A Year in MX

Saturday

So I left Chris’s house bright and early in order to get to the NPG tent, which is where I pick up my Credentials for the season. The credentials had been sorted out by Davey Coombs after he found out about my trip which was really cool of him. They would allow me Pit Access to all of the races this summer so I was pretty chuffed!
I soon put the pass to the test, flashing it to anyone who would care to look at it. Seemed to work.
The pits are quite a sight to behold, at one end of the pits are the factory riders with the massive lorries that are a home and a workshop rolled into one, whilst at the other end are the privateers who own a pickup and a trailer which they somehow also turn into a home and a workshop. Both are testament to the amount of energy and dedication it requires to compete in MX at the highest level.
Flashed the pass once again and I had access to some seats (bleachers?!) right on the start gate… not only could you see the start, but the rest of the track as well. I can’t thank Davey enough for this pass. It will really make this summer a lot more enjoyable.
I also hope to catch some of the webcast they were producing all day, I’m pretty sure they got some good footage, especially of the Villopoto/ Lawrence fight… something that my seat didn’t give me a good vantage point of… looked like a good’un though.
The other practices produced some good timed action, watching RC on a hotlap is a pretty awesome thing to behold!

However the thing I enjoyed most was seeing the riders up close: watching James Stewart explain to his mechanics how things weren’t quite with his bike or about how a certain line felt a lot faster. You can tell he really enjoys what he does, even just talking about the racing brings out that trademark smile. He wasn’t the only one working hard though, the team around were constantly busy, taking notes of what he said, making line suggestions  or tweaking/ cleaning the bike.
I always made fun of the podium speeches when the riders have to thank all their sponsors etc but that was the first real time I’d seen the team aspect of professional MX. A lot of people (myself included before today) just see the finished product of Stewart winning the race and not the behind-the-scenes work done by the many, many people that make-up his team.
It’s a real eye-opener as there aren’t many sports that you can stand 10 feet away from the stars as they go about their profession.

Practice is practice but nothing compares with the racing that will unfold tomorrow.

Sunday

This was it, the official ‘first day’ of my trip… everything that I’d done up to now was just a prelude for this day…err right
During the early practices I wandered around the track, checking all the good viewing spots, taking a couple of photos from the different positions. It was already a lot busier than it ever got yesterday with people setting up canopies and all their seating arrangements.
I also had a look through the pits again to see what all the riders were up to, a lot of them had autograph sessions so obviously the pits were rammed with people. I didn’t fancy joining the 200yd queue for Stewart’s autograph so I headed out.
On the way out I got called by Ritchie from MXHeaven, this was one of the events organised by Stefan for the riders when they come on one of his trips. Another nice touch to an already incredible package. We chatted for awhile before security started kicking people with the day passes, out of the pits. I had my pass, so I was safe but Stefan didn’t so they had to leave… I would’ve gone with them but they were making them go out the far entrance so I said my goodbye’s and began to enjoy a much emptier pit area.

An hour before the races and I decided that the bleachers where I sat yesterday would be where I’d sit today as well. I got in there, picked a seat I knew would be shaded within a couple of hours and prepared for (hopefully) a day of some immense racing… I wasn’t to be disappointed.

NOTE: I’m writing this 4 days after the races so excuse any factual mistakes.

 

Lites - Race 1
This was the class that a lot of people, myself included would provide the majority of the entertainment throughout the year. After the Vegas mishaps everyone hoped that finally Villopoto (RV), Townley (BT), Dungey, Grant, Lawrence, Morais etc etc would put on a decent spectacle.
Boy, did they manage that!
Josh Grant got the holeshot and opened up a little bit of a gap before the chasing pack of Townley, Villopoto and Dungey got their act together. Gradually they reeled Grant in and then proceeded to produce a few laps of the action we’d all dreamed of. Each of the 4 riders had the lead at some point, as none of them were sure whether they should be concentrating on getting past the rider in front, or concerned about being over-taken by the rider behind.
All the riders made mistakes but after those few laps, the order started to settle down. RV had the lead even after a stall at the top of the track, with BT behind him. Dungey had 3rd place to himself and Grant, who had led for a lot of the race had dropped back to fourth.
This is pretty much how it stayed for the rest of the race, BT was a couple of seconds behind RV but just couldn’t get any nearer no matter what he tried.
As the race was drawing to a close, the majority of the crowd were focusing on Lawrence (J-Law). Due to the fight the day before, he had been fined, and had his gate pick taken away. This meant picking last and as a result, led to him starting off the race well down the field.

MX Class – Race 1
This was always going to be a massive race – would RC still have the hunger and desire? Would JS still try to win, even though he knows RC is only running 6 rounds of the Championship?
The answer to both was a definite: Yes.
As much as I’d like to tell you about the rest of the riders, there really was only one battle to watch the entire race. Anything I come up with to describe their battle would be doing it an injustice. It’s up there with High Point 06, in my opinion and they completely destroyed the rest of the field.
RC led for most of the race with JS just behind, never really close enough to pass but always about 3 seconds behind. This was the case until the last few minutes of the race when JS gathered some more speed from somewhere take RC. Whether he had been waiting behind RC for the right moment á la a few SX races last year, or whether he just found a new line from somewhere, hard to say…

As the white flag came out JS had pulled a few seconds lead, but as the lap progressed and they started to pick up lappers, RC got nearer and nearer until he was right on the rear tyre of JS. It looked like he would overtake him with only a couple of corners remaining, but JS held him off to take the win.

Lites - Race 2
After the first race, everyone had high hopes for race 2 and whilst the racing wasn’t quite as intense, it did open a few eyes in another aspect – the emergence of BT.
He took the holeshot and never looked back, winning from RV who had a good battle with Dungey. It was a very convincing victory though and showed that ‘07 wouldn’t be the RV domination that a lot of people expected. Dungey and Grant are also showing enough form to suggest that with some more stamina training, they have the capacity to hang with RV.
While those guys were swapping positions at the front, J-Law was making his way through the field from out of the top 20, right up to 5th position. It was very impressive riding and with better gate positions, he could easily have been challenging for #1 spot.

MX Class – Race 2
Just like the Lites, the anticipation for the second race of the MX class was huge. However, also like the Lites, it failed to live up to race 1.
Millsaps got the holeshot but it wasn’t long before RC had passed him, with JS close on his tail. Just as we began to hope for a repeat of race 1, JS crashed, thus allowing RC to break away.
With RC riding well, it was up to JS to try and up his pace and as he tried he crashed for a second time which allowed Millsaps to regain 2nd place. The second crash seemed to cause a problem with JS’s bike and as he went round at 75% speed, his teammate Tim Ferry overtook him for 3rd spot.
After the racing it seemed there were even more questions that needed to be answered:

1. Will RC be tempted to ride the whole championship?
2. Can JS actually complete a whole series?
3. Is RC going to get his 150th win before he retires?

High Point should help answer those, but the way these two are racing, anything can happen…

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ben Townley (47 points, 1 win) Ryan Villopoto (47) Ryan Dungey (40) Josh Grant (33) Brett Metcalfe (32) Jason Lawrence (32) Tommy Hahn (28) Broc Tickle (27) Martin Davalos (20) Jake Weimer (18)	Ricky Carmichael (47 points, 1 win) James Stewart (43) Tim Ferry (40) Davi Millsaps (38) Grant Langston (31) Kevin Windham (30) Andrew Short (28) Mike Alessi (27) Michael Byrne (23) David Vuillemin (20)

Back to Top

Saturday

Woke up about 10am, wasn’t feeling too great after the night before but a few bottles of water cured the major problem of the dry mouth. Left for High Point soon after that as there was no point hanging around the RacerX offices. The track was only about 15 minutes away and was pretty easy to find.
Parked up in a very cool position right near the merchandising alley… once I got the levelling blocks sorted out, anyway. Only took a couple of attempts… honest.
Left Mack to go have a wander around the pits/ track. It wasn’t long before I bumped into Davey Coombs (plus Wes the cameraman) as they were out filming for their webcast. We were just about to start my interview when he spotted Ben Townley cycling around the pits, seeing as he was a tad more important than me, I didn’t mind him interviewing BT first. He sounds like a really stand-up guy, and a really easy interviewee. Even after the victory last week, he wasn’t happy with his bike setup but he is really liking the look of the High Point track, apparently its like some of the tracks back in New Zealand… although I couldn’t say if he is right.
Once BT was finished, the camera’s attention switched to me. This was even more nerve-racking than the phone interview I’d had, but I think it went OK… it’s hard to say really until I actually see it played back. Davey knows how to interview so he gave me some decent questions that didn’t require too much thinking on my part. If it does come out badly, I’m going to blame it on the drinking last night… yea.
Davey is a busy guy so he moved off for his next target and I was left to my own devices again.

I figured now would be a good time to walk around the track, check out some viewing positions. High Point has lots of bleachers setup, but no Level 3 sections, Level 6 sure…. But not Level 3. Looks like I’d have to sit with the masses.
The practices began with the Lites class as exciting as ever, I think at least 5 riders all held the fastest lap at some stage. RV, BT, J-Law, Dungey, Metcalfe, Grant… this year really is gonna produce some outstanding racing. By the end of practice 2, BT had posted a lap over 2 seconds quicker than RV, but after those 2, there were roughly 7 riders within a second.
The main class was dominated by RC and Stewart who posted laps over 6 seconds quicker than the 3rd placed rider after practice 1. In practice 2 RC became the first person to ever run High Point in under 2 minutes, JS was close, but as he posted his time of 2:00.4 he caught a foot peg in the tabletop (scrubbing too much?!) and crashed pretty badly. He was ok, but the bike was bent up a little so he didn’t run anymore laps.

During the breaks in the practices Matt had got news that they would be running an article in MOTO about my trip so he proceeded to conduct an interview with me. For some reason I found this interview a lot easier to do than either the phone or the video interviews. He recorded everything I said so I reckon it could be quite a good one, gave me a chance to be a bit more in-depth. I believe it will be in the next edition so make sure you check it out. I’m sure it can be found in all good retailers and some dodgy ones as well.
Also had Roger DeCoster sitting about 3 metres away for the duration of the interview so hopefully he’s heard all about my trip now.
After all the practices had finished Matt had to interview BT (guess that’s tied it 1-1 now) and I had to leave because I also had an interview. This time with Josh Allen, who is the Online Editor for TransWorld MX. Similar to the interview with Matt, I found it pretty easy to get my information across, maybe it’s all the practice I’m getting. This interview should be posted in the Friday Feature on the TransWorld MX website: http://www.transworldmx.com.
After all the interviews and the chatting with people I was making my way back to Mack when I bumped into Joe McKeon who runs VisuWalls: http://www.visuwalls.com . This will hopefully be the company who will put some big stickers on the side of Mack. It was good because I hadn’t heard from him all week, and wasn’t sure if he was still interested, but he definitely still is. We now have a couple of weeks to figure out some good designs.
Finally back at Mack I fired up the barbeque and nailed a couple of tasty burgers. Good times.
Dinner over and I’d heard there was some kinda Pit Bike Nationals going on, seemed like something I should see and I didn’t really have anything better to do so I went off to the little track in one of the neighbouring fields. It was actually pretty cool as they split up the riders into about 4 categories: Kids, Intermediate, Pros and a class for the larger riders. Watching people weighing over 20 stone (280lbs) riding little mini-bikes is always good for a giggle and this didn’t disappoint.

I was now thoroughly knackered so retired to my bed in preparation for some awesome racing tomorrow.

Sunday

No lie-in today as the loud speakers boomed out with a welcoming speech at roughly 8am. Not exactly my idea of a good welcome… and I wasn’t even one of the many people drinking that evening.
Seeing as there was no chance of sleep again (I knew there was a down-side to getting a parking spot so close) I brought myself into the land of the living and made my way into the pits. En-route I bumped into Matt and seeing as he wanted to speak to a couple of the riders, I tagged along. The rider he mainly wanted to speak to was BT, at the time I assumed it was a follow-up to what they spoke about yesterday, but it soon became apparent that this wasn’t the reason…
As we approached the Monster Kawasaki rig, I was pretty surprised by BT’s reaction: he started shouting at Matt, “I don’t want to hear it” “I have nothing to say to you” “It was a complete fluke”… to be honest, I had no idea what they were talking about… until Matt said, “Don’t worry, I won’t be rubbing it in, Billy Mac is Scottish and even though he won the overall in Japan, doesn’t mean he is any more English!”
Woah there… Billy Mac won overall, 1-2 ?!? Wow, I heard he’d been riding well, but to win an overall… damn, good on him… I then find out that Mike Brown went 5-1, so it all began to make sense… Coppins (Kiwi teammate of BT) got whooped!
Matt then introduced me and my trip, and to my surprise BT had heard of what I was doing… I’d always thought the Pro riders lived in their own bubble, completely immersed in their training regimes, barely noticing what happened in the outside world, let alone some internet forums… we all chatted for awhile before he had to get back to his pits and speak to his team.
Next on Matt’s agenda was David Vuillemin, another guy he’d known for awhile from when DV ran the GPs. I had a feeling that DV might’ve heard of my trip as I know he is a member on a couple of the forums where I’ve posted about it. Still, it’s always nice to hear him confirm it… that was until he mentioned Mack… He questioned how I made it cross-country in that “heap of junk”, I couldn’t believe my ears! He’s lucky I’m a laid-back guy and I was still sleepy from the morning wake-up… him being 6’2 and being built like the proverbial ****house had nothing to do with it… riiiight.
The topic of conversation soon moved onto football (the one where you use your feet) and the Champions League final which took place on the Wednesday, of course I didn’t watch it but DV obviously has a TV in his 40ft motorhome or the private jet, whichever he chose to use this time. Just like BT, the conversation had to be cut short as DV was summoned by his team… seems these riders are actually busy people on race day, who’da thought?

The rider practices soon begun with some impressive laptimes from some different names, Broc Tickle posting a 1.57 laptime, almost 2 seconds faster than J-Law with Davalos, Hill and BT only in 5th place. Tickle’s lap was done on lap 1 of the spanking new race track, but even if it was a perfect, he still went out there and rode it. This laptime stood throughout the second practice and gave him the #1 pick come race time.
In the MX class JS led RC, even though he didn’t race for a lot of the allotted 20mins, hard to say why he did as few laps as he did, but when you produce a 1.56, don’t exactly need to keep riding.

With the practices over I headed into the pits where I knew they were getting ready for a parade lap with riders from throughout the years of MX. They were also going to ride the bikes used in those eras. Chuck Sun, Jeff Stanton, Steve Lamson and plenty of others including RC and his team manager Roger DeCoster all dressed in their finest attire. Really was quite a sight to behold, for some more awesome pictures check out this site:
http://www.mxinsiders.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=2463. They were all having a really good time, clearly loving a chance to ride all the vintage bikes again. The crowd also really loved the opportunity to view all their old favourites, especially when a couple of the stars busted out a double. Whilst around the pits, I bumped into a couple of my drinking buddies from Friday night, Chris (Shenzi) who took the pictures of the legends riding, as well as Joel and his girlfriend Stacy. They bought me a couple of drinks on Friday so it was good to see them. Also around was RupertX, and I’m glad he was… without him I’d never have got this picture with me and Miss MX – Leticia Cline… yea I’m playa:

With the parade over, it was time to get down to the serious racing.

Lites – Race 1
As with every Lites race this year, anticipation was high before the start of the race. Any one from 6/7 riders could win this race and the crowd knew it.
Grant got another holeshot, but unlike last week where he couldn’t maintain his speed, this week he not only held the lead but pulled away from the rest of the pack to take a convincing victory. He was in part helped by the ‘pit-stop’ that BT had to take after only one lap. During the first corner BT’s wheel got bent up and after a lap of cruising round he pulled into the pits to get it replaced. This put him almost an entire lap down on the leaders, and a long way off getting any points. He wasn’t put-off though as somehow he battled his way all the way up to a 10th place finish, over-taking some very good riders along the way, truly a class act.
Up at the front J-Law, RV and Dungey had a 3 way battle for 2nd. After last week’s incident there was also going to be an extra dimension to their battle so with Grant checking out, and BT a long way back, this is where the focus was. In the RV had the superior stamina and passed J-Law near the end of the race, Dungey kept the pair of them honest but didn’t really manage to get close enough to pass.

MX Class – Race 1
After Hangtown the onus was on JS to push the pace, and that seemed to be the case early on. Millsaps got the holeshot but didn’t hold off JS for long as the Floridian made a push the victory. RC started pretty badly, getting to about 6th place before an uncharacteristic crash left him further down the pack. The only seemed to spur RC on though as he sliced through the field making his way up to 2nd in no time at all. He now had his sights set on JS and it didn’t look like he’d be denied. Sure enough RC soon closed the gap and in one of the crazier over-taking manoeuvres, went round the outside of a hairpin turn before cross-rutting on the exit, almost flying the track, but just about maintaining enough speed to whip through ahead of Stewart.
The sequence of pictures below give you a better idea:
The way that he not only chased down a significant JS lead, but passed him in the fashion that he did, had a lot of people bringing out the G.O.A.T. nickname. It’s hard to disagree with them.
Down the field, Ferry held off the challenges of Millsaps, Langston and Short to get a deserved 3rd, but again, these guys were well off the pace of RC and JS.

Lites – Race 2
Grant again managed the holeshot but this time BT was right behind him, it didn’t take long for the New Zealander to get into #1 spot and once he did, he never looked back, taking a remarkable 3rd overall position with a 10-1.
RV knew in order to get an overall, he’d have to either win the second race or beat Grant by 2 clear places, unfortunately a bad start saw him 5th, and with BT going so well, he’d have to rely on someone else to get the #1. He did manage his part by over-taking Grant after a good battle, but although Dungey pushed him hard, Grant held him off to take his first overall victory. It was nothing more than he deserved after he had raced so well in both weekends so far, and there was no way anyone could wipe the smile from his face. RV went 2-2 to get second, but he most definitely isn’t having it his own way this year, and will really have to step it up for Southwick in a fortnight’s time.

MX Class – Race 2
Millsaps again grabbed the holeshot, but it only lasted about 2 turns as RC pulled out his big weapon – the tunnel jump, to overtake him in the air. RC was the only guy consistently doing this jump, but non-one expected him to bust it out in such congested traffic. Once ahead, RC never looked back and took an easy victory, although even with the extensive lead, he still pulled the risky tunnel jump and the triple/triple whoop section.
JS was resigned to another second place, and will really be pleased to see the back of RC, it must be killing him to see RC so dominant, even though he leaves to do NASCAR in a matter of weeks.
In the battle for both 3rd in the race and overall, Millsaps held off Ferry to finish 4-3 to Ferry’s 3-4. With Short and Langston not too far behind, there will definitely be some good battles in what is considered the second tier of the MX class.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (91 points) Ben Townley (83/1 win) Josh Grant (78/1 win) Ryan Dungey (76) Jason Lawrence (67) Tommy Hahn (59) Broc Tickle (52) Jake Weimer (48) Josh Hill (36) Matt Goerke (33)	Ricky Carmichael (97 points/2 wins) James Stewart (87) Tim Ferry (78) Davi Millsaps (76) Grant Langston (61) Kevin Windham (59) Andrew Short (59) Mike Alessi (50) Michael Byrne (48) David Vuillemin (43)

Back to Top

Saturday

I left New Haven, CT a little later than I had hoped, but this was mainly down to the awesome breakfast that Liz prepared for me: Eggs, Bacon and toast… happy with that!
Once departed, I headed north through some pretty heavy rain, this was not good, I really didn’t fancy walking around Southwick in the wet. I’ve heard it gets pretty sloppy there and that didn’t sound like too much fun. Fortunately as I got nearer the track the rain eased and some blue skies appeared. Someone was obviously looking out for me…
I tried blagging my way into the pits with Mack and actually managed to get inside them, however my joy was short-lived as a rather more clued-in security guard forced me to go out the other entrance… I still got to park really close and it was free, so I can’t complain too much.
Having parked up and got my stuff together, I made my way into the pits on foot. It was now almost midday, which was a lot later than I had planned. I started my circuit of the team at the Monster Kawasaki Lites rig, hoping I’d see BT again. Sure enough he was working with his mechanic on the bike. We got chatting again, both joking how I really needed a job, I left after a couple of mins as he’s a pretty busy guy… didn’t want to outstay my welcome… Also made my way to DV’s rig, he spotted me approaching and shook my hand, but I could tell that he was already involved in a pretty important conversation with another guy… I assume it was important, although I don’t really have a clue seeing as the conversation was in French!

By now it was almost time for the first set of practices so I ventured out for my first sighting of the Southwick track… Wow is it different from the previous two tracks…
The crowd at Hangtown were complaining when a small tree was blocking their view of one jump… they’d be pissed watching a race here as there was not one spot that could see 100% of the track, it was either blocked off by big trees, spectator bleachers or even just the natural terrain. It does however have a saving grace: the sand. Southwick is the only sand track on the AMA roster and this fact means that it is one of the few tracks where local riders stand a real chance to compete with the big boys. All the Pros find riding in the sand a real challenge and this gives locals like John Dowd and Chris Pugrab an edge.
I walked around the track, trying to get good vantage points and ended up round by the start gate. Here I came across a rather amusing scene as Jason Lawrence was trying to get his buggy past a 300pound security guard. J-Law didn’t want to walk to where the rest of his team were, but the guard wouldn’t allow the buggy anywhere near the track… the argument went back and forth for a bit, before J-Law finally conceded and told the security guard he just needed to turn around so that he could park it up… the guard obviously wasn’t the sharpest tool in the draw as he allowed this manoeuvre. Of course as soon as the guard moved, J-Law wizzed past and drove to the rest of his team-mates. Silly silly security guard…

As the practices went on, the cream still rose to the top, but it was mixed with a few names that weren’t instantly recognisable. RV and Grant Langston led the way in the Lites and MX classes respectively with all the contenders not too far away.
However I got the feeling that some of the riders were saving themselves for tomorrow, hoping that any track grooming that went on, would allow them faster laps.
With the practices winding down, I made my way to vendor row to see if I could find anyone I knew… me being the celebrity now, I figured that shouldn’t be too hard. As it happened, I got lucky. It seems Wes and Rob (RacerX camera crew) were doing some editing at the Monster Drinks Rig which is where Wes (the driver who I met at a couple of rest stops) was also hanging out. Also there was Jason Weigandt and DC so pretty much everyone I knew had gathered in one place… as seemed to be the pattern of the day though, they all had work to do (what is it with this work ?!) so I couldn’t speak to them for too long.
I got a bit further up Vendor Row when I noticed a large queue forming by the Fun Mover stand, a couple of questions later and I had discovered that RC was going to be signing autographs there.

Looking at the size of the queue, I decided not to bother and was just about to walk away when someone tapped me on the back.
“You’re the guy in the Transworld article.”
I turned around to discover some a group of guys a little younger than myself, “Yup, that’s me.”
As the conversation progressed, it turned out that their parents (Cheri & Mike) were part of the Fun Movers stand and had been promised to meet RC after he’d finished with the queue of people. I was soon introduced to the parents and they were impressed with my initiative and bravery at taking on such an adventure by myself. They then allowed me to go in with their son (Scott) at the end of the session to an autograph. This was something I’d actually hoped to do earlier on in the day, but a lack of a pen put pay to that idea… now seemed like a good time to make up for it.
RC is definitely a class act, he probably would still be signing autographs now if the security guards hadn’t ended it. I got him to sign one of my ‘A Year in MX’ t-shirts which will now be my designated ‘Autograph T-Shirt’. As I let the rest of the Fun Mover crew get their autographs, RC’s agent pulled me aside and said that he recognised my t-shirt from Mototalk and that he’d been looking out for me at the previous races. Just like everyone else today, he had to go off with Ricky to do some other work-related things, but I’m definitely going to try and see him next week at Budds.
I said my goodbyes to Cheri, Mike and Scott and headed back through the pits towards Mack. It was pretty deserted now, but as I came up the hill I noticed a game of baseball was taking place. On further inspection it seemed like Davi Millsaps was the pitcher with an assortment of MX people filling out the teams. It seems Davi’s talents don’t just lie on the bike as he proceeded to strike-out the opposing team to win the game. At least that’s what I think happened… my knowledge of baseball is rather limited, and there was a fair amount of arguing going on, so I can’t be 100% sure.
Davi was still arguing the baseball result as he made his way to his motorhome so I didn’t have a chance for his autograph, but as I rounded the corner I noticed JS was having his picture taken with a fan. This seemed like the ideal time to get a second signature on my ‘Autograph T-Shirt’ and JS was only too obliging.
Not a bad hour’s work, getting the #1 and 2 rider’s signatures.

It was about 7ish before I got back to Mack, and unfortunately still daylight. I’d read that it was no longer allowed to stay overnight but I really had no intentions of moving. This led to a nervous couple of hours before it got dark… and even then, the sound of any vehicle had me wishing Mack had turned invisible.
I needn’t have worried though, nobody said anything and I soon fell asleep.

Sunday

Throughout the night, bursts of rain hammered down on Mack, this did not bode well for tomorrow, however when I awoke it had ceased. The ground was a little wet but nothing too serious and the skies above showed no sign of the rain reappearing.
By the time I left Mack there was already a stream of spectators making their way to the front gate, as I walked I heard a couple of people admiring my bumper stickers, wondering incredulously how I had made it from Hangtown to High Point in my “crap RV”. Obviously they have no faith…
As I walked into the pits the number of people already there was crazy, a complete change from yesterday. I’d be surprised if there weren’t more people in the pits at 9am on the Sunday than there were at any stage around the whole track on Saturday. I’d hoped to get my ‘Autograph T-Shirt’ signed by a couple more riders but I really couldn’t see this happening now. Instead I made my way back along vendor row, hoping to bump into someone, anyone… again, my luck held and a couple of familiar faces were gathered at the Monster Energy drinks rig. (I really should be getting paid for all this name-dropping… err… actually… scrub that, Big Brother would deport my ass due to Visa regulations.)
I soon made my way to the track, and got ready for the practices… as I suspected some of the riders got their act together and posted some much improved lap times. I think the vast amounts of track preparation helped though. It also seemed like riders were only running one or two hotlaps during their 20 minute sessions, spending the rest of the time just cruising around. So it wasn’t the greatest spectacle, but I suppose it is understandable that they aren’t really exerting themselves on the sand too early on in the day.
With practices over, it was time for the real racing to begin… but before that happened a parade lap was performed by John Dowd in a buggy, driving local hero, Doug Henry. Henry was very badly injured in a Supermoto accident earlier in the year and so is currently unable to walk, let alone ride. The MX community is really getting behind the cause though and gave him some of the loudest cheers of the day as he progressed around the track. There was also an auction raising money for him and various donations by the MX companies. I’m sure he really appreciates everything that’s being done, and I definitely wish him all the best in his recovery.
OK… race time.

Lites Class – Race 1

The battle for the win didn’t last very long in this race, Michael Willard got the holeshot but RV soon got around him and proceeded to walk away with the victory. BT was second the entire race but could make no impact on RV’s lead, this was surprising as insider information had tipped BT to really dominant in the sand as he had been used to riding it when he did the World GPs. This wasn’t the case though, although he did finish a long way ahead of the 3rd placed rider.
This is where the real battle took place as Grant and Dungey went at it. Grant who had the confidence of his first overall at High Point a fortnight ago had 3rd place for the entire 30mins but seemed to be getting noticeably tired as the minutes ticked by. Dungey sensed this and made a desperate charge as the +2 laps board came out. As the white flag came out, Dungey had yet to pass Grant, but it now looked inevitable. Sure enough, midway through the final lap Dungey made the pass and Grant just had no response. They finished the race a few seconds apart, both thoroughly knackered.
Lawrence, had another bad start and had to make his way through the pack. He ended up getting a comfortable 5th but it really would be good to see him get a holeshot and then running it with the big boys.

MX Class – Race 1

To the distain of a rather partisan crowd, JS got the holeshot and led for a lot of the race, RC was keeping a similar pace just behind in 2nd and the pair opened up a big margin over 3rd. With about 2/3 gone, RC made the move and overtook JS, it seemed as though JS had no response to the pass and so RC went on to win by a comfortable margin.
Grant Langston put a disappointing start to the season behind him with a hard fought 3rd place.
The usual suspects of Ferry, Millsaps and Windham all had indifferent races, Ferry’s bike went up in smoke whilst the other two struggled to get to grips with the conditions. This let some different riders get in the top 10 as Gavin Gracyk, Ryan Mills, Troy Adams and John Dowd all took advantage.

Lites Class – Race 2

In race 2 Dungey carried on his speed and took the holeshot ahead of BT and RV. However it didn’t take long for both of them to overtake him though as they started up another in-house battle. BT was never able to pull away from RV, and instead it was RV who closed and then passed BT. Just as he looked set for a 1-1 finish and his first overall of the season, he crashed in the tight and tricky hairpin section allowing BT and Dungey to go back around him. This gave BT all the impetuous he needed and even though RV went on a charge to re-take Dungey, he never got anywhere near the flying New Zealander who took his second overall win of the year with a 2-1. RV again getting the same points with 1-2 finishes but lost out on the tie-breaker.
Dungey held off the challenge of Grant for most of the race, and in the end it was Grant who lost his place as Lawrence got him near the end. This meant Dungey got 3rd overall, Lawrence 4th with Grant an unlucky 5th.

MX Class – Race 2

Just as in race 1, JS got the holeshot with RC 2nd. This lasted a lot shorter than race 1 and within a couple of laps RC had the victory sewn up. It really is surprising to see him so dominant over JS, especially after the recent couple of SX seasons where JS seems to have the edge in terms of speed.
Just as the crowd settled down for a processional race, something most unexpected happened… Langston started closing on JS. I don’t think anyone saw this coming, including JS as within a couple of laps Langston was right on JS’s back wheel. Then the unthinkable happened as the South African overtook JS! This must’ve stunned JS as it took a couple of laps before the status quo was resumed and he was back in his usuala 2nd position. Even then, Langston refused to give up and pressed JS right to the very end… hopefully this will be sign of things to come as when RC departs after Red Bud, the #1 spot could be very boring to watch.
Behind them, Ferry, Millsaps, Short and Windham were having the sort of battles that everyone wishes were for the lead. Still, the riding was pretty intense and by the end of the race they all looked pretty darn tired. Millsaps faded to back of this group having been in 4th at one stage. Ferry took this position with Short and Windham not too far behind him. Mike Alessi followed up from the 6th in Race 1 to record an 8th position and take 5th overall.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (138 points) Ben Townley (130/2 wins) Ryan Dungey (116) Josh Grant (112/1 win) Jason Lawrence (101) Thomas Hahn (74) Josh Hill (63) Broc Tickle (58) Jake Weimer (55) Matt Goerke (46)	Ricky Carmichael (147 points/3 wins) James Stewart (131) Grant Langston (101) Timmy Ferry (96) Andrew Short (93) Davi Millsaps (90) Kevin Windham (79) Mike Alessi (78) David Vuillemin (66) Michael Byrne (59)

Saturday

It started to get hot in Mack pretty early, much earlier than I wanted to get up anyway. I was aware that the Women’s MX Moto 1 was happening so headed off to the track. I missed them at Hangtown but wanted to see how they were, after all, racing is racing.
It seems Jessica Patterson is the RC of Women’s MX, she won the first moto in pretty convincing fashion, and later in the day, also won moto2 but the second race was a lot closer. There was also a secondary reason to check out the Women and was because Tarah Gieger was racing… no, not for that reason, although she is hot!.. but because she is going to become the first Woman to race in the MXoN this year. She had a 2-2 finish so together with Travis Pastrana and some other ‘normal’ rider, they should make Team Puerto Rico one to keep an eye on.

After the racing I met up with the RacerX guys, they were about to do some videoing so I joined Jason Weigandt (Weege), Rob and Matt as they went around the Pits. Weege was going around pretending it was the Des Nations today, asking DV about the French support. He then asked BT and Grant Langston about how well Team Australia would do, when together with Chad Reed. It was all done in good humour as of course BT is a Kiwi and Langston is from South Africa. I think it played on the fact that American’s can’t tell the difference between the accents… hey… who am I to say that though?!? ;)
We also looked for Chad Reed for his input, but unsurprisingly he was keeping himself to himself. Weege also did a piece with the bike sound-testing equipment, he tried to see if he could get his voice loud enough to become illegal… I’ll leave you to guess if he managed it or not.
The practices were almost ready so I left Weege and crew to finish off a couple of things. I’m sure they managed without me… just.

Nothing extraordinary happened in the Lites practice, RV set the fastest time with a whole host of riders not too far behind. However in the MX class, it was more noticeable by someone’s absence… Stewart’s. It took a couple of laps to spot it, but there was definitely no #7 out there. At the time I didn’t have a clue, and I think the announcers only gave a reason halfway through as well, although I could be wrong there. Apparently he just wanted to spend some more time with his Dad, it being Father’s Day tomorrow. This meant RC’s dominance became even more pronounced as he led the field by over 4 seconds.

With the practices over, I headed back to Mack for a well-deserved BBQ, for some reason it took a lot longer to light than usual but I was soon on my way to having a couple of tasty burgers. By that stage more of Russ’s friends had arrived so there was now about 8 of us. We were all having a good chinwag around the RVs when things started to get a bit rowdy in the field near ours. It seemed water was involved, and that, along with camera flashes was enough to get my attention. On arrival, I came across a 50ft piece of tarpaulin that was stretched out down the slope of the field with people sliding down it. Obviously that’s where the water came in, along with washing up liquid and pretty much any fluid that came to hand… it was actually pretty impressive how far they were going on this slippy-slide. At the top of the slide a decent amount of beads were being passed, so it made for a pretty enjoyable experience, hopefully this beads idea will catch on in England…

This all went on for a few hours, with the partying interspersed with Security visits to make sure everything was kept in order… ya, nice try… they did finally get a good enough reason to shut it down though as some people released a whole load of fireworks. This obviously didn’t go down too well with the crowd but it was effective enough, by this stage I was happy to call it a night, sleep was definitely needed.

Sunday

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wake up as early as Russ and his friends, they had to be ready for a meeting at 6am!!
When I did eventually make it into the Pits, the Pros were having the Prayer session. This is a feature that is performed in pretty much all American sports, but isn’t something that participants in English sports do. I left them to it and continued to walk around the pits. A couple of the riders were still in their rigs prepping the bikes, getting ready for the practices and waiting for the onrush of ‘Pit Pass Spectators’ who weren’t allowed in yet. This is my preferred time to be in the pits as you know the riders will be around and there isn’t the huge swarm of people yet. Also the riders are in ‘race’ mode rather than ‘I’ve got to sign 3000 autographs’ mode, so they don’t mind holding a conversation.
The practices were soon underway and the results were much like yesterdays. In the MX class RC led the way, but this time JS took part and got within a second… RV taking the Lites #1 gate pick.

With the practices completed, there was a little time before the races, it was then that I bumped into Jeff around by the announcers tower. He was someone who’d seen my trip on the internet and got in touch, pretty lucky to meet him though as the track had got really busy by this stage. We chatted until the races were almost ready to go, he had to head off and meet someone else so I went back to my spot on the fence. It may have been out in the sun but I could see pretty much the whole track from that position… more than any place at Southwick, anyway.

Lites Class – Race 1

Even though the inside gate had a significant advantage, Grant just managed to squeeze out RV for the holeshot. This didn’t last too long though as RV soon got past him and checked out. After only 1 lap he’d already pulled a 4 second lead over Grant and that was the closest anyone would get. BT managed to get around both J-Law and Grant to get second position which he maintained till the end. The other had a small battle for 3rd but J-Law soon got out in front for a podium finish. With all the passing at the front happening early, the only real action was watching Dungey make his way through the field, he’d got off to a bad start but by the end of the race had managed to get up to 5th.

MX Class – Race 1

JS took the holeshot and the win in Race 1, but this wasn’t the same kind of race as the Lites one. RC was pushing him the entire way when a rock came off the back of JS’s bike and broke a lens in RC’s goggles. He managed a couple of laps before discarding the goggles but his chances of overtaking JS were now gone. Both of them had put up a convincing gap over the 3rd placed rider Chad Reed, who was only running this National in preparation for the MXoN in September. Behind the Australian, Windham, Short and Ferry had been battling for the 4th spot with Red Dog eventually coming out on top, ahead of Short and then Windham. Last week’s star Langston, struggled to overcome a bad start and got 7th.

Lites Class – Race 2

Much like Race 1, RV checked out almost straight away, the holeshot was his and he never looked back. The others just had nothing for him as he put in the most dominating weekend of racing by anyone in the Lites class. BT again got an easy 2nd place but it was surprising how far behind RV he was, hopefully come September he will have sorted out any problems he has with the track and will give RV a run for his money.

Behind those two was where the real action took place as J-Law, Dungey and Grant went at it. It would take too long to describe the number of passes they each put on each other, as the positions swapped on practically every corner. In a clever move J-Law seemed to back off the other two and hopefully allow them to get tired fighting each other, it worked because a few laps later J-Law burst through them and got a few seconds ahead. Grant then dropped off and it was left to Dungey to chase. He tried valiantly but never quite got close enough, in the ended crashing down at the hairpin before Big Gulp. He was only down momentarily but it was the mistake J-Law needed to get his first overall podium finish of the year. Dungey got 4th overall with Grant 5th.

MX Class – Race 2

JS again got the better of RC for the holeshot and proceeded to lead the riders round, RC right on his tail. Reed and Ferry both got caught up in a first corner incident which left them both at the back of the field. Up front the battle for the lead was monumental, JS managing to somehow keep RC at bay whilst also putting in fast lap after fast lap. RC was trying everything but with the limited line choices there was only really one spot he could manage it. After several laps setting it up, including one where JS forced him off the track RC pounced as JS went slightly too wide and jumped up the inside. He never looked back and went on to get his 100th National win, much to the delight of the Budds crowd. Down the field Reed and Ferry were slicing their way through, eventually getting 4th and 8th respectively. Mike Alessi had his best race of the season and got a 5th placed finish for a 6th overall and Short followed up his 5th in race 1 with a 3rd to narrowly missed out on 3rd overall.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (188 points/1 win) Ben Townley (174/2 wins) Ryan Dungey (150) Josh Grant (146/1 win) Jason Lawrence (141) Josh Hill (90) Broc Tickle (80) Jake Weimer (78) Tommy Hahn (74) Matt Goerke (64)	Ricky Carmichael (194 points/4 wins) James Stewart (178) Andrew Short (129) Grant Langston (129) Tim Ferry (127) Mike Alessi (107) Kevin Windham (106) Davi Millsaps (102) David Vuillemin (87) Michael Byrne (80)

Saturday

A beautiful day met me as I woke this morning. I got out of Mack before it got too hot and headed into the pits again. Today was a complete transformation from yesterday as the pits were a hive of activity, all the factory rigs had arrived and were setting up. Its part of the reason I choose to arrive on Fridays, get in before the rush.

As I’m walking around the pits I bump into some familiar faces, the RacerX gang. Seems that the gang’s got slightly bigger, weird coincidence seeing as it will be RC’s last race for awhile….  Some of them were filming for the Pre-race show (others, I’m not so sure) so I went with them, Weege was now sporting a very fancy looking sling, and he was joined by a new co-presenter Sean, DC and the camera posse. DC said they were going to do a follow-up interview with me so I was happy (not that I’m vain, you understand).
Always interesting watching them do the filming, they have a plan, but they definitely aren’t afraid to improvise. Well, maybe its not improvisation… hard to tell with those guys. Still they took some footage of me ‘sleeping’ on the bleachers before my interview. Having now seen the pre-race show, you can see me standing near DC rocking out and also right at the end, after the credits in my own segment… I could get used to this…

Those guys had some other stuff to do so I left them to it, apparently they wanted to interview some riders or something!? Must be running out of ideas… I actually had somewhere to be as well as Chris, who had put me up in Illinois was coming to the race and I was meeting him by the RacerX booth. However as our arranged time came and went, he hadn’t showed, not too worry… our backup was to meet up on the hour until we both got there. Seeing as I now had about 50mins to kill I decided to check out the track, and just as I was about to do so, I bumped into Rupert who was doing the same. We both headed out to LaRocco’s Leap to see who out of the Lites riders would bust it out… unfortunately none of them seemed up for the challenge, well… none of them until right at the end J-Law decided enough was enough. He went right off the track at the bottom of the hill to extend his run-up and BAM!... finally I’d seen it performed. It was pretty awesome. He certainly made a few more friends in the crowd after doing that.

Of course pretty much all the riders in the MX class did the leap, although RC was having a whipping contest all on his own, I’m sure a few of the photogs filled up a memory card or two just in this practice session.
It was almost time to head back to RacerX again and sure enough, on arrival I saw Chris there. He said he had a few problems getting his pass sorted out, and also finding Mack. All was sorted out now though and we proceeded track-side. Chris goes to Red Bud every year but he was surprised how different the track looked. Seems they had re-modelled all of the bottom section of the track after the ski-jump. We had a look and took some photos, meeting up with Rupert again plus a couple of other people I’d met at previous tracks like Kurt who owns of the bikes they use for the legends parade (more on that later).

I headed back to Scott truck to get some refreshments, provided by Mr and Mrs Beevo (thank you kindly). Also in the truck was DC holding a very large trophy, on closer inspection it turns out this was the MXDN Trophy (someone put this in French for me). DC was in the process of filming an advertisement for the Des Nations, not sure where/when it will be shown, but make sure to catch it as it’s a very cool premise (I won’t spoil it though). Sad thing is that this is probably the closest a Brit will come to it, although I do think our boys will do well come September. Go Billy, Tommy and err James/Carl!!!

Later that evening we met up with Kurt again, he was actually parked only a few RVs down, also with Kurt were a couple of guys he met during the day, I can only remember one of their names (Craig) but they were all cool guys. We all had a couple of drinks before heading down to the track… we got kinda split up but the SX was good and the alcohol was flowing. They also got the Trophy Car out on the track tearing it up, looking a bit out of place but the power in that thing is pretty incredible.

We finally got a bit too cold and made our way back to the pits, unfortunately Chris had a lost a part of his hardcard and was getting hassled by security all-day… and all night it seemed as they refused to let us in. Thankfully we had a White Knight in the form of commentator Tim Cotter. I’d met Tim a couple of times at RacerX and also again at Snowshoe and when he says jump… well, you get the idea. Not only that but he was riding in a Mule so we had a lift to Mack. That wasn’t our first port of call though as instead we got off at a different RV, this time belonging to Ron Tishenor Snr. Not knowing my MX history too well, I wasn’t fully aware of my company but it turns out that Ron sold RC his very first trike. He also drinks regularly with Rick Carmichael Snr. Speaking of drinking… whilst in his company I had my first sip of proper American Moonshine, and well... it was definitely alcoholic.
I’m afraid that if my recollections were blurry before, I had no clue about the rest of the evening, fortunately it was pretty late so I think we just ended up going back to Mack to prepare for the racing tomorrow.

Sunday

The first few hours of this morning weren’t particularly pleasant. My head was banging! Not to mention the fact that I was thoroughly de-hydrated, it was not good. Drinking my body-weight in water was gradually doing the trick, and I did manage to scoff down a couple of breakfast rolls courtesy of the Beevo catering crew.
It wasn’t long before the practices started again, and the first thing that we noticed was that BT was out riding. It was surprising because he didn’t run the 2nd practice yesterday amidst rumours of appendicitis. Obviously this wasn’t the case, but at the same time its hard to believe whatever it was wouldn’t affect him throughout the day.
Also prominent was JS who had again decided to drop Saturday’s practice and only turn up on the Sunday. I can’t say that I like the decision, but at the same time… he does have the option and it does seem to be working for him. I just don’t like where this thing could lead, what if the entire top10 followed him and didn’t turn up on Sat… would leave a lot of supporters angry. Anyway, that debate is for a different place… I understand both POV but I still want him there on Sat.

With the practices over and RV and RC dominating their respective classes, we headed back to the pits for some rider spotting. It was there that Chris decided it was time I met Erin Bates (Thanks to Rupert for the picture). I’d mentioned it to him a couple of times, but I didn’t think he’d flag her down and tell her about my story. Still… I’m definitely glad it happened…

Some further wandering and we ran into Kurt again, he was getting ready for the Legends Parade lap with his 4 bikes. However he also needed a couple of pseudo-mechanics to help push the bikes to the start line, one of the easiest decisions of my life was to say “sure”. I got to push out Steve Lamson’s 1996 CR250… pretty sweet deal. Of course it meant I got to meet the guy. I also spoke to Chuck Sun and Broc Glover as they reunited again for the first time since High Point. They all really have a good time doing these laps, who wouldn’t love it… getting to ride in front of all those fans?!

Being part of the bike crew, I then got to walk around to the podium on the other side of the fences, another really cool deal. The fences were about 5 deep and I must admit, I did feel pretty important being on that side. As they all finished their laps, they rode up on the podium and Jeff Stanton was given the honour of unveiling the Michigan Mafia rock, the rock I was standing literally 1 foot away from. I’m sure I must be in thousands of pictures. With the ceremony ending, I got to walk back along the fence to the start again so that the riders could give the bikes back to their owners. It was a completely surreal 15 minutes of my life… one of those random events that just makes a trip like this all the more worthwhile… if I hadn’t met Kurt at High Point, I’d have never got the chance to do all that today.

It was now almost race time so me and Chris thanked Kurt before making our way to the bleachers by the ski-jump. I think offered the best overall spot for watching the entire South section of the track, obviously this meant that LaRocco’s Leap was not in sight, but there are pros and cons with every position.

Lites Class – Race 1

Josh Grant continued his good form with another holeshot here but his lead didn’t last too long. BT quickly overtook Grant and seemed to showing now signs of any lingering stomach problems from yesterday. This was good news for the race fans as with Villopoto just behind him, it had all the makings of a classic. Unfortunately that never really materialised.

RV soon overtook BT and pulled to a 6 second lead, a gap that just wouldn’t budge no matter how hard BT tried. J-Law overcame an early crash to get back to 3rd although over 50 seconds behind the leading pair, Grant was 4th and Tommy Hahn riding well for 5th. The trouble was that there was no real racing going on. Each rider had a comfortable cushion both in front and behind and this meant no passing. It almost seemed like Dungey provides the link between riders to draw them closer to each other.

MX Class – Race 1

Hopefully the MX class would provide a bit more of a spectacle. And sure enough, right off the bat it did. Not only did Mike Alessi grab the holeshot, he also led for a couple of laps. I’m not sure when the last time anyone led a moto for a couple of laps when RC and JS were not on the ground, but it certainly made things interesting.

Obviously they did both overtake Alessi, first JS and then RC. This meant Alessi now had Langston and Ferry to contend with, a challenge he would’ve failed to cope with in the past. However in this race, he not only held them off… but forced them into making both into making mistakes that would end their chances. Alessi would take a deserved 3rd with Ferry 4th and Langston getting 5th.

Up front, the lead was changing hands a few times, not with sheer pace and power though, but through unusual mistakes by either rider. The last mistake being RC’s when he was in 2nd place anyway, the mistake costing him a chance to overtake JS. This gave JS another Moto win, but he’d still need to get another one to claim an overall. It wasn’t what the crowd had hoped for but it really upped the ante for RC to go out on a high.

--------------------------------------

In between the Motos we decided that our low down position in the bleachers wasn’t cutting it, so as people had gone to get food or whatever, we got places right on top. This now gave us spots overlooking the starting straight as well as the South section… sweet. Unfortunately we hadn’t taken into account the bees… yes, you heard me… bees. Not big ones by any means, but there were an awful lot of them. When we first got up there, they were all congregated on one spot right at the end of the bleachers, about 5-10 yards away from our seat, no bother whatsoever… that was until some jackass from security had a bright idea involving some fire extinguishers… yes, he thought that spraying these bees, (that weren’t actually bothering anyone, I hasten to add) they would… well, I don’t actually have a clue what he was thinking, or even if he was thinking. So yes, he gave the bees a quick dose of some gases which promptly got all bees away from their spot on the bleachers and… into the air. What a frickin’ genius.

So now we had bees flying all around us, and I’m not talking like 3 or 4… I mean thousands of the little buggers. And guess what, bees like yellow, and in particular… my yellow shirt. I got covered, I had them crawling everywhere on me, I looked like one of those bee-keepers… except without any of the protection. The dilemma was this, leave my awesome spot on the bleachers and risk getting stung a decent amount of times… or lose the spot, my dignity and any shred of MX-related pride…

Let me just tell you… the start of those next two races some of the best times I’ve had during a race, not only that but from our vantage point, we could see LaRocco’s Leap, only when the riders were in the air, mind, but still… I could still see it.

--------------------------------------

Anyway onto the race reports…

Lites Class – Race 2

After the slightly disappointing race 1, there was a certain amount of trepidation regarding race 2. RV was in pretty dominant form and unless BT and others could step it up, win 4 in a row was definitely on.

Things looked good when BT got the holeshot and moved out to an early lead. RV soon moved into second and looked to pass his teammate over LaRocco’s Leap but didn’t succeed with that attempt. He did look faster than BT though and it was more a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Sure enough lap 7 and RV made his move, taking the lead and with it his second overall in a row. BT needs to step it up if he wishes to remain a title threat. Elsewhere J-Law had some more bad luck when he crashed in the 3rd corner to go to dead last place, he showed immense speed to back to 6th place but it wouldn’t be enough to podium for the overall. That honour went to Josh Grant who had a fairly easy 3rd place over Jake Weimer, next was a surprisingly Andrew McFarlane who put away early season disappointment to get a well deserved 5th.

MX Class – Race 2

So this was it, would RC manage to go out on a high (at Red Bud at least) or would JS overcome his foe to record a famous victory.

Once again the limelight went to M. Alessi as he repeated his Moto 1 feat and not only got the holeshot but led for at least 1 lap. JS was right behind him though and knew he had to overtake quickly in order to make the most of RC’s poor start. Having got wheelspin on the concrete, RC could only come out of the first corner in 10th position and he was making usually hard work of getting through the field. Status quo wasn’t too far away though and by the end of lap 4 it was the JS/RC show once again.

Although RC had been gaining over 1 second a lap on JS he couldn’t get round the Kawasaki rider. In fact the longer it went on, the more likely it became that JS would hold on and record his first 1-1 of the season. That was until one of the ruttiest corners on the track caught JS out, leaving him with the bike vertical rather than the usual horizontal. RC didn’t look twice as he rounded the stranded JS and went on to get the win that the massive crowd had craved. JS held onto 2nd ahead of Alessi who had again held off Ferry to get a 3-3 performance and his first overall podium in the MX class.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (238 points/2 wins) Ben Townley (218/2 wins) Josh Grant (184/1 win) Jason Lawrence (176) Ryan Dungey (150) Jake Weimer (110) Josh Hill (105) Tommy Hahn (104) Broc Tickle (86) Kyle Chisholm (78)	Ricky Carmichael (241 points/5 wins) James Stewart (225) Tim Ferry (163) Andrew Short (160) Grant Langston (159) Mike Alessi (147) Kevin Windham (132) David Vullimen (110) Davi Millsaps (102) Michael Byrne (100)

Saturday

Just as I expected, the parking guys were out early trying to get everyone from this one field into the Pro Pit field, at least it became apparent why they didn’t let us in yesterday though – the factory rigs needed to get parked. These obviously take priority over the privateer guys so once all the big rigs had rolled in, we were allowed to take up our position. I have to admit, I was pretty chuffed at the position I was allotted, not only was it close to the track and vendors row, but it was also on a relatively flat bit of land. For breakfast I had a slice of the pizza from last evening’s dinner and damn, was it nice. I said all my hellos to various company people and made my way to U2 in the hope of seeing Joel… again, no luck… I was beginning to think he hadn’t made it…

After the loooong walk back I ran into the RacerX video crew as they were starting to get setup. It was quite fortunate really as it turns out that Weege had thought of another ‘spoof’ video for the weekend, á la the fake Des Nations one from a couple of weeks ago. I won’t go spoil the details of plot but I think it’s pretty funny and hopefully I’ll be starring in it… don’t worry, if I’m in it, I’ll make sure to post the link. That took a lot of the morning as not only was I filmed but also Josh Grant and Broc Hepler who was making a welcome return to the action after a long absence. Again, I won’t spoil the surprise but make sure you check out the video once it gets uploaded.

Once the filming was all done, it was time to watch the practices… although it’s during the Saturday practices that I try to get my photos done. This is why you won’t see a picture of James Stewart on my website from here on… as long as he doesn’t turn up on Sat, he will never get a photo taken by me. Sorry James, it’s your loss. With practices over, I wandered over to the Monster truck where I knew the RacerX guys would be working feverously to get their Pre-race show online. Just as I arrived, they were all heading over to the Parts Unlimited catering to get some food… being hungry I figured it would be a good idea to join them, and for the second night in a row I was treated to some delicious food – Steak, chicken, pasta, meatballs, shrimp and cookies for dessert… scrumptious.

That evening I wanted to check out the festivities over on U2, and in order to do this properly, I needed to drink… a lot. I’d heard lots and lots of stories about ‘Dilla in the “good ol’ days” with burning RVs, rolling beer kegs and just general drunken destruction. The first time I went over there was on the Monster rhino which saved my legs a trip, and just as a few of us were leaving, a couple of Pro riders jumped on the back as they also wanted to get in on the partying… I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to who those two riders were, but put it this way… one of them is exactly who you’d think it would be. As we approached the hill, we were given a severe warning by the security guard to turn around and go back to the Pro pits. It seems that a Rhino driving through might cause a bit too much ‘excitement’ amongst the natives who were already in high spirits. We decided we’d do a lap through and then head out, and to be honest the security team were right… there were numerous fires, and somehow a massive expanse had been cleared in a previously rammed field… something had obviously happened here.

Just as we were turning around, the Pro riders jumped out and headed into the crowds, not to be seen again until the races. We went back to the Monster truck and drunk a little more and before long an old drinking buddy turned up… TBone. It seems he was pitted in U2 and needed a ride back over there… I hopped in the Rhino again and went over to his FunMover. By the time we got there, the hill was eerily quiet, the whole place was on lockdown… it seemed you couldn’t move around without being questioned by security personnel. I stayed at his camp for a bit before I realised that I still had to get back to Mack… and there was no Rhino!

As I made my way back I must’ve been questioned by about 5 guards on quads with the conversation going something like this:

Guard: You aren’t supposed to be out at this time.
Me: I know, I’m heading back to the Pro pits now.
Guard: You realise that you should already be there?
Me: Yes. But seeing as I’m not, could I grab a lift?
Guard: No! Hurry up… I don’t want to see you again.
Me: I’d be lot quicker if I was on the back of…
Guard: *stares at me*
Me: Nevermind…

I did eventually get back to Mack and fell asleep pretty damn quickly, unsurprisingly.

Sunday

After the festivities of the night before, I was looking forward to seeing some racing. I made my way through the pits towards the track but at this time, the riders were having their prayer service and meeting. I popped into Scott truck for a spot of breakfast and in particular, a McBeevo Bagel. Sure enough, there were a few left so I dug in to one of his bacon variety. Also in the truck were Scott (Speed cameraman) and Erin Bates (Speed presenter), it seems Erin had fractured her finger in a wake-surfing accident. For those of you who aren’t aware of wake-surfing (I didn’t have a clue until she explained), it is basically like water-skiing with a boat and tow-rope but at certain stages, the rope gets tossed back and forth between the surfer and the boat driver, it was during the rope tossing that her finger got caught up and fractured… ouch!

It was now time for practice so I made my way to the track-side where I bumped into Rob (RacerX cameraman) who was waiting for the rest of the crew to turn up. For some reason, the practices seemed to starting a little earlier than at previous races and so a few of the assembled press were caught out. As we waited for them, first the Lites went out… then the MX class and then it happened. The funny thing was, we were actually discussing what the race would be like if Stewart wasn’t racing, how open it would make the field… literally as we finished the conversation, a mass of people began gathering around the fence in the turns before Gravity Cavity… JS had crashed… bad! He must have been down for about 5 minutes, with the Asterisk crew huddled around him. Not many people actually caught the crash on film (photo or video) as it was only the second lap of MX practice, and like I said, it started early. Still, I know Steve G from http://www.vitalmx.com has some pictures as I looked through them in the AMA Press tent on his laptop.

With the MX class now thrown wide-open, everyone in the press corp was in overdrive, trying to get pictures of the contenders, re-writing all their headlines, discussing the ramifications for the championship… a couple of times I found myself surrounded by Steve Bruhn (RacerX), Steve Cox (MXi), Matt Ware (RacerX), Mario Marini (GPs and AMA journalist) and Steve Lamson (MDK/Honda Team Manager) all discussing who would now win Unadilla, and indeed the championship. (Yes, I know I just name dropped big-time, but its true.)

With all the excitement I decided to grab my seat early and settle in for an afternoon of intense racing.

Lites Class – Race 1

Ryan Dungey proved to everyone that he was fit for racing by grabbing the holeshot ahead of BT. It took BT a couple of laps to get around him but once he had, he never looked back and although Dungey kept with him for a lot of the race, he was never under any serious pressure.

Behind them RV got 6th out of the gate before moving up the field in the first half a lap, but a mistake dropped him back all the places he had gained. Just as he worked his way back up to 4th he banged into the rear tyre of Broc Hepler who was making a welcome return. This put RV on the ground again but that wasn’t the major problem, during the incident a rock had punctured a hole in his radiator and in the end it forced him to retire from the race. Broc Hepler showed good speed to keep 3rd place ahead of J-Law who had moved his way through the pack to overtake both Grant and Hill.

MX Class – Race 1

With no JS, it really was a toss-up between about 8 riders. One of those was Mike Alessi who grabbed his 3rd holeshot in a row to lead the field round after lap 1. Right behind was K-Dub, followed a little way back by Tedesco and Short, with Millsaps, Langston and Ferry further back still.

Ferry eventually got into 3rd position but on the final lap, he made a mistake over a small tabletop to allow Langston and Tedesco to gain their places back. Short had slipped all the way back to 6th, in a disappointing race for him.

Out front, Alessi was holding off Windham and it seemed like he would manage his first victory in the MX class, it would have to happen on another day though as a small mistake allowed Windham through, much to the delight of the crowd.

Lites Class – Race 2

RV put the disappointment of his DNF behind him to not only get the holeshot, but to lead the entire race and level up the points with his teammate BT. This wouldn’t have been the case had BT last lap charge been successful, but Dungey managed to hold him for a 2-2 finish.

BT had earlier come back from a Lap 1 crash to overtake the rest of the field but he just ran out of laps to overtake the young Suzuki rider. This meant a 1-3 finish, which, as everyone in the sport is now aware beats a 2-2 finish *cough*.

Behind them J-Law had another quiet race but still managed to get another 4th place for a 3rd overall. Both the Yamaha riders, Hill and Hepler had some bad luck with Broc crashing in the first corner and starting off last, and Hill being unable to restart his bike whilst in 4th place.

MX Class – Race 2

There were still plenty of riders who could take the overall in this class, and when Millsaps came around for the holeshot, it looked like he was staking a claim. Unfortunately for him, Windham and Short were right behind him so he was never really in with a chance, he did still want to get the first victory though. Behind those 3 were Ferry, Tedesco and Alessi who had gone off the track at the end of Lap 1 to change his goggles.

It wasn’t long before the first lead change as Millsaps went down allowing Short to take the lead, Millsaps rejoined in 4th place, but his chance was over. It was about this time that Ferry started making his move, first setting his sights on Windham and then over-taking Short for the lead. That’s where he stayed for his first victory of the year. There wasn’t really much overtaking the rest of the race as everyone had settled into their positions, with Windham knowing that he just had to finish ahead of Alessi to take the overall.

So Short finished 2nd to take 3rd overall, Millsaps 4th, Tedesco 5th and Alessi unable to repeat his Red Bud performance to take 6th for a 4th overall.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ben Townley (263/3 wins) Ryan Villopoto (263 points/2 wins) Josh Grant (215/1 win) Jason Lawrence (212) Ryan Dungey (194) Jake Weimer (131) Josh Hill (121) Tommy Hahn (104) Andrew McFarlane (103) Broc Tickle (96)	Ricky Carmichael (241/5 wins) James Stewart (225) Tim Ferry (204/) Andrew Short (197) Grant Langston (190) Mike Alessi (184) Kevin Windham (177/1 win) David Vuillemin (135) Davi Millsaps (134) Michael Byrne (113)

Saturday

Well it wasn’t the heat that woke me, but someone banging on my door… apparently they were parking vertically down the field, not horizontally. No problem with that, I thought… I just wondered why the hell he had to do it at 5.30 in the morning!!!

I had no problem turning Mack 90 degrees, the trouble was that I now needed to put down my wooden ramps to level it up a bit. And with it being a grassy field, the ramps were slipping and not allowing me to actually drive on it. Under the watchful eye of an early-bird security guard, I had to use my ol’ noggin a bit… thankfully I’m a bright chap and took out some tent pegs, hitting them into the ground to prevent the ramps from sliding – the operation was a complete success, and I think even the security guard was impressed with my ingenuity.
I slept for a couple more hours before the heat got to me and I had to get up. After a quick brekkie, I was wandering around the track. Even at 9am it was hot, things did definitely not bode well for later…

I met up with the ScottUSA guys and hung in their nice air-conditioned truck, trying to build up the energy to walk up to the Monster trailer. I soon headed off though, and I won’t lie – it wasn’t easy. The altitude, heat and slippery gravel surface made the trek something a mountain goat would be fearful of, but I struggled onwards. Thankfully on arriving outside the trailer, Wes was putting drinks into the cool boxes. Amongst the many cans of Monster (obviously), Gatorade and a selection of Busch-produced beer there was a good amount of ice-cold water… sweet water.

There was another bonus awaiting me as coming out of the motorhome was Miss Motocross herself, Leticia Cline. Firstly I must apologise for lack of picture, my only excuse is that I must’ve been light-headed… I promise next week I’ll get a picture.

After recovering from the initial shock, I headed into the trailer where I was greeted by the usual RacerX crew of DC, Wes and Rob. However with Weege at a wedding, there was someone I hadn’t seen before – a Mr Kevin Kelly from DMXS Radio stardom. Normally I’d hang around and watch them doing a lot of their filming but they were on their way to the pits and seeing as I’d only just left there, I didn’t want to head back down. Instead I walked around the track, taking a few pictures… talking to a couple of the vendors I knew.

After completing a lap of the track and taking all the pictures of practice that I wanted, I headed back into the pits where I bumped into the RacerX guys again. They were filming segments for their Loretta Lynn’s show. It involved getting Pro riders to read paragraphs from the Rules and Regulation, when I joined them they had Jason Lawrence talking about “what NOT to do”… wonder why. They also had Matt Goerke reading another part, although due to a number of factors *cough* J-Law *cough* it took a bit longer to film his clip.

Today was also the 4th round of the Women’s MX tour, before this round, Jessica Patterson had been undefeated but a crash in the first corner of the first race caused her to DNF and allow Alisia Nix to take the win with Tarah Gieger in 2nd. Moto 2 was turning into a classic as Nix and Gieger were battling out for first place and the overall, however midway through the race, Nix went down hard giving Gieger her first victory of the year.

After the Women’s second race, it was almost time for dinner with Chris Becker and his friend George. I’d been in contact with Chris for a few weeks now and we had sorted out an arrangement where I’m been running a competition giving away his products. It was George who was picking me up from the track, but he was joined by his daughter Carly and niece Rachel. The four of us made it to the Mexican restaurant where we soon joined by Chris. I’m now getting used to a lot of the Mexican food and now know what some of the longer-named stuff is… well… considering I’d never had Mexican before this trip, anyway.  

All the food was awesome, although we did have problems eating the cheesey/meaty appetiser thing (official name) as it was so gooey. Trying to be sophisticated in front of two attractive ladies is pretty hard when you are using your fingers to break off the 8 inches of cheese trailing from your nacho. Still, I managed to pull it off… both the cheese and sophisticated look…

Just as dinner was ending, Chris got a message from a friend who was attending a bachelorette party (Hen party). I always thought they were strictly for women, but if the invite was there… I wasn’t going to turn it down. George and ladies couldn’t make it so we said our goodbyes and headed in the general direction of the Hyatt hotel, hitting a couple of bars along the way. Eventually we made it all the way to the top floor of the Hyatt where the bar was situated, and after a minute we spotted the group of women.
It didn’t take them long for them to spot that I was English… not quite the 1-syllable record, but it wasn’t far off. The drinks flowed fairly consistently for the remainder of the evening, taking its toll everyone.

The taxi journey was pretty eventful, after Chris got dropped off I realised that I didn’t really remember how to get to the track…I knew it was just off the 70, but had no idea what exit to take, or which roads I took after the exit. As I got chatting to the driver I decided that I was in fact a privateer rider for MDK Honda (can you guess who I am yet?). Its amazing how much stuff you can BS… although there was one truthful comment: I am called David.

We did eventually get back to the track, although it did take a long time, and we did have to loop around the 70 once after missing the right exit. The time had now gone 2am and with the certain heat/noise at about 7am… I was going to be tired tomorrow.

Sunday

As suspected it got loud and hot pretty damn early. I wasn’t feeling too hungover though so that was at least one positive. For breakfast I had a couple of McBeavo bagels although I think the second one was a mistake – it meant I had to perform a favour for Beavo… and this involved taking the money pouch from the ScottUSa truck at the bottom of the hill to the ScottUSA stall right up at the top of the hill. Damn my hunger.

Once I got to the top of the hill, I pretty much stayed there for the rest of the day helping them sell sunglasses. Well not all day… I did venture around the pits a couple of times and meet up with Chris who was setting up a stand for his Slide plates.

I also met up with Craig (golf/AMA) who was busy at work in the AMA timings booth. The amount of equipment they have in this port-a-cabin was quite surprising… there must have been at least 8 computers displaying various tables of data. Laptimes, race positions, overall positions… all sorts. It was also AC’d so I was quite envious.

To be honest though, it was so hot outside, I could barely stand to be around out there. I know there was hardly any humidity but seriously… 100+ is hotter than anything I get back in England and I’m just not used to it… especially with that altitude.

For the races I had decided to watch from on top of the RacerX booth, I knew it would be baking hot up there but it gave a good view of the track and I could see one of the big TVs which was showing live action.

Lites Class – Race 1

This race was the first time that the PC Monster Kawi rig was full as Metcalfe was finally making his return to action. However it was his teammate Gosselaar that took the holeshot. Not to be outshone, Metcalfe soon got around him and led for about 3 laps ahead of Grant and RV who was battling with the fourth member of the team, BT. During their battle BT made a mistake which sent him back to 10th position.

This left RV to work his way up to the front with impressive over-taking manoeuvres on both Grant and Metcalfe. As he tried to keep RV in sight, Metcalfe went down allowing Grant and Dungey through. BT was now charging through the pack quickly getting past all the riders ahead of him, except for RV. As the race was drawing to a close BT was just too far away, and even though he set the fastest lap of the Moto, it wasn’t enough.

In the end Metcalfe rode well for 5th with Dungey 4th and Grant 5th. In a disappointing Moto for the Yamaha’s, JLaw finished 7th, Hepler 11th and Hill 32nd.

MX Class – Race 1

All the pre-race discussion was about JS’s condition, and how would it affect him for this weekend. Within one turn, all questions seemed to be answered as JS got the holeshot ahead of Honda’s Davi Millsaps. He then began opening up a couple of seconds lead over local-boy Andrew Short who had squeezed past Millsaps on turn 2. It looked like the race was done at this point, with the only battle being the one for 2nd.

A mistake by Short had let Millsaps back into second place and strangely… it looked like he was closing in on JS. After a couple of laps of closing in, Millsaps made a pass stick, much to the delight of crowd. Soon after Short followed his teammate around JS to take 2nd place, unfortunately for both him and the crowd he didn’t have enough laps to catch Millsaps. JS hadn’t finished dropping down the field though as Mike Alessi capitalised on his deteriorating condition and got another podium place. In a performance that would cost him a chance at the overall, Tim Ferry crashed a couple of times to get 11th. It would be Millsaps’ first ever Moto win and would give him a great chance of an overall victory.

Lites Class – Race 2

With RV now having the points lead, BT needed to step it up so that he wasn’t too far behind going into ‘Area 51’. It didn’t look good for him though as RV took the holeshot although BT wasn’t too far behind. As the two began leaving the field behind, RV was looking comfortable, which made the next 2 laps even more strange. In the same corner in consecutive laps, the young Kawi rider went down, the first time allowing BT to go through and open up an 8 second lead, the second time giving Grant a chance to experience 2nd place. That didn’t last for long though as RV soon got by, the chance of a win was gone though as BT had a commanding lead.

JLaw had battled through the field and eventually also got around Grant to finish 3rd, Grant maintained 4th ahead of Metcalfe who impressed with 5th in both Motos. BT grabbed the overallIt really was a good day to be on the PC bike as each of their riders held the lead at some stage of the day, and 3 of their 4 riders finished in the top 5 overall.

--------------------------------------

OK, so race 2… I could easily write a whole essay on this race alone but it still wouldn’t do it justice. You really need to see this race on TV… in its entirety. Although even that won’t be as good as being one of the 17,000 people sweating profusely trackside.

--------------------------------------

MX Class – Race 2

Millsaps got revenge on JS by grabbing the holeshot over the Kawi rider, who was followed around turn 1 by Short and Mike Alessi. These four opened up a gap over the rest of the field which included Tedesco and Ferry.
Within a few laps JS had overtaken Millsaps but the rest of leading group were all still there. Behind them, Tedesco and Ferry had broken away from the field and were gradually closing the gap on the top 4. Millsaps continued to drop further and further back after letting the lead slip and with it, his chance of an overall.

Even though JS had the lead, he was unable to pull away and with Alessi now in 2nd after overtaking Short it looked as though the young KTM rider would grab the win. Somehow JS held him off again and again as Alessi just could not make a pass stick. By this stage Tedesco and Ferry had caught up with them all and there was a 5-man freight train going around the track.

As Tedesco pushed for 3rd, he went down in one of the slow hairpins, leaving the group at 4. Short was dropping back and Ferry soon got past the local rider. This left the young duo up front as the only people who could stop Ferry recording consecutive Moto 2 wins. Alessi gave it everything he had for first, but it wasn’t to be enough, soon he tired allowing Ferry to get 2nd position with his teammate ahead. As the race neared the end, a final push by Red Dog gave him the #1 and another victory… JS held onto second ahead of Alessi and then Short. This meant we had a 3-way tie for the overall as Short had a 2-4, Alessi a 3-3 and JS a 4-2, the second Moto being more important, thus giving JS a completely unexpected victory.

In the press conference afterwards all 3 of those guys were struggling to recover from such a performance, Alessi especially, having problems walking and breathing. After seeing him a fair amount this year, I can’t help but be impressed with how he is riding and acting.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ben Townley (310 points/4 wins) Ryan Villopoto (310/2 wins) Josh Grant (253/1 win) Jason Lawrence (246) Ryan Dungey (212) Jake Weimer (141) Tommy Hahn (129) Andrew McFarlane (128) Josh Hill (121) Kyle Chisholm (111)	James Stewart (265 points/1 win) Ricky Carmichael (241/5 wins) Tim Ferry (239) Andrew Short (237) Mike Alessi (224) Grant Langston (213) Kevin Windham (203/1 win) Davi Millsaps (172) David Vuillemin (164) Gavin Gracyk (129)

Saturday

Ok, so there was a Women’s race at 8am this morning and to be honest, I really couldn’t be bothered to watch it… that really is waaaay too early to expect anyone but the dedicated to attend. Apparently though, they put on a good show as Jessica Patterson just about won ahead of Satchwell. Later in the day Patterson would get her second win to take the overall. I’m afraid to say I didn’t watch the 2nd race either… not totally sure what I was doing that time.

When I did leave Mack, I caught up with the RacerX crew who were just about start filming for the pre-race show. Having little better to do, I joined them. I’m sure you’ve all seen the show now but it also attracted a decent crowd at the time… even the Alessi’s showed up near the end. I also got noticed by a couple of people, which is always nice… one of the people was English as well so we spoke about the home-country a bit.

With stand-up over, I wandered into the pits where all the teams were now setup… nothing seemed out of the ordinary, other than the fact that Broc Hepler was sporting some rather strange blue hair… turns out that he lost a bet with his mechanics that he would get an overall podium.

With the practices almost ready, I had somehow found myself as Rob’s (cameraman) assistant. It was cool though, I ended up walking around the start gate, in the mechanics area and around a lot of the track… inside the fencing though. All I had to do was carry his tripod and a little bit of ‘spotting’ for him. Basically I just told him who was coming up, but I only did this if he was busy preparing for a low-down shot, nothing too strenuous.

Figuring that I needed to take pictures for my website, I left Rob to video and went back to get my camera. For the next practices sessions I was walking around the track to the slower parts of the track… not having a fancy-dan camera means I can’t get the high-speed, mid-air shots that a lot of the pros get… no biggy, I’ve managed to get a few good shots every National.

With practices done, and the consolation and women’s race over (I think I was either in the Monster trailer, or at the ScottUSA stall) things were quietening down. With the ban on alcohol in the camping areas, there wasn’t a great deal going on. Fortunately there was a decent congregation of people around the Monster trailer again. The RacerX crew have to work late in order to the get the pre-race show online that evening so they were hanging around.
As the evening went on, Brett Metcalfe pulled up on his pit bike… giving the chance for a score to be settled.  During the pit bike national, rumours were flying around that the Monster pit bike wasn’t totally stock… with Metcalfe’s bone-stick pit bike to test against… a drag race was in order!
Two Monster employees lined up, but unfortunately they did not give RacerX enough time to get the cameras rolling… for what follows should really be watched, rather than read. As the two bikes shifted up, Metcalfe’s bike started to wheelie and the rider was unable to control it… sliding off the back before skidding along the grass on his ass. The bike flipped and rolled onwards eventually coming to a standstill. Almost the funniest part was Metcalfe’s girlfriend’s reaction when she noticed it was his bike that had the crash! Thankfully, both the rider and the bike escaped unhurt… but still… it was damn funny.

The rest of the evening was relatively uneventful… everyone going back to their respective camps, the campsite had a little going on… but that soon got shutdown. I can understand the reasoning for no alcohol, but really it just means the guys who do manage to sneak it in look a bit foolish.

Sunday

I woke early to a very misty morning but that didn’t stop myself from getting another bagel from Beavo… they seem to go pretty quickly on Sundays and I didn’t want to miss out. I did my usual tour of the pits before the masses got in, wished BT good luck (after yesterday’s practice times – he needed it).
As I was there, I ran into Chris Hay, a Scottish privateer who is trying to make his way in US MX. We had a good chat about the state of motocross, and how hard it is for a true privateer to “make it”… and a lot of other things. We also actually had a mutual friend in Rupert who Chris met last week so that gave us another subject. I do wish him all the best though… any Brit gets my support!

The rest of the morning I spent either at the ScottUSA stall helping to sell their fabulous sunglasses (goggles can be found at the nearby superstore rig) or at the Monster trailer seeing what RacerX were up to. It was during one of my many stints at the ScottUSa stall that I made a bold prediction that RV would only get a 3rd place in the second race… admittedly I thought that Hepler would be 2nd but I wasn’t as far off with that as you may think.

Anyway, as race time approached, I made my way to the hill just above the S-bend, from there I could just about see the bottom of Horsepower Hill, a lot of the middle section of the track all the way up to the finish line and a couple of jumps just before the start bend.

Lites Class – Race 1

Ryan Dungey took the holeshot ahead of the Monster Kawi trio of RV, BT and Metcalfe. It didn’t take too long for RV to take him, but the lap delay for BT was crucial as it allowed RV to get a 4 second lead. In the end, it may not have been so vital as RV continued to increase his lead, even after BT had passed Dungey. Together with Hepler and Metcalfe they had a pretty good battle for 3rd with the young Suzuki rider coming out on top.

It wasn’t really an exciting race to watch as a lot of the riders were too spread out. Still, there was Moto 2 which hopefully would hold the interest…

MX Class – Race 1

A seemingly healthy JS took a massive holeshot. As thoughts turned to a Stewart checkout, he crashed on the first lap in the S-bend below where I was standing, allowing Short, Windham and Ferry to go past him. As Jason Weigandt mentioned in the post-race show this only “delayed the inevitable” (wonder where he got that quote from?) as JS soon overtook those in front of him and proceeded to go on and win by a comfortable margin.

Windham continued to slip down the field as Langston overtook him for fourth and then Alessi getting him near the end of the race for 5th. Ferry took his time to get past Short but eventually did it with 2 laps remaining.

Lites Class – Race 2

Dungey again got the holeshot but this time it was massive, maybe due to the fact that RV had fallen over in the first bend. With all the main contenders at the front of the pack, they had to seize this opportunity to put time on RV.
BT and Hepler soon made their way past Dungey but neither could escape from the youngster. These 3 began moving away from the rest of the field, but the main drama was taking place further back… RV was storming through the field at a pace that would get him back to 5th by the end of lap 5.

With the gap between Grant in fourth and Dungey in third, it seemed that the few laps it took RV to get past would hinder his chances… not so, as to the delight of his home crowd, he was soon right on the tail of Dungey. Just as it seemed he was making his move to the front, he crashed coming down off a slippery tabletop losing a lot of the time he’d just made up.

As those 3 pulled away again, Hepler who’d lost his goggles a few laps earlier started to have problems with his bike smoking. This would eventually see him pull out from the race and leave him sporting the blue hair for another fortnight at least. The second crash had seemed to spur RV on even more and he began chasing Dungey again with even more gusto. With the laps ticking down, it would be touch ‘n go if the Kawi rider would make it. On the final lap, RV made a couple of moves but neither of them would enough to overtake Dungey so the Suzuki rider got a second place.
With Hepler’s withdrawal it moved Grant into fourth and Metcalfe got another 5th place to add to the collection, his fourth in a row since the return from injury.

This meant BT now had a 2 point lead over his teammate with Grant, Lawrence (who a disappointing weekend) and Dungey separated by 32.

MX Class – Race 2

Just as the dust began to settle on that phenomenal Lites race, the MX class also had a similarly amazing start as JS went down in the first turn. This left Windham to lead round a pack of Langston, Millsaps, Short and Tedesco.
K-Dub soon let the lead slip to the South-African who proceeded to leave the chasing pack to fight it out amongst themselves. Short soon overtook both Honda colleagues with Ferry overtaking just Millsaps. As expected JS was making speedy progress in getting back to the front, soon right on the back of Ferry and Short. Within a lap he was in 3rd but there didn’t seem to be enough time to catch Langston. He also seemed to settle for the 3rd place as his laptimes slowed… however just as the race was winding down, Stewart went over a rock which caused him to crash and dislocate his knee. By all account it was able to get popped back in almost immediately, but that leaves serious doubt over a championship campaign that many thought he would dominate.

The crowd, still reeling from Stewart’s departure then witnessed one of the stranger moments of the season as Windham, who had a comfortable cushion over Ferry in 3rd, pulled over to finish the race… on the white flag! Ferry took full advantage of this significant change as it now meant that he would take the overall win, something he has deserved from the previous rounds.

Eventually Short took fourth ahead of 2008 teammates Vuillemin and a charging Alessi who recovered from a first-lap crash to get back to 6th place. This meant Short finished 3rd overall behind Langston, with Windham 4th and Alessi 5th.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ben Townley (357 points/5 wins) Ryan Villopoto (355/2 wins) Josh Grant (286/1win) Jason Lawrence (258) Ryan Dungey (254) Jake Weimer (162) Tommy Hahn (141) Andrew McFarlane (132) Josh Hill (128) Broc Tickle (127)	James Stewart (290 points/1 win) Tim Ferry (283/1 win) Andrew Short (275) Grant Langston (256) Mike Alessi (254) Ricky Carmichael (241/5 wins) Kevin Windham (238/1 win) David Vuillemin (192) Davi Millsaps (186) Michael Byrne (148)

Saturday

So there I am, peacefully snoozing away… when my world gets blown apart! The flap on Mack’s roof gets flung open, a bucket load of rain pours down onto me, a lightning bolt lights up the sky, and a clap of thunder pretty much deafens me. This wasn’t good…
The flap on the roof just wouldn’t sit still… every 5 minutes it would open up and give me a darn good drenching. It wasn’t the greatest night’s sleep in the world, I’ll be honest.

The walk to the pits was like visiting a bomb site… there was rubbish everywhere, trash cans overturned, easy-ups definitely not ‘up’ anymore… in fact most of them didn’t even have any canopy left. The Vendors was hit especially hard, all 3 of the ScottUSA easy-ups were down and in fact only one was left standing on the entire row.
I soon met up with the RacerX film crew around the pits where there was a certain amount of intrigue… there were rumours that Stewart wouldn’t just be out for this race (a big deal in itself) but that he would be out for 4 months! That would mean that the title would be between Tim Ferry, Andrew Short, Grant Langston and Mike Alessi… anyone guess this at the start of the year? Nah… thought not.

So the plan was to now interview all these contenders and see if at any stage during the season, they had left points on the track, or would’ve changed anything. Of course they all gave the usual “I did everything possible this year”… all except for Windham, who I gave the honest truth that he wished he had tried harder at the beginning of the year… it was surprising to hear him being like that… then again, this was probably his only chance at a title… without either RC or Stewart… and he knew it.

The overnight rain, together with another shower had turned the track into a complete bog, so it was of no real surprise to hear that the first practice session had been cancelled.
This just gave more time to the guys to try and get an official statement from Kawasaki, something that really shouldn’t be too hard. I mean, what other sport would not give out ANYTHING for over two weeks, regarding the one of the sports top athletes? It’s a crazy situation…

When the second practice came around, I was about to take up my position around the track to take some pictures when Ainslee pulled up in the Rhino again. I now had my own chauffeur to take me around the track, letting me get out when I needed to take a shot. I could get used to this… It was also a lot of fun razzing the mud trails around the track, although a couple of people weren’t too happy with the situation. Pffftt jealousy…
When all the racing was done and dusted, all the RacerX guys go to the Monster Energy trailer to get the pre-race show… oh, and we were joined by Leticia.

She had returned from a Maxim photoshoot in New Orleans, with a whole load of interesting photos… probably sounds like I’m sucking up, but she is a pretty cool lass… and those photos… WOW!!!
It was good though, a lot of good motocross talk, and other subjects were covered during the editing, I’m not sure it helped Wes do his job… but still. It turned out ok.

After a good few hours of BS-ing, they were all heading home… I began to make my way back to ScottUSA when I was joined by a couple of the Mototees workers – Shannon and Jen. They were on their way to get a toy truck signed by RC… having nothing better to do, I joined them. RC was chilling with a few of his friends/industry people in Mitch’s PC Kawasaki rig… he was only too happy to do it – what a guy.

After getting him to sign it, we were joined by Wes who was going back to the trailer to watch a DVD… this didn’t seem like a bad plan, even though they were holding the concert again tonight. In hindsight… I am sooooo glad that I chose the DVD option.

After about 30mins of watching ‘Joe Dirt’ (a film I’d never even heard of before, let alone seen) the storm began to start, rain was lashing down, thunder was clapping and lightning was errr lighting up the sky. Unfortunately for Wes, this meant things needed to be nailed down and fast! 5mins after he ventured out… the door opened with Wes calling out “Honey, I’m home…” it was hilarious... All his clothes were skintight-wet, his hair was flat to his head… definitely not a pleasant sight really.

So now it was just a case of waiting out the storm, apparently it had taken out the phone signal so Jen and Shannon had no contact with the outside world – we were stranded. Wasn’t quite a desert island situation… we had food, electricity, a TV and a DVD player, it was pretty good really.

Eventually the rain ceased allowing us all to venture back to our homes, I’d made provisional plans to stay in the trailer, which apparently Leticia might well be using as well, but it didn’t change my mind.
The walk back was sloppy one, there were huge mud puddles everywhere and the lack of lighting really caused problems. There didn’t seem to be as much destruction as last night, but maybe that was because there was nothing left to destroy… would certainly be interesting to see how the track would hold up.

Sunday

To my surprise, when I awoke the next morning, it hardly looked like it had rained at all. Obviously though, the look of a field is slightly different from the conditions on the track. Apparently the track crew had been out there since 6am working on it, dicing it up, scraping all the sludge off the top… and boy, did it look like they did a good job. The morning practices were still a bit sloppy but you could the track was drying out nicely, and would be in almost perfect condition by the time the racing came around.

Due to the fact that both my batteries died when I was taking pictures of practice yesterday, I had to take some photos today. Everything I took can be found on my recently changed photos page.

Between the practices and the races I spent my time either at the Monster trailer, or at the ScottUSA stalls. The problem with being around the Monster trailer on race-day is that the place is like cattle market. To get into the trailer you have get past all the people after free Monster… surely it can’t be that bad, you are probably thinking. Well you’d be surprised… its normally 3 or 4 deep around the barriers with everyone screaming at us inside the ropes “CAN I HAVE A MONSTER!!!” You really have to see it to believe it, it is afterall – a $2 drink.

Finally though, the racing was ready to begin. I walked up to a spot near the Honda Racing Club VIP area in preparation for the last chance to see RC compete in a National… he’d have to wait though as first up were the Lites.

Lites Class – Race 1

When RV grabbed the holeshot, it looked like the race would be the usual “race 1” where RV dominated from the front with BT a few seconds behind him. However after a couple of laps, it became clear that RV wasn’t pulling away from the Kiwi, in fact the gap was closing. With about 5/6 laps gone, it looked as though RV was tired of having BT glued to his back tyre and let him go through. It was certainly a strange manoeuvre considering there were only 2pts between them at the start of the day. He later explained that he wanted to see what BT’s lines were so that he could learn and be better for Race 2. Either way, BT got a couple of seconds lead which would last all the way till the end.

Behind those two a pack of Grant, Hahn, Canard, Hepler and Metcalfe were battling it out. It didn’t take long for the pack to shrink though as both Canard (DNF) and Grant crashed (slipping back). Hahn would be in 3rd for most of the race but eventually Metcalfe made the pass with 3 laps remaining. This would make a Pro Circuit 1-2-3 for the first ever time in an AMA National.

MX Class – Race 1

With no Stewart racing, it would’ve taken a major shock for RC not to win the overall here… and sure enough, after a Kevin Windham holeshot, the #4 got out ahead and put on a masterclass display, taking the win by a very comfortable margin.

The real race though was behind him as 4 guys were now in the running for the championship. One of the guys – Ferry crashed in the first corner pile-up which left him a long way back. He eventually made it back to 8th place, but the gap at the top would be close as Short who was looking good in 2nd started to tire, eventually getting passed by another contender, Grant Langston. Mike Alessi, the 4th rider with a shot at the title got around Windham to finish in 4th. Even though Ferry now had the points lead, the gap between the 4 riders was a lot smaller now.

Lites Class – Race 2

Canard made a much better job of Race 2 as he took the holeshot before being quickly passed by BT and Metcalfe. RV was in 5th place but gradually made his way through the pack to get behind BT. Just as Race 1 is normally RV’s domain, Race 2 has been controlled by BT… not in this round though.

After a couple of attempts, RV would get the pass and move on his way to his first overall since Red Bud. BT would keep his 2pt lead, but the overalls are now just 5-3 in favour of the Kiwi.

Metcalfe again managed to get the 3rd place on the podium giving Mitch’s team a clean sweep in both motos. The impressive Canard took 4th place in his first AMA national and Davalos had his best finish of the year with a 7-5 for 4th overall.

MX Class – Race 2

Much to the delight of the crowd, RC took the holeshot in his final race of a long career… or so he thought. A nasty crash involving David Vuillemin caused a red flag and a restart. DV was eventually able to walk-off thanks to the Asterisk crew, but his place on the French MXDN team is now in doubt.

In the restart, privateer Gavin Grayck surprised Mike Alessi by sneaking inside him and grabbing the holeshot. The KTM rider soon got the pass though, with him being followed closely by Short and Langston. RC was a little way back at this stage but it didn’t take him long to get the lead and check-out. While in the first race he performed a variety of whips and salutes in final few laps, it seemed the occasional had overwhelmed him as he only did a couple of fist pumps for last laps of his AMA career. He did take the win though and that meant overall victory #150… a truly amazing feat.

Again the real battle was raging behind him as Short seemed to drop anchor allowing Langston, Alessi and even Tedesco through. Ferry got another bad start before working his way up to 6th, but it really wasn’t impressive riding by the joint championship leaders.

It seems while those two were struggling with the pressure, Langston and Alessi are making some moves and have the momentum with them. There will certainly be a few more twists and turns before the season is done, and maybe even Stewart will make a return… it seems only he knows that answer though.

--------------------------------------

After all the racing, and podium speeches came the press conference. Normally the AMA tent where they hold it is pretty empty… not so this time around… it was rammed. I think it was probably to do with the fact that it was RC’s last one… maybe.
Hearing him speak, it became clear that his is done with Motocross, there is no way he will run the remainder of the year, even if he could pretty easily win another title. It has certainly been a privilege to witness his last few races in person, and I am looking forward to watching for his final outdoor race at the Des Nations this September.

With the press conference completed I went back to the Monster trailer with the RacerX film crew, they still had the post-show to complete so I figured I’d hang around and ‘help’… after all, I was in no rush to leave the venue.
The only thing that really needed be sorted out was where they’d shoot the stand-ups for the show…after a brief conference, it was decided that in front of the Suzuki factory rig would be an ideal location.
Hopefully all of you have now seen the post-show, so I won’t go over it in detail, I just have to say that it was friggin’ hilarious to be around. Seeing all the racers just chilling out, having fun… tipping ice on Weege… that kinda thing. Its very rare to be able to see the top professionals in any sport just BS-ing like this.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ben Townley (404 points/5 wins) Ryan Villopoto (402/3 wins) Josh Grant (312/1 win) Ryan Dungey (267) Jason Lawrence (258) Jake Weimer (188) Tommy Hahn (159) Broc Tickle (148) Kyle Chisholm (142) Brett Metcalfe (136)	Tim Ferry (311 points/1 win) Andrew Short (311) Grant Langston (300) Mike Alessi (292) Ricky Carmichael (291/6 wins) James Stewart (290/1 win) Kevin Windham (254/1 win) David Vuillemin (207) Davi Millsaps (186) Michael Byrne (168)

Saturday

So after the hell, that was last night, I was happy to start a new day in the hope that it would offer me some better luck. As it turned out, the day was a lot better.
Literally as soon as I left Mack I ran into Ainslee who was heading for the ‘generator-running RV’ next to me, the occupants of which were apparently Pro riders Brad Kelly, Andy Sherman and WMA star Alisa Nix. I’d actually met these guys last race at Millville whilst being chauffeured around by Ainslee so I gave them some stick about all the noise they were making last night. Obviously it was all done with good humour…

I soon made my way to the Monster trailer where I was met by the usual RacerX crew… plus some additions. After last week where they had to scrape the barrel and get DC (joking) to film, this week they were inundated with cameramen (and having now seen the Pre/Post shows, they did a really good job.)

The first thing on the track in the morning were the Pro ATV practices… something that was met with mixed-reaction amongst the MX community. I know that it is a big deal for the ATV riders to get to race “on the big stage” but for the MX people, they kinda ruin the track… a lot.
Me, Wes and Robb (two Bs) went out to watch the practices and whilst standing there we were almost run-over (deliberately) by a certain Kiwi, BT. He was checking out the track conditions for his own practice later in the day…although to be honest, the track conditions would be completely changed by then. Still, it was cool to chat with him about everything even he did give me crap about wearing the “same” t-shirt every week.
Back in the Monster trailer, an argument was developing over who’d be filming the first ever Pro ATV National… “you cover it!”…“no, you cover it”… “I’m covering Stroupe, you’ll have to do it”. I’m only kidding… the ATVs are a great edition to a weekend already packed full of stunning MX action (oh, and thanks for letting me stay in your car park all week DC.)

It wasn’t long before the actual race took place, and whilst I have absolutely no idea who won it, or indeed who any of the competitors were… the racing was still pretty interesting. Certainly a lot different to MX anyway…
With the ATVs finally completed with a great deal of success (I appreciated the electricity and the desk as well DC) it was time for the real racing to begin… I mean… the MX racing to begin. Well, once they had finished all the grooming anyways. I did my usual routine of taking all my photos during the Saturday practices in order to leave the Sundays free for viewing, although whilst I was waiting I got cornered by Rob Buydos who wanted help with some of the Vintage bikes. In case he is reading this… I did wait around but when I saw you get your van stuck in the mud, I figured you’d be awhile. Being the generous guy that I am, I decided to help Mosher get his bikes down to the display instead.

One thing that was apparent during the day, was how empty the place was… I mean, I know they had to cancel Amateur Day on Friday due to all the bad weather but the place seemed eerily quiet. Normally its hard to find people out and about at a track due to the vast crowds but definitely not today. I saw Joel and Stacy a couple of times, Chris Smith, Mosher, Rupert and various RacerX staff members, I even had a couple of people recognise me as “that guy doing that trip”… made me feel like a full-blown celebrity. Even when I spoke to Jenn and Jess at the Mototees rig, I was able to speak to them for ages without anyone trying to buy anything. It was pretty sad really considering all the work that I know the Coombs and Racer Productions put into this event.

After all the practices were done it back to the Monster trailer for the usual bench-racing… who’s gonna do what, who ain’t gonna do anything and for what reason. Most of the talk was about whether RC would be turning up… plenty of rumours were flying around, and anyone who might’ve known, certainly wasn’t saying anything. Other subjects covered were Stroupe’s awesome #1 practice time, compared with Bower’s disappointing 46th place.
Once all the RacerX people left for their comfy hotel rooms, in preparations for this evening’s festivities. Unfortunately as I left the trailer, Toast was busy taking down the easy-ups and closing the awning – there had been a tornado warning!

I made my way up to Mack, where it began spitting with rain… this did not bode well for the track, or for my chances of getting out of the track on Sunday. Close by I noticed Mosher, Kardy, Rob and Chris having a few cold ones. Damn… cold ones… just reminded me that all my alcohol is probably 80F. I spent the rest of the evening under a $5000 Suzuki easy-up (the bike was free) just chatting and drinking with those guys… still wondering if RC would show up. As the night wore on the rain predictably got harder and there was plenty of lightning but the tornado never actually materialised. The ground was now pretty much pure mud so my walk back to Mack was gonna be dangerous… thankfully the torch on my phone enabled me to dodge the really bad spots.

Sunday

When I checked Mack’s status in the morning, it didn’t look good… I seemed to have sunk down a bit in the mud overnight… all I could do now was hope for really bright sunshine all-day long… oh… and a bulldozer.

The track was in a similarly awful state…sloppy mud all over the place. I really didn’t envy those women who had the task of having their race first thing in the morning. Due to the rain, the start got delayed but eventually they got underway. Making her Pro debut was the much publicised Ashley Fiolek, a 16-year old phenom who is profoundly deaf… and who rides a two-stroke 125! Basically the first race was what people in the industry call “a mudder”… a lot of the riders really struggled to stay upright. One rider who didn’t though was Sarah Whitmore as she won the race comfortably. Jessica Patterson wrapped up the Championship as her closest competitor, Tarah Gieger crashed out and Fiolek crashed a couple of times before finishing 6th.

The venue was getting a lot busier today, but definitely not up to the number that packed into the last round at Millville as much like yesterday, I seemed to be bumping into people all the time, and seeing as I really don’t have anything better to do, I always try to chat to the person. Well that wasn’t entirely true today as I’d been given the job by Wes to take notes during the races in order to make the post-show a little easier. So pen ‘n pad in hand, I headed off to a spot right at the start of the track.

Lites Class – Race 1

Just as the Lites was almost getting predictable with RV and BT out front dominating, along comes a race such as this one.
At first it looked like RV would win the holeshot by a good distance but as he rounded the corner, his young teammate Austin Stroupe shot by and sent him crashing to the ground. This in turned started a chain reaction that took out his other teammate BT, fellow youngster Trey Canard and a whole host of other riders. Now followed a mad scramble as each rider needed to get their bike vertical and started. BT rose first but couldn’t get it going until RV had departed 10 seconds earlier. They now had to make their way through as much of the field as possible.

Meanwhile at the front of the race Stroupe, Hepler and Hahn were pulling away. Just as he was about to complete his first lap of a Pro race, Stroupe fell, enabling local hero Hepler to lead the race. A lap later and he handed the lead to Hahn after a mistake on the same spot. It didn’t take him too long regain it though and once he did, he never looked back… taking his 5th win in a row at Steel City.

Down the field and the duo of RV and BT were flying with RV consistently staying 2 places ahead of the Kiwi. As the race was drawing to a close, BT made some uncharacteristic mistakes as he went down 2 times within a lap, this meant he had no chance of catching RV and had to settle for 6th place. RV on the other hand had got 3rd position but has his sights firmly set on Stroupe. With 1 lap remaining it was touch and go, would RV catch him…somehow the answer was ‘no’. It went down to the final corner, but the youngster held off the slightly older youngster.

MX Class – Race 1

Mike Alessi was able to grab the holeshot in race ahead of Kevin Windham and title-rival Grant Langston. These 3 very quickly pulled away from the rest of the field, a field that included the championship leaders Tim Ferry and Andrew Short. The start cost both of these riders as by the time they got up to full pace, the lead 3 had already disappeared. Eventually they would end up 4th and 5th, but in a series as tight as this one has turned out to be, those aren’t good enough.

Out front and Alessi was looking good to take victory, however Windham had other ideas as he put on a spurt that eventually rewarded him with the lead. In past rounds, this would’ve signalled a gradual decline from the KTM rider, but with the title on the line, this wasn’t an option. In 3rd, Langston had dropped a few seconds behind, but as the lead changed hands, it seemed to inspire the South-African. All 3 riders now closed up with Alessi soon grabbing the lead from Windham, a couple of laps later and it was GL’s chance to pass him in the same spot… however it didn’t quite go as smoothly as there was a mid-air collision between the two left Windham off the track and shaking his fist at the aptly titled ‘Zulu Warrior’. Windham rejoined the track after missing out a section but obviously had to let GL through. Replays later showed that some standing water caused GL to wobble on take-off and veer onto KW’s line.

That collision seemed to affect him though and it wasn’t long before his crashed on his own, giving KW 2nd place. As the laps wound down, GL put on one final successful charge and overtook KW near the end.

Lites Class – Race 2

Unlike race 1, this one had a familiar pattern as RV grabbed the holeshot and then checked out… he made it look that simple.

Behind him, teammates Townley and Metcalfe were battling it out with Hepler and Hahn for 2nd before BT crashed back to 9th. Unsurprisingly this didn’t last long and within a few laps he was back in 2nd, where he’d remain for the rest of the race.

Hepler had seen off Metcalfe early but after a crash, he then stalled the bike and was unable to get it going again, a year-long problem that Yamaha has faced. This, together with Hahn crashing hard meant that the Australian would get his 3rd podium of the year, and his 2nd OA.

Stroupe crashed on the first lap but his 12th place was still good enough for 4th overall, giving Monster PC Kawi a 1,2,3,4… completely unheard of.

MX Class – Race 2

It was a photo finish between Grayck and KW for the holeshot in race 2, although I think the official verdict is that KW got it. These 2, followed by GL and M.Alessi set the early pace with Short a little behind them and the other title contender Ferry going down in the first bend after a collision with Jeff Alessi. Eventually he’d make it back to 7th place, but his grip on the trophy has been severely loosened as he now sits in 3rd place.

Up front and Grayck had dropped back with Windham now having the lead ahead of GL and M.Alessi. It wasn’t before lap 10 before the action really started to kick in as Alessi made it round GL and started closing in on KW.

The positions switched around a bundle of times as the 2-lap board came out. KW who had led all the way up till lost the lead to GL who had overtaken Alessi a couple of times having come off the track a couple of laps previous. It was then down to see if Alessi would take KW and he actually managed to get about 1ft ahead in the last corner before hitting some boggy mud and losing momentum. The smaller-than-usual crowd certainly made enough noise during those few laps and I’m sure they’re all happy they saw this event.

This meant GL took the OA and the title points lead, with M.Alessi 2nd OA, 10 points back. The two leaders are now 2pts (Short) and 4pts (Ferry) back.

--------------------------------------

Rather than watch the second Women’s race which Patterson won, I sat in on the press conference… and not just that, but front row of the press conference as well. I had the important job of holding GuyB’s fancy tape-recorder and some other journo’s as well. I felt REALLY important now.

Once it was over, I spoke to BT again and he wished me all the best… especially in getting out of all the mud. I told him it was under control and that I’d got this far ok…

It was then just a case of helping them with the Post-race show, which involved deciphering my own notes and then vehemently sticking up for Tommy Hahn… although I’ve still to get my name on the credits for doing all this…
Having finally completed that, I headed back to Mack where I proceeded to keep my word to BT and drive out of there without any problems… or not. Yea… I got stuck… and if would’ve been really bad if I had turned up 10mins later as the bulldozer driver had almost finished for the day. Fortunately he dragged me out and I was on my way to Texas… yeeeeeehaaaaaaw

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (447 points/4 wins) Ben Townley (441/5 wins) Josh Grant (340/1 win) Jason Lawrence (277) Ryan Dungey (267) Jake Weimer (211) Tommy Hahn (177) Brett Metcalfe (169) Broc Tickle (164) Kyle Chisholm (151)	Grant Langston (347 points/1 win) Andrew Short (345) Tim Ferry (343/1 win) Mike Alessi (337) Kevin Windham (296/1 win) Ricky Carmichael (291/6 wins) James Stewart (290/1 win) David Vuillemin (207) Michael Byrne (192) Davi Millsaps (186)

Saturday

Waking up Saturday (far too early) I went over to the Monster trailer where the RacerX crew were already setting up things. Everything seemed normal except for the fact that there was only one host – DC. It was then that I found out that there would be a revolving host system, but not only that… I would be one of the hosts!!!

I was thrilled to be asked, not everyday you get asked to present in front of an estimate audience of ~10000 people. I think it went pretty well, but you can judge for yourself here: http://www.live.motocross.com/freestone_preshow.php.

After my standup we headed into the pits to find Kevin Windham. We also needed to find a kid to interview him. Luckily as we were hanging around the Sobe NoFear rig, a perfect candidate presented himself… a young by standing there with his Dad. I don’t think he could truly believe what DC was asking of him… interview Kevin Windham?! He actually did a really good job of it, and judging from his whole demeanour, will probably still be enjoying it for weeks to come. In fact when I saw him later in the day, he still had a massive smile on his face.

For the practices I managed to wander around the whole track finding some good sections where they hadn’t put up the sponsorship banners. These banners would cause problems for all amateur photographers tomorrow due to the fact that the fencing was a good 5 yards away from the track.

Even though I had some good spots, I didn’t feel as though I took many good action pictures… not entirely sure why, just one of those days I guess. Still, you can checkout my efforts here. And I did manage a few overview shots of the facility.

During the day I was invited to throw the pigskin around, which to everyone’s surprise… I wasn’t too shabby at. Thing is, as I explained to the guys I was throwing with, I actually played (American) football at University so it wasn’t completely alien for me.

That evening I hung around whilst the guys finished the Pre-show, wanting to see how my acting debut (as opposed to interviewee) went. As they departed I went for a couple more mule rides… this time with some NPG workers, including Matt (English). We visited the graveyard again which was a lot scarier in the dark… the main reason being that you couldn’t see all the spiders’ webs that were dotted around the place. I was avoiding them pretty well until finally my luck ran out… this led to a frantic thrashing of arms to try and rid myself of the invisible spider.

Sunday

As opposed to Saturday’s when I choose to wake up early, Sunday’s are kinda forced upon me as there is a lot more bike-revving and movement near to where I’m staying. It’s one of the downsides to getting parked so close. Still, at least it wasn’t as early as all the RacerX crew who had to get up at about 6am as they needed to come from Waco which was almost 70miles away.

My assignment was the same as last week – take notes for help with the post-show… but this would prove to be a much more difficult task due to the fact there was nowhere on the fencing where you could see the whole track. Seriously… the most you could see from one spot was probably a couple of turns, maximum. And even with my credential, I couldn’t get into the bleacher sections as they were for Toyota/ Yamaha/ Thor VIPs only… not me. This left me with one option… the commentary tower and even though I didn’t have a high enough # officially… I had the connections.

A few conversations later and I was a #8… sweet…but as it turned out, I didn’t even need it as there was absolutely no security guarding the building. Typical. Once in the building I noticed a good friend of mine was working hard in front of some computer screens – Craig (from golf). I chatted with him for a while, catching up with all things MX-related. Up a floor from Craig was the RacerX webcast room, and seeing as the room was reasonably empty and I could see a good amount of the track from here, this seemed like the perfect place to watch the racing… not only that but I’d actually be able to hear the webcast, something that I’d obviously never had a chance to listen to before.

Lites Class – Race 1

Hepler chose the inside gate and it seemed to work out as he stormed off with the holeshot ahead of Izzi, Grant, Villopoto and Stroupe. With RV in the lead pack, it was vital that BT didn’t let him get too far ahead, but his recent bout of crashing continued as he went down on the first lap again.

RV soon made light work of the riders ahead of him and checked out, continuing his dominating form. Further back, the two recently-turned-pros Izzi and Stroupe were having a battle royale for 3rd place. Soon though the Suzuki rider would pull off with bike problems leaving Stroupe to chase after Hepler. These two would then battle right till the end with the young Kawi rider over-taking on the last section of the last lap. Behind them Metcalfe would hold off Canard for 4th and BT would fight his way back to 6th place.

MX Class – Race 1

Andrew Short probably got the biggest holeshot of the year, and by the end of the lap was a staggering 12 seconds ahead. Behind him were the Alessi brothers, Antonio Balbi and Langston, with Ferry continuing his run of bad starts with 8th.

Mike soon got around his brother and Balbi before setting his sights on Short, however he was more in danger of being passed by Langston and sure enough GL got around the KTM rider. Ferry worked his way up the field to 4th place but there is no way he will get any higher whilst his starts are so bad.

Windham, who rode so well at Steel City struggled to maintain momentum, eventually getting passed by the rookie New Zealand rider, Cody Cooper.

Lites Class – Race 2

RV managed to get the holeshot ahead of young Honda rider Canard, Broc Hepler and BT. Canard soon dropped those 2 places and it was left up to BT to catch his teammate. On laps 3,4 and 5 the two PC Kawi riders put in a series of laps that would turn out to be 4 seconds faster than anything the MX class would run.

Something had to give, and it was the Kiwi who slowed, allowing RV to increase his points lead to 19points going into the final round. Behind those 2, Hepler was struggling to hold off Stroupe and although he lost the 3rd place, he soon got it back at Stroupe’s bike died on him. Metcalfe also crashed, in a bad couple of minutes for the PC Kawi team, allowing Canard and Davalos to get 4th and 5th place respectively.

Hepler’s ride finally broke up the PC Kawi stranglehold on the OA podiums as he got 2nd overall, with BT fortunate to get 3rd.

MX Class – Race 2

Short managed another holeshot and again pulled away to an 8 second lead ahead of Mike Alessi, K-Dub, Grayck, GL and Ferry. GL soon disposed of Windham and began closing on Alessi before taking 2nd place just before the sand whoops. Before he had a chance to start reeling in Short, the Honda rider crashed and slipped back to 3rd place. This signalled a complete loss of confidence and soon not only did Ferry manage to pass him, but Josh Hill also got around him on only his second ride of a 450. This was in part due to the fact that he was cutting out complete sections of markers on different areas of the track. It was soooo blatant up in the commentary tower that DC felt obliged to question Jimmy Button (Hill’s agent) during the webcast… obviously Jimmy remained unnerved.

Langston was now comfortably out in front but the real battle was for second where somehow, Alessi managed to hold off Ferry after taking an off-track excursion. It went right down to the wire with the KTM rider prevailing, just about maintaining his title chance.

So GL would get the OA ahead of Alessi with Short and Ferry a disappointing 3rd and 4th respectively.

--------------------------------------

This was the first Texas National in 20 years, and all in all, I think they did an excellent job. The Pro pits were awesome for teams and spectators, there were plenty of port-a-johns all around the track, including some air conditioned ones. Vendors row was spread out so that the lines were too bad anywhere. Parking seemed to be ok for most people, although it’s hard for me to comment too much.

The minus points of the track were that it was sooo hard to get a good viewing position. As it was such a flat track, the most you could see were a couple of corners (unless you were lucky enough to have a VIP pass or credentials. Even then, the PA system was way too loud and made the whole sand whoops section, painful to watch.
Regarding the actual track, it seemed like a lot of the Pros liked it, and weren’t complaining too much.

Obviously there a few kinks that needed ironing out, but overall I had a good time, but only because I was lucky enough to get a good view.

LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	MOTOCROSS SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (497 points/5 wins) Ben Townley (478/5 wins) Josh Grant (346/1 win) Jason Lawrence (277) Ryan Dungey (267) Jake Weimer (226) Brett Metcalfe (202) Tommy Hahn (202) Broc Tickle (189) Kyle Chisholm (176)	Grant Langston (394 points/2 wins) Andrew Short (386) Tim Ferry (381/1 win) Mike Alessi (379) Kevin Windham (322/1 win) Ricky Carmichael (291/6 wins) James Stewart (290/1 win) Michael Byrne (218) David Vuillemin (207) Ivan Tedesco (198)

Saturday

Waking up was quite a shock, before I remembered that we stayed over at the party house. We hung around a little bit, finishing off some of the left over food before departing for the track.

The drive took awhile as we had to stop off at a Walmart for some camera tapes and various other bits ‘n pieces. Arriving at the track it soon became obvious that this round would be a lot of hassle. For some reason Glen Helen implements a different system for press credentials and passes so getting Brent and Andrew into the track would now be a lot harder. Eventually Wes got permission from a head AMA guy to get a couple of press vests but it really shouldn’t have been this hard… it hadn’t at any of the previous rounds.

I didn’t actually get to see any of the track yesterday as I was literally in ‘n out... today though I finally managed to see Glen Helen in all its glory. It is MASSIVE. I don’t know whether it’s because I was comparing it to Freestone or not but all the hills and everything just seemed soooo much bigger. I had no problems walking around the Texas track but there is no way in hell I’d even consider walking a ¼ of the way around this facility.

As I began to wander around the track it soon became apparent that I was getting recognised by more people than I ever had at previous rounds… obviously nowhere near James Stewart levels (who actually made an appearance at the track) but it was more people than I ever thought would know/care about my trip. A couple of people were subtle about meeting me, others were less so (you know who you are!) Still, I did enjoy all the conversations I had with the various people.

I did my usual job of taking pictures during practice, even managing to walk all the way to the top of the hill with the USA flag on it… in flip-flops! (Mt St Helens I think) The views from up there were stunning, and I’m glad I took the effort to do it. It’s a track that has such a stigma regarding the uphills/downhills that my trip wouldn’t really have been complete if I hadn’t done it… almost like not watching someone triple LaRocco’s Leap.

Apart from all the hiking, I helped out with the RacerX crew as they went around the pits, interviewing all the main contenders. I also hung around that evening whilst they were doing the editing, bench-racing with them all about the possible outcomes of tomorrow.

That evening I checked out the nightlife around the amateur camping with Mort and a couple of other guys – it was surprisingly disappointing to be honest, although that maybe to do with the heavy police presence.

Sunday

In the morning I took another wander around the track as due to my delayed entry I felt as though I was behind on my usual routine… although in reality, other than watching the races… I don’t actually have anything to do…

I probably watched more of this Sunday practices than I had in the last 8 rounds… I wanted to check out the big triple over on the back-side of the track. I’d seen it a couple of times from a distance but not really up close. As with most of the track… it was huge. I don’t know how it compares to LaRocco’s Leap in distance terms but I think the feat is equally impressive. However the main action was actually taking place on the downhill jump, just before the finish straight-away. I must’ve seen about 10 guys come up short on what is a pretty ‘routine’ jump. I think they changed it overnight or something because there is no way there should’ve been that many crashes. Still, I don’t think anyone was too severely hurt.

After the practices were over, there was only one place to be – the Monster trailer. Not totally sure why they did it, but after witnessing the festivities… I don’t think anyone was complaining. They had shipped in a swimming pool and managed to fill it with 4 models… in bikinis. They also gave them pretty powerful water-guns to squirt passers-by… most entertaining. Obviously the RacerX guys in the trailer are Pros so they didn’t get distracted at all by the goings-on *cough*.

For lunch I was lucky enough to get hooked up by RacerX cameraman Robb Swiatek who snuck me into the Red Bull VIP area. It was a nice little area… free food, free alcohol, shade… the sort of thing that VIPs such as myself (uh huh) expect at a race track. I didn’t want to take too much advantage of all the stuff as there were probably some far more deserving folks out there so I ate a couple of burgers and went down to the spot I’d picked up to watch the race from.

As I got there, a load more people came up to me and chatted about my trip… it was then that I started to realise how close my trip was to the end. It was only a couple of weeks ago when I had 4 races left, and looking forward to all the new things I’d be doing… now I’ve got one race left and it’s a track I’ve already been to, driving along roads I’ve travelled before. To be honest, it got me kinda depressed… then someone came up to me and asked if it was ok to have their picture taken with me… with me!?! Then it struck me that although my trip is almost over, I’ve done sooo much this year and met sooo many people that there is no way I can be feeling bad about it. People everywhere are dreaming about doing a trip like… leaving the real-world and just travelling for 6 months watching MX… and I’ve been lucky (and I do mean lucky) enough to have done it.

I will do a proper ‘Thanks’ to everyone in a separate article but to everyone who I’ve met at the race track… I appreciate you coming up to me… certainly something I never imagined when I dreamed up this trip.

For now though, there were two Championships to decide and I needed to watch it unfold:

Lites Class – Race 1

It was only fitting that the two title contenders should be first across the white chalk line with RV just about grabbing the holeshot award. He lead didn’t last long though at BT passed him and opened up a couple of seconds gap.

Behind them Josh Grant was trying to put a disappointing run of results behind him and for the first few laps he actually stayed with the 2 PC riders, although it wouldn’t last long. On lap 6 he crashed hard, leaving him unconscious for a couple of minutes and completing the trio of riders (Lawrence and Dungey) who had promised so much early in the year, but just weren’t able to sustain the pace.

Mid-race and RV made the move to take BT after a slight mistake, it would prove to be enough though and eventually he would lead the Kiwi home by a few seconds. It was crucial that BT finished 2nd though as it still meant that the title would come down to the final race… basically he needed a Villopoto DNF… but there is always a chance on those PC bikes.

Behind those two, Metcalfe, Canard and Hepler were battling hard to finish out the year on the high, with the Australian taking the final podium spot.

MX Class – Race 1

There were all kind scoring permutations for this championship but basically, Langston had to finish down to the field to allow any of the other contenders a chance. Going around turn 1 and that was exactly how it looked. Short got the holeshot but soon dropped back to 4th, relinquishing the lead Mike Alessi. Behind him were Mike Brown, Kevin Windham and Tim Ferry, with Langston having a really bad start down in 8th.

It didn’t take long for the Zulu Warrior to latch onto the back of that lead pack and even though he was roughly 15 seconds off the lead… he never really looked in trouble. The order stayed the same for awhile before Ferry and then Windham crashed on consecutive laps coming down ‘Yamaha Hill’. What with Brown struggling to keep the pace up, GL slowly began moving up the field.

The Windham crash meant the pressure was off Alessi for awhile as previously he’d been right on the back tyre of the KTM rider, but now it was GL who was in second place and he knew that a #1 finish would all but seal the title.
Just like in the previous 4 rounds, he smoothly overtook Alessi and led for the remainder of the race. His first place would leave him 13 points clear of Andrew Short, with Alessi a couple back and Ferry slipping even more.

Lites Class – Race 2

With 22 points to make up, BT needed a win and hope something went wrong with RV’s bike. He did his part by grabbing the holeshot and then checking out. Unfortunately for the Kiwi, RV rode a consistent race, not taking any risks and cruising home in second place for his 2nd Outdoor National title.

Behind those two, the other PC Monster Kawi bikes battled it out for 3rd place with Metcalfe eventually getting the better of the youngster Stroupe. Hepler put in his best OA Glen Helen performance by gaining another 5th place.
The day did belong to RV though as in the last weeks, his performances have be almost perfect. He stepped it up when he needed to and BT just couldn’t match him.

That now left one final AMA moto to decide the MX Class…

MX Class – Race 2

Although it was tighter than the Lites championship, it was still GL’s title to lose. So when Alessi pulled a massive holeshot, it wasn’t as important as where GL was placed. Unfortunately for the young KTM rider, GL was in 3rd place behind Windham, with Short and Ferry further back.

Alessi tried to checkout but the veteran Windham (in possibly his last National) stayed right up there with him, eventually passing him and opening up a big gap. An Alessi mistake then allow GL into 2nd but that didn’t hold. GL knew the maths and let a storming Alessi back through, in a manoeuvre that would have podium implications. Those 2 points would give him 2nd OA in his first MX class season and a lot of belief when he rides for Suzuki next year.

It was a bad end to the year for Short would lose his place to Ferry in the race and drop him back to 3rd in the Championship, and also for Ferry who was joint point’s leader after Millville as he slipped down to 4th.

Even though GL only really stepped it up from Washougal onwards, his performances since Stewart went out have been considerably better than any of the title rivals and he does have the most OAs (behind RC).

I think he rode the best when it mattered, and that’s the crucial part – Short and Ferry both let the point’s lead slip and put in some disappointing rides when the pressure was on. Mike Alessi can be very happy with his results, he pushed right till the very end and was very unlucky to miss out on his first race OA in a couple of rounds. 2nd place is a fair result for him.

*Thanks to RacerX for the podium photos

FINAL LITES SERIES POINTS STANDINGS:	FINAL MX SERIES POINT STANDINGS:
Ryan Villopoto (544/ 5 Wins) Ben Townley (525/ 6 Wins) Josh Grant (346/ 1 Win) Jason Lawrence (277) Ryan Dungey (267) Jake Weimer (255) Brett Metcalfe (242) Tommy Hahn (220) Martin Davalos (203) Broc Tickle (201)	Grant Langston (439/ 3 Wins) Mike Alessi (423) Andrew Short (421) Tim Ferry (417/ 1 Win) Kevin Windham (363/ 1 Win) Ricky Carmichael (291/ 6 Wins) James Stewart (290/ 1 Win) Michael Byrne (230) Gavin Gracyk (218) David Vuillemin (207)

Text
about
Freestone