2023 Malvern GP Review
Presented by SRS Suspension and Trackside Support
Sunday, October 15th
Waynesburg, Ohio
Words: Bierbower
Photo: Fraas
Our final race of the 2023 in the books AND capping off our second season. It’s hard to know even where to begin with this post. For as chaotic and stressful as running a race series is - The MERP team takes so much pride in what we do, we are harder on ourselves than anyone else could be and it’s simply because we want to present such a well oiled and fun racing series. We set the bar high for ourselves and we’re always looking to raise it.
Again, a million times - thank you to our racers, who at this point are friends and family. We finished off the season with a 360 entry day - after considerable rain the day before. You guys showed up and we tried like hell to give you all a fun track to go racing on. The Malvern MX crew crushed the prep for the hand Mother Nature dealt us.
Conditions today and I heard it from the guys that know - about as close to a pro national as you can get. Deep, muddy, loamy, ruts, gnarly, bumps, chuck holes and more. I think it’s safe to say today shaped up to be one of most physically demanding courses yet. Man vs. machine vs. the course. When tracks like todays rear their heads - excellent racing comes with it. The technical bike skills shine and raw speed can take a back seat. Trading mistakes and position, navigating the technical deep ruts and constantly changing traction. Today was a challenging course - and that’s one of the reasons we race motorcycles - because they’re tough.
Thad Duvall on comeback from a broken back pulled in the big bread in Open Pro Sport - not without challenge as Trevor Maley and Zach Peters gave the Coastal GasGas rider all he wanted and more. 35 minutes of war? Indeed.
We handed out a lot of hardware today - season end hardware and normal race day hardware. We’d love to see some photos of your plaques in their forever home. The red plates are here to stay because they look so trick. Congratulations to all of our champions - those red plates are EARNED.
We had some amazing vintage iron scattered around the pits today - more to come on the winner of that. Maybe one of the hardest fought battles of the day was the Chili Cook Off! Spicy chili would take the top step. White chicken would land off the podium…..ouch.
Another excellent season of racing. Plain and simple. More learning and growing for us as race promoters. Every race this year went better than the last. We made more mistakes and learned more lessons. Most of all - we had a damn good time racing motorcycles.
Here’s to 2023 - year 2 in the books.
*Still working through some results - equipment malfunctions created an absolute nightmare for our scoring department - as soon as we have results complete we’ll get um on website and let you know.*