Wolfpack Hustle - Civic Center Crit 3

This past weekend was another successful night of racing here in Downtown Los Angeles. Wolfpack Hustle hosted their second race of the series and chose the perfect day to do so, with warm weather and a cool breeze. We decided to meet at our local coffee shop in the Art District, the Daily Dose Cafe to go over some team tactics and strategies before the main event and also hit our local bike shop El Maestro Bikes to make minor adjustments on our new Prism builds. This time our team was in Group 2 for qualifiers so we had a bit more time to kill before we went up, so we hung out in our team tent spinning spokes and telling jokes. With so many first for our team, like introducing our new team mates for the season Hector Morales and Natalie Trujillo, It was also the first event our team rider Cristian Martinez had to miss out due to an accident he had earlier this year while descending the Malibu mountains on his road bike, He had surgery 4 days prior to the main event but will be back on the saddle in no time. Natalie was up first in her women track qualifying group and we are stoked to have her on board representing our brand and hammering it out with some fierce girls in that same field. Our male track team was in the qualifying group with some elite pro riders as well hardcore street riders and we bet you wont catch these pros riding brakeless track bikes in the streets like we normally do on the daily basis. We were not afraid, it just meant we had to go even harder and put those street skills to the test.

It was around 6:30 pm and the final list had gone up, only the top 90 racers that qualified out of 200+ participants would be able to race and we all landed in the 30s. We knew coming in the stakes were going to be high just for the fact that there was a blend of pro and amateur racers that were going to battle it out in the first lap to gain position. Experience from last year was if you don't battle to get a good position in the front on the first lap, we were going to be stuck with the chase group hanging for dear life. Natalie showed a killer performance at her final race with 39 women racing she finished her final sprint at 16th place and are proud that she never gave up or got lapped by some of the elite women racers. As the final event came closer our team hit the rollers one last time to get those machines warmed up for battle. Names were being called to get racers lined up to their starting positions, music was spinning, hearts were beating, and camera lights were flashing. 3, 2, 1, GO! and they're off! 5 seconds into the race a huge crash happens on the right side of the field taking out some top notch riders including two of our very own. We stand by Don's call to restart the race and give everyone the race they came to spectate. Lucky non of our riders were critically injured or had malfunctions with their prism builds, but we do know this, Angel's adrenaline was pumping because not till after the race he started feeling his pain. So as the racers lined up again for the second time we had one thing in mind, MOVE UP! MOVE UP! and that's exactly what we did. With 6 laps to go and about 5 crashes dodge already team rider Felipe had moved up to a top 10 position and avoided going down on Hairpin 2 by a crash that happened in front of him, but that move left him with a slow leak on his front wheel. By the time he came out of hairpin 1 it was completely flat and had to pull out for the second time at a Wolfpack event. It was up to Angel and Hector to complete this battle and hold it down for our team and that's exactly what they did. We finished with a 20th and 36th position and never got lapped by the field, they may have won the battle but the war is not over. Till next time.