that they weren’t a part of robbed it from me.”
Mitchell currently sits in second place in points with Round 4 coming up in Lake Havasu, Ariz. on March 18-20.