Blake Baggett raced his Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing RM-Z450 to an eighth-place finish Saturday night in the Detroit Supercross in front of a crowd of 46,141 fans in Ford Field. Baggett was on his way to an even stronger sixth-place result, but on the final lap another rider changed lanes in front of Baggett causing Blake to move his line at the last second and clip a tuff block leading to a crash.

The crash proved to be a pretty good hit to Baggett, but he still managed to get back on his Suzuki and ride across the finish line in eighth. Although the night ended on a sour note, Baggett was able to advance in the series standings after Detroit. He’s now moved up to seventh in the AMA/FIM Supercross standings after 12 of 17 rounds.   Baggett missed qualifying directly out of his Heat race, but rebounded to convincingly win his Semi to make the Main. When the gate dropped on the 20-lap final Baggett was among the leaders, but coming out of the second turn a couple of riders tangled in front of him and Baggett had nowhere to go and had he got tangled up with another rider trying to finding a way around. That moved him back to 11th place at the end of the first lap. From there Baggett used the power of his Yoshimura Suzuki RM-Z450 to steadily work his way through the field. He’d made it to sixth and for a brief time appeared to be on the verge of challenging for a top-five, but on the final lap Kyle Partridge appeared to change lines in front of Baggett. Baggett made an evasive maneuver but clipped a tuff block in the process and hit the ground. Baggett was able to remount and finish in eighth, even though he was pretty beat up after the crash. “We were able to find a really good setup for the Semi,” said Yoshimura Suzuki Team Manager Mike Webb of the commanding win for Baggett in his qualifying Semi. “After getting his arm hooked with another rider on that shuffle in the second turn he was as far back as 12th at the start of the Main. He began picking them off and worked his way up to sixth and then on the last lap a lapped rider moved over right in front of him and Blake went down pretty hard on the tabletop jump and (Josh) Grant and (Broc) Tickle got by. All and all it was a good night. He was fast again and put it all together in the Main.” The series resumes next Saturday, March 28 in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

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