By NICK YAMASHITA
The Progress
Moapa Valley youth, Austin Monk, has had a good year racing for the World Off-Road Racing Championship Series (WORCS).
He now finds himself in 4th place for the 450 C Class and sitting in first place for points. But the top four are only 22 points apart from each other. Austin Monk has 100 points for 4th while the leader, Chase Laub of Duck Creek Village, Utah, has 122 points.
“It is extremely close!” said Austin’s father Blake Monk in an interview last week. “It is still open to anyone to win this year. Any one of the top 10 could possibly win.”
Up until the last race, Austin was in first place with only 7 points separating the top 5 racers. Austin took 3rd in Round 6 – Cedar City, Utah, on September 10, with a time of 1:02:26.895. He was right behind the current leader of Chase Laub who took 2nd and Chase McDaniel of Victorville, California, who took the win.
On September 25, Monk took 11th at the Round 7 – Glen Helen MC in Devore, California. “It didn’t go as well as we had planned for that race,” Blake said. “But we rebounded on the next day to take 4th place with a time of 00:55:02.977 for Round 8 at Glen Helen MC Track.”
“Each race is bringing in thousands of racers,” added Blake. “Cedar City had over 1300 racers and over 120 riders in his heat and class. This is getting him plenty of experience and really gives him good competition to help him be better.”
WORCS is the premier racing organization and series in the Western United States consisting of racers from such states as California, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, Colorado, Oregon and more.
Monk will head to Primm, Nevada for Round 10 at the Buffalo Bill’s Track on November 19-21.
Besides racing the WORCS race series, Monk has done some of the Motorcycle Racing Association of Nevada (MRAN) races. He raced two night racing events in Searchlight and Ely, taking first place in both. Monk also raced at the Juab County Xtremes in Nephi, Utah. Last season, he raced in MRAN and finished 3rd in points for the season.
The current leaders are: first place, Chase Laub of Duck Creek Village, Utah with 122 points; Second place, Piet Diaz of San Jacinto, California with 117 points; and third, Freddy Martinez of Farmington, New Mexico with 105 points. Austin Monk is in 4th with 100 points.
“I just have to stay more focused and kick it into gear for these last two rounds so I can bring home the hardware,” said Austin.
For more information or race results visit www.worcsracing.com.
