ill_lil_romey
01-21-2006, 11:12 PM
Round two of the Amp'd Mobile AMA Supercross Series saw a new winner, which was significant. It was also significant because Phoenix saw the first in what may be considered a new generation of supercross tracks.
After Anaheim I, many of the riders were up in arms that the track was poorly built, and the AMA agreed. At Phoenix, the media got a chance to sit down with AMA MX/SX Manager Steve Whitelock and talk to him about why they're making changes, and what changes are being made. "Well, I think you guys saw last week's racetrack. It put some of the stars on the ground, and that wasn't exactly what I had in mind for A1," Whitelock said. "I need them on May 7th in beautiful downtown Las Vegas, so I was a bit concerned. But I think they've come back and built me a good race track here. We've got little issues, but there's always little issues with these funny racetracks with split starts and stuff, but I think we're opening up a dialog and we're going to talk with more riders as we go along. And as I said, if they've got a problem, they should go up and talk with me. Don't be afraid of me. It's their racetrack, and it's our job to give them the best, safest racetrack and a racetrack that they can race each other on, and not race the racetrack. Right now, I think at Anaheim we had a racetrack where they raced the racetrack—they're not racing each other. I think at Anaheim they were too busy paying attention to the track.
"Like in that little speed section [in Phoenix], that's what they're calling it [before the finish], it's just what I wanted because you can momentarily lose concentration. If you think about a lot of the racetracks we put them on, you have to concentrate 100% of the time that they're on the racetrack, and that's a hard thing to do. It's too hard on them. I think no mind can stay that focused for that long. So, with giving them a few places to figure out where they are, and who is where, it's much better than, 'Where's that front wheel? Where's that front wheel? Oops!' If you look, the only time they ever take tearoffs off is when they're in the air. They don't get a chance to rest their brain. It's important that we come up with these places.
"Another thing I said to a couple of guys—I'm not perfect on the facts, but I think I'm pretty close—I said something to one of my hardcore road-race buddies that we can't be putting our stars on the ground, and his reply back to me was, 'That's the nature of motorcycle racing.' So I just sat there and thought about it, then asked, 'Hey, in the last five years, how many times has Valentino Rossi been on the ground?' He sat there and stuttered. And I said, 'If you think about it, in the last five years, he has been maybe 8 times total on the ground, and in the race? I can only think of three times in the last five years that Valentino Rossi has fallen off in a race.' That's the kind of figures we need to work with because that man is riding at the highest level of competition in road racing, and these guys are riding at the highest level of competition in supercross or motocross, so I need to be able to look at that and think of it that way.
Lites class winner, KTM's Nathan Ramsey
"So that's what we're going to try to do. We're going to try and give them race-able racetracks that they can use and race on and race each other on."
When asked if this is why the AMA put out a press release earlier in the week expressing their concern with the tracks, Whitelock responded: "There was starting to be a lot of chatter about, 'Aww, what's the AMA going to do? Nothing, like they normally do?'" Whitelock said. "No. We're not going to do nothing. I had to let everybody know that I'm concerned. Also, good or bad, my board of directors was at Anaheim I, and they expressed concern that things weren't right and they wanted me to get on it. You listen to your boss, so I said, 'Okay!' I talked with Graber, he wrote the press release, and he asked me lots of questions, but we tried to build that press release where we're not blaming anybody. This is something that's growing, and it's growing because the damned motorcycles are getting so good. They are getting to be really, really fast, quick-accelerating things that they can put together groups of jumps that we never dreamed they could. Now we just need to look at our spacings. If you look at the guys at Dirt Wurx, they know what kind of dirt they're dealing with, how much traction the dirt's got, because they've been doing this a long time. They have little formulas that they say, 'At this track, they're 27 feet apart, and at another racetrack they're 24 feet apart because the dirt is good.' So, we need to start looking at those things again and say, 'Christ, these 450s are SO fast and accelerate SO hard and can do things that we never dreamt they could do...'
Jeremy McGrath responds to his screaming fans (and family) after the main event.
"Like I said, our game is motorsports, and we're letting them build better and better and better motorcycles that make more and more power, and we're not restricting them, and the way we're trying to restrict laptimes and speed on the racetrack is to make the racetrack more difficult. That's no good, because in every other motorsport, what are they doing? Restrictor plates, capacity's down, all kinds of things. So we've got to not restrict the racetracks and not restrict the motorcycles—because that's what makes this so much fun because the customer is getting such a good motorcycle out of it—but we have to find ways to keep them up in the air longer. That's one way we can slow down laptimes. When you're flying, you can't be accelerating. Or spacing out the jumps where they can't put a quad together when we only imagined it was going to be a triple. So we're looking at all of that stuff. And that's what we're up to. And it's going to take us a couple, three, or four, or maybe six or eight races to get it right. It's going to be a learning process.
"With having the stars race these 450s, it's way different, and I think the 450s that the guys are riding, if you call Ricky's, Chad's, Kevin's and Bubba's bikes 100%, there's a whole bunch of bikes out there that are 95%, and then another little group that's 90%. So we've got a lot of guys going really fast, which is what we want, but we want them to be doing it safely.
Ricky Carmichael was "stood up" in the first turn of his heat race by Chad Reed. Chad Reed was likewise stood up in the main event by RC.
"The AMA has always been there to look over things, and we'll go out and talk about the angles of the faces and that stuff. We don't get into the technical mechanics of the spacing, but we are now because we have a different situation. Duke [Finch] always addressed those things. Last year, we looked at all that stuff.
Tim Ferry recovered from his crash in Anaheim to race round two.
Another thing I said last week was, if Anaheim I would've been round 13, we probably would've been okay, because no matter how much they prepare or how much testing they do, after they've done it 13 weeks in a row, holy smokes, they're magic. There was a race last year where we lost Friday practice, and Ricky, Chad and Bubba came down the tunnel together and went at it the first lap of practice. They cleared every obstacle, hit every whoop section perfectly, didn't overjump anything, and they probably went within a half a second of their fastest time on the first lap!
It's because, after enough weeks and enough seeing these things, they can walk around and go, 'I'm going to land here, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that...' So, maybe if A1 would've been round 13 Houston or something like that, we might've been great, but we can't have that. We need to think."
Billy Laninovich
SoBe/Samsung Honda's Billy Laninovich said before the race that the track was easy, but that everyone had to race the same track. He obviously did fine, hanging on for second and his first series points lead. "I liked the track last week," Laninovich said after the race. "It was tough, and it separated a lot of the guys. But I guess they don't want them all tough. It made for good racing. You can see, the 250 class was good racing, and in the 125, there was four or five of us battling the whole time, and I know that the fans like that kind of stuff. They don't want somebody who will just check out. But the track was easy, but it was easy to make mistakes—it broke down a lot. You get wheel-spin and it got pot-holes on some of the jumps and stuff like that."
Kawasaki's James Stewart fell down on the start, but still recovered for third, even though he thought the track was too easy. "I've been fortunate I haven't been back there all year, but I thought it was a good race—a smart race," Stewart said. "I thought I made some good passes and stuff, and I just tried to get up there because I knew how easy the track was, and once people got away, it was kind of hard to make up time. My strongest point was the whoop section tonight—I made a lot of passes through there. So it was good."
Yamaha's Chad Reed didn't think the track was any better or worse than normal. "I don't know? Did it look any different? Or did it make any difference? I don't know," he said. "Last weekend, everybody complained, but mostly I think that it was the same as always. I don't think they ever really finish the tracks too great, and I think last weekend was just the first race that they really made it a problem, and I think that was it. Everybody was nervous, everybody wanted to do good, everybody was on new bikes, and the problems were magnified. I don't think it's any better or worse than normal."
After Anaheim I, many of the riders were up in arms that the track was poorly built, and the AMA agreed. At Phoenix, the media got a chance to sit down with AMA MX/SX Manager Steve Whitelock and talk to him about why they're making changes, and what changes are being made. "Well, I think you guys saw last week's racetrack. It put some of the stars on the ground, and that wasn't exactly what I had in mind for A1," Whitelock said. "I need them on May 7th in beautiful downtown Las Vegas, so I was a bit concerned. But I think they've come back and built me a good race track here. We've got little issues, but there's always little issues with these funny racetracks with split starts and stuff, but I think we're opening up a dialog and we're going to talk with more riders as we go along. And as I said, if they've got a problem, they should go up and talk with me. Don't be afraid of me. It's their racetrack, and it's our job to give them the best, safest racetrack and a racetrack that they can race each other on, and not race the racetrack. Right now, I think at Anaheim we had a racetrack where they raced the racetrack—they're not racing each other. I think at Anaheim they were too busy paying attention to the track.
"Like in that little speed section [in Phoenix], that's what they're calling it [before the finish], it's just what I wanted because you can momentarily lose concentration. If you think about a lot of the racetracks we put them on, you have to concentrate 100% of the time that they're on the racetrack, and that's a hard thing to do. It's too hard on them. I think no mind can stay that focused for that long. So, with giving them a few places to figure out where they are, and who is where, it's much better than, 'Where's that front wheel? Where's that front wheel? Oops!' If you look, the only time they ever take tearoffs off is when they're in the air. They don't get a chance to rest their brain. It's important that we come up with these places.
"Another thing I said to a couple of guys—I'm not perfect on the facts, but I think I'm pretty close—I said something to one of my hardcore road-race buddies that we can't be putting our stars on the ground, and his reply back to me was, 'That's the nature of motorcycle racing.' So I just sat there and thought about it, then asked, 'Hey, in the last five years, how many times has Valentino Rossi been on the ground?' He sat there and stuttered. And I said, 'If you think about it, in the last five years, he has been maybe 8 times total on the ground, and in the race? I can only think of three times in the last five years that Valentino Rossi has fallen off in a race.' That's the kind of figures we need to work with because that man is riding at the highest level of competition in road racing, and these guys are riding at the highest level of competition in supercross or motocross, so I need to be able to look at that and think of it that way.
Lites class winner, KTM's Nathan Ramsey
"So that's what we're going to try to do. We're going to try and give them race-able racetracks that they can use and race on and race each other on."
When asked if this is why the AMA put out a press release earlier in the week expressing their concern with the tracks, Whitelock responded: "There was starting to be a lot of chatter about, 'Aww, what's the AMA going to do? Nothing, like they normally do?'" Whitelock said. "No. We're not going to do nothing. I had to let everybody know that I'm concerned. Also, good or bad, my board of directors was at Anaheim I, and they expressed concern that things weren't right and they wanted me to get on it. You listen to your boss, so I said, 'Okay!' I talked with Graber, he wrote the press release, and he asked me lots of questions, but we tried to build that press release where we're not blaming anybody. This is something that's growing, and it's growing because the damned motorcycles are getting so good. They are getting to be really, really fast, quick-accelerating things that they can put together groups of jumps that we never dreamed they could. Now we just need to look at our spacings. If you look at the guys at Dirt Wurx, they know what kind of dirt they're dealing with, how much traction the dirt's got, because they've been doing this a long time. They have little formulas that they say, 'At this track, they're 27 feet apart, and at another racetrack they're 24 feet apart because the dirt is good.' So, we need to start looking at those things again and say, 'Christ, these 450s are SO fast and accelerate SO hard and can do things that we never dreamt they could do...'
Jeremy McGrath responds to his screaming fans (and family) after the main event.
"Like I said, our game is motorsports, and we're letting them build better and better and better motorcycles that make more and more power, and we're not restricting them, and the way we're trying to restrict laptimes and speed on the racetrack is to make the racetrack more difficult. That's no good, because in every other motorsport, what are they doing? Restrictor plates, capacity's down, all kinds of things. So we've got to not restrict the racetracks and not restrict the motorcycles—because that's what makes this so much fun because the customer is getting such a good motorcycle out of it—but we have to find ways to keep them up in the air longer. That's one way we can slow down laptimes. When you're flying, you can't be accelerating. Or spacing out the jumps where they can't put a quad together when we only imagined it was going to be a triple. So we're looking at all of that stuff. And that's what we're up to. And it's going to take us a couple, three, or four, or maybe six or eight races to get it right. It's going to be a learning process.
"With having the stars race these 450s, it's way different, and I think the 450s that the guys are riding, if you call Ricky's, Chad's, Kevin's and Bubba's bikes 100%, there's a whole bunch of bikes out there that are 95%, and then another little group that's 90%. So we've got a lot of guys going really fast, which is what we want, but we want them to be doing it safely.
Ricky Carmichael was "stood up" in the first turn of his heat race by Chad Reed. Chad Reed was likewise stood up in the main event by RC.
"The AMA has always been there to look over things, and we'll go out and talk about the angles of the faces and that stuff. We don't get into the technical mechanics of the spacing, but we are now because we have a different situation. Duke [Finch] always addressed those things. Last year, we looked at all that stuff.
Tim Ferry recovered from his crash in Anaheim to race round two.
Another thing I said last week was, if Anaheim I would've been round 13, we probably would've been okay, because no matter how much they prepare or how much testing they do, after they've done it 13 weeks in a row, holy smokes, they're magic. There was a race last year where we lost Friday practice, and Ricky, Chad and Bubba came down the tunnel together and went at it the first lap of practice. They cleared every obstacle, hit every whoop section perfectly, didn't overjump anything, and they probably went within a half a second of their fastest time on the first lap!
It's because, after enough weeks and enough seeing these things, they can walk around and go, 'I'm going to land here, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that...' So, maybe if A1 would've been round 13 Houston or something like that, we might've been great, but we can't have that. We need to think."
Billy Laninovich
SoBe/Samsung Honda's Billy Laninovich said before the race that the track was easy, but that everyone had to race the same track. He obviously did fine, hanging on for second and his first series points lead. "I liked the track last week," Laninovich said after the race. "It was tough, and it separated a lot of the guys. But I guess they don't want them all tough. It made for good racing. You can see, the 250 class was good racing, and in the 125, there was four or five of us battling the whole time, and I know that the fans like that kind of stuff. They don't want somebody who will just check out. But the track was easy, but it was easy to make mistakes—it broke down a lot. You get wheel-spin and it got pot-holes on some of the jumps and stuff like that."
Kawasaki's James Stewart fell down on the start, but still recovered for third, even though he thought the track was too easy. "I've been fortunate I haven't been back there all year, but I thought it was a good race—a smart race," Stewart said. "I thought I made some good passes and stuff, and I just tried to get up there because I knew how easy the track was, and once people got away, it was kind of hard to make up time. My strongest point was the whoop section tonight—I made a lot of passes through there. So it was good."
Yamaha's Chad Reed didn't think the track was any better or worse than normal. "I don't know? Did it look any different? Or did it make any difference? I don't know," he said. "Last weekend, everybody complained, but mostly I think that it was the same as always. I don't think they ever really finish the tracks too great, and I think last weekend was just the first race that they really made it a problem, and I think that was it. Everybody was nervous, everybody wanted to do good, everybody was on new bikes, and the problems were magnified. I don't think it's any better or worse than normal."