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DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS COLUMN BY STEVE MATTHES DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THOSE OF THE ENTIRE STAFF OF TRANSWORLD MOTOCROSS.
This week the travelling circus moved up the California coast and into the bay city of San Francisco. I’ve always liked this race, it’s a cool city with a lot of things to do in it. In the past I’ve visited Alcatraz, saw Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf and taken a trolley ride up and down the hills. When I was a mechanic, I never really took the time to smell the roses in all these cities but the last few years, I’ve been trying more and more to do stuff.
Now having said that, I didn’t do anything on this trip but see some great, great racing. Still, San Francisco is a cool city that I recommend visiting for anyone out there that’s wondering.
It’s always hit and miss with the weather at this time of the year up there but we all got lucky this weekend and the rains held off-although it was chilly at night. The conditions were pretty much perfect. The track is always short and it seems that there is less dirt used at this race than others. Who can forget the infamous Nick Wey quote about donating his gas card money to Dirt Wurx so they can “build more jumps”?
But this year’s track was pretty good, lap times were in the 53’s or so which is on par for other tracks. I remember that sometimes, they have been in the low 40’s which makes for a fourteen minute main event or whatever. The track this week didn’t have much to separate the guys but it got rough. Like national rough! The soil is loose which makes for braking bumps, ruts and other assorted troubles and adds in a bit more of a variable. So while the obstacles were easy (relatively speaking) the track was good.
On Friday night, there was a bomb dropped that defending champion James Stewart went under the knife for a wrist injury he suffered at Phoenix. It was obvious that he wasn’t 100% at Phoenix or A2 and it seems that the wrist was the problem. I found it interesting that Dr Author Ting did the surgery, he’s a bay area doctor and he’s worked on a ton of high profile athletes including motocrossers. In my travels, I’ve found some guys that swear by him and some that wouldn’t let him touch them ever again. He’s also certainly a bit controversial as you can read HERE and HERE.
So James Stewart is out for the foreseeable future as is Chad Reed and the supercross series is blown wide open. 2010 is going to see a brand-new first time champion no matter who wins it and that’s exciting.
Before the season, L&M Yamaha team manager Larry Brooks probably knew that he had a possible supercross champion under his tent, but I’m guessing that he just didn’t realize which rider it was.
So this is going to be the first time that my column doesn’t have the words “James Stewart” and “Chad Reed” in it and that feels weird, strange and good-all at the same time!
RV was great on Saturday night, I should've went to go talk to him and see if he was angry like usual. Maybe it's only with me because he's funny in Donn's videos.
Ryan Villopoto was the subject of much talk and speculation this season, as in what’s wrong with him and can he come back and assume the mantle of the next guy after the big two? To be sure, last week’s race in Anaheim wasn’t one of his shining moments as he just kind of rode around out there. This week he was a man on fire that got a little lucky but that was all because the Moto Gods were rewarding him for his hard work and speed.
He won his heat race and got off to a decent start in the main but it really wasn’t enough to battle points leader Ryan Dungey as Dungey grabbed the start (more on that later) and sprinted away. RV rounded the first lap in sixth and moved into third behind Josh Hill when the fireworks began. Hill and RV, state rivals and racing rivals, had a great race for second but the only problem with it was all the stopping, starting and stuffing was letting The Dunge get away. At this point, the Suzuki Ryan looking good for his third win in a row and a nice lead in the standings.
But it all went sideways for Dungey on lap 11 when he caught a rut wrong and flew off his bike in an ugly crash. It certainly was a surprise with the way Ryan had been riding but it goes to show you that we should never take a rider having a clean lap in supercross for granted. Anything can happen (ask Stewie) and the benefactor of Ryan’s crash was that the Kawasaki Ryan grabbed the lead and won his first race of the season.
Great to see and I can’t help but wonder if a couple of changes in RV’s life helped him get out of this slump (and I use the word slump lightly as he did have a podium two weeks ago-it’s just that he hadn’t shown us RV speed yet). The changes were that he got a new trainer and his parents came out to a race for the first time since last year’s Hangtown as they had a bit of a fallout last year.
It seems that RV either reacts to his life changes by winning races or maybe it’s just a complete coincidence that, last year, after dumping long-time trainer Randy Lawrence, hiring the now-deposed Jeff Spencer and seeing his long-time mechanic Jon Mitcheff get let go from Kawasaki, he won his first supercross in Seattle.
Probably complete co inky-dink but still kind of funny right?
Josh Hill almost won last weekend, he’s a bit shy in the fitness department right now (I feel his pain as I too am a “bit” shy of my ideal fighting weight) and that probably cost him at Anaheim. This week he was better and although I think he was holding up RV by simply not going as fast but once Ryan got in front of him, he seemed to learn a few things and picked it up. In the end it wasn’t enough to get back up to RV but his second place was well earned and an indication that he’s going to be a front-runner all season. And he will probably win his second career sx at some point. That’s three straight podiums for the Washington Wizard and his future is looking bright.
The mystery that is Davi Millsaps might be solved. I’m not real tight with him (as the numerous criticisms I’ve written directed at him, his training and other things don’t exactly make us buddies) but I did see him post on Twitter (Davi18) that he changed some things in his program and was hoping for some real results this weekend. I have to admit I was skeptical as how can anything you change really affect you a few days later? Up to now, his 9-9-10 finishes wasn’t cutting it for someone of his talent and support level and he was in real danger of losing his ride next season with the Red Bull Honda team.
Well shiver me timbers because whatever he changed in his program seemed to work as Davi was very fast this weekend in getting a third. The former San Fran winner obviously felt at home in the gravel, hung around just outside the lead and if anyone had made a mistake, he would’ve brought home the bacon. Great ride for Davi and that sound you heard was Team Honda exhaling.
Davi was real good this weekend and with a few breaks, might've won the whole shebang.
Jake Weimer had gone three for three this season in the 250 class and was just a man on a mission. It was going to take a perfect race by someone to beat the number 12 Pro Circuit rider and that’s exactly the kind of race that GEICO Honda’s Trey Canard rode.
It was perfect.
Canard got the holeshot with Jake right behind, the two best riders in the class both starting 1-2 for the first time this season and the race everyone wanted to see was on. As I said, Canard was absolutely flawless for fifteen laps and he took the win with a nothing-to-be-ashamed-about Jake Weimer in second.
Trey won his first race of the season, I'm sure he's going to be a threat the rest of the way now. Somewhere in the world, Jimmy Albertson was smiling.
Canard is battling an Achilles/ankle/leg type of injury but getting anyone to actually tell you what it is that hurts on them is the same as getting the directions to the hanger in Area 51 where the little green Martians are. No matter, he was awesome and this win has to give him some serious confidence and will set up a battle between these two the rest of the way. He’s sixteen points down to Weimer with four races remaining.
If those two are the top two riders in the west 250 class, than right behind them has to be Will Hahn as he had another great race. Will didn’t get the start that he or really anyone would want and came around after one lap in twelfth. That was where he was but in reality, he was like fifteenth by my count. The Texan put in some serious laps on a track that wasn’t easy to pass on and ended up fourth on the night. He’s gaining confidence each and every race, his brother Tommy told me that he’s doing less and being smart about training, riding and all that. Whatever it is he’s doing, it’s paying off.
Will also let me know that he wasn’t too happy with my prediction last week that Canard would have passed him had there been one more lap. He was smiling about it but I’m sure he meant it.
I got this text at 10:38AM on Saturday morning “Ryan will win” and it appears that the sender was some sort of soothsayer or something like that. His name? Tim Ferry. Say no more…
Last week I wrote that if you jump the triple on the very first lap of the very first practice, it shows that you’re a confident guy and a bad-ass. So we’re going to name it the “BAC- Bad-Ass Club” from here on out. The following riders are bad-asses and should not be messed with under any circumstances:
Max Anstie (on a 250F so he’s on top)
Ivan Tedesco
Josh Hill
Ryan Villopoto
Nick Wey
Kyle Chisholm
Justin Keeney
Casey Hinson
Andrew Short and Davi Millsaps also jumped one of the triples but I’m DQ’ing them because they rode press day. Short wasn’t happy with this move, he protested a bit but in the end realized that the ruling was correct.
Speaking of Short, he rode really, really well in the heat race on his way to a win over Dungey. It was an aggressive, attacking Andrew that we saw and I have to say, I wondered if San Fran was going to be his night. Dungey snuck up a few times but he couldn’t make the pass. He eventually hit eject in the air in the same spot as his main event crash but the heat race was Shorty’s the whole way.
Shorty's starting to get frustrated with his lack of podiums this season. If you watch his post race videos, his teeth are clenched more and more.
In the main event, he didn’t get the start that he needed and was back there with RV. Still, if RV can move to the front, the winner of the other heat could as well. Moving from seventh to fifth was good for the 29 but then stalling the 29 bike was not. It was uphill from there as Andrew ended up back in seventh and it took him all race to get back to fifth.
Ivan Tedesco wasn’t happy with Shorty’s pass on him and let him know after the race that it was now on but if IT9 was complaining about the pass that I saw, it didn’t look anything out of the ordinary for a supercross race. I’m going to keep an eye on these two this weekend and see if anything develops.
The bad news is Shorty’s finishes have been 4-5-4-5 so far this year but the good news is his heat race win bonus probably allowed him to buy a small car.
Still talking about Short, have you guys been watching his post-race video RECAPS on his website? Some pretty interesting stuff in there. I hope he keeps doing them and doesn’t lose interest when something shiny distracts him.
I was watching Dungey off the start the last two weekends and it’s uncanny how good he is at the most important part of the race. His reactions seem to be bunny-like (notice I didn’t say cat-like? That’s because I’ve seen some lazy, fat cats that don’t seem to be all that quick. I think the whole cat species have caught a break with this one, they’re not all amazing athletes. Bunnys however, are always amazing and quick) and when he comes out of the gate his bike just squats and goes forward. It’s amazing and I can’t see him not being out front the rest of the way.
Think about this as well, his teammate Austin Stroupe (who wasn’t there this weekend) has also been killing it on the starts lately. Maybe it’s a Suzuki thing?
Some people think Maeda is just a videographer now but he can still snap some pretty good shots here and there. I liked this one of Fabien Izoird.
I checked in with some of Dungey’s peeps on Monday and he’s not injured at all, nothing wrong but some soreness from his crash. Of course, again, remember the Area 51 comment when I say this. He got off real hard (and lucky) in both of his crashes on Saturday night.
Man, that gear that the Fox riders wear is so awesome. It’s incredible and you should all go out and buy some from BTOSports.com right HERE.
Seems that some folks in Morgan Hill didn’t appreciate the somewhat-unfair Fox-gear-is-ugly comments from last week but I’d just like to say that, again, I’m not the ideal consumer for it (36 years old and tubby) and that it’s quite possible I don’t know what in the hell I’m talking about. There are plenty of other guilty companies out there as well so maybe that’s what was unfair a bit.
Josh Hill looking snazzy in San Francisco. He's really been great this year.
One would think that Grant Langston, after being off for almost two years, would start off real rusty and then get better as the season went on but he seems to be doing the opposite. After a very impressive tenth in the opener, he’s regressed a bit in going 18-16 the last two races. Well, it got worse this week as GL8 didn’t make the main event and to be honest, didn’t look very good at any point. It wasn’t like he had bad luck, he just didn’t ride well. Anyways, still good to see him out there and hopefully soon he rides like he did at A1.
It’s cool to think about how good the production bikes are nowadays. Rock River Yamaha’s Kyle Chisholm missed round one when he was over in Germany racing but came back and scored a much unexpected eleventh at Phoenix.
In talking to Kyle about his season he told me that in Phoenix, his bike was stock except for a pipe (besides of course, the suspension). When I type stock, I mean stock handlebars and bar pad. I mean stock chain. For A2, they went big and threw on a new chain but again, his tenth was with a stock bike and a pipe.
Pretty cool and he was rewarded with a ride on the Motoconcepts Yamaha team for the rest of the season. Because of the weather, he wasn’t able to practice at all on the bike so he went into San Fran having never ridden his actual race bike. He was stressed about it being too fast and Enzo had to basically kind of guess at a suspension setting.
Early on it didn’t look like it was going to work as The Chiz was way back in the LCQ. He was so far back that I even Twittered that he was done. But then Manuel Rivas, all alone in a qualifying spot, decided to better himself and win the LCQ for some reason. He ran it in on the leader, Mike Sleeter, pretty hard a few times and almost crashed himself. Finally Sleeter went a bit high, got predictably plowed into and knocked down by the Spaniard.
A guy from Brazil sent me this mock-up of what Ferry's bike would've looked like had he ridden for Kawasaki this year. I will now go and slam a door on my head over and over.
This opened the door for The Chiz and he grabbed the final spot into the main event. He was actually in qualifying spot in the heat race but overshot the triple, blew his hand off the bars, stalled the bike and flew over the berm. Exciting! Once in the main, Kyle had another great race and got a twelfth. He told me that he got a couple of eighths last year but for some reason, he’s sticking out more (at least to me) than he did last year.
Well he did stick out at Salt Lake City but for a little different reasons…
Chisholm might have to hold down the 450 fort for a while on MC Yamaha as I hear through the grapevine that the other 450 rider Dan Reardon’s knee is worse than originally feared.
Speaking of knees, Matt Boni of the Hart & Huntington didn’t race at San Fran and that was good and bad I think. He’s been fast but the top privateer from last year had yet to qualify for a main event this year. During the week he had a nasty get-off at the practice track and hurt his knee which resulted in him missing San Fran and most likely San Diego as well. The good part of this that I spoke of is that this will allow Matt to push the ‘reset’ button on his season.
As is the case with all these teams nowadays, look for H&H to pick up another rider if Matt is out for any length of time. There has been some talk of Daniel McCoy coming back from Aussie to fill-in.
Here's Wey on Reed's bike which really is Ferry's bike. At least in my world. Nice to see Kawi bringing in another rider that I once tuned to greatness. Hey Fish, need Kelly Smith or Shuan Kalo's number?
Kevin Windham had the fast time of the day in practice but couldn’t translate that to any success in the main event. He did have a good joke on me when I walked by prior to the night show and KW asked me if I wanted to buy some works suspension. With the GEICO guys running stock components this year, Kevin said that he had some and would donate the money back to the team. I think, although I don’t know, this was a crack on me saying it was a cost-saving measure. Which I’ve been told it’s not.
Honda has some of the trickest stuff in the pits and this weekend they debuted something else that was cool. I call it a USO (for Unidentified Stationary Object) because I really don’t know what it does. It’s a wire going from the clutch lever to a little round canister on the bar, there’s a wire leading out of that thing and into the bike. So when you pull the clutch in, the wire activates something inside the canister to do something. Most likely the canister is round to take up the slack of the actual cable as it gets pulled in and then the ignition is activated with a different curve or pattern for whatever you want.
Here are the top twenty in each class:
250
1 38 Trey G Canard
2 12 Jake T Weimer
3 20 Broc Tickle- Finally got the podium he had deserved this season. Quiet third place but I’m sure he’ll take it.
4 49 Wil A Hahn
5 200 Cole Seely- Another good ride for the rider that Jeff Ward hand-picked for the team. He’s also got some nice jeans.
6 585 Travis A Baker -Very good this season, his finishes so far have been 20-11-9-6 so two more rounds and he should win! Check out this post race interview right HERE.
7 100 Joshua Hansen- Still waiting.
8 48 Max Anstie
9 801 Jeff Alessi
10 175 Phillip J Nicoletti-After missing last week, “Filthy” Phil was back to putting in some good rides. Did you know he’s sponsored by Alessi Racing?
11 410 Eric J Mccrummen – Makes Norcal proud with his ride from the last qualifying spot to this.
12 592 Jake M Canada-Jake did his country proud this week.
13 21 Blake Wharton- Blake cannot, just cannot, keep going through the LCQ’s. Three in four races is not a good recipe for success.
14 124 Ryan D Clark
15 52 Antonio Balbi- The Brazilian Bomber seems a little smoother this year. He’s not riding like a grenade with the pin pulled.
16 255 Daniel L Hendrix
17 126 Hunter Hewitt
18 102 Christopher Gosselaar- Lil Goose’s theme song? Simple Minds- “Alive and Kicking.”
19 251 Joshua M Clark North
20 758 Jason K Potter
450
1 2 Ryan D Villopoto
2 75 Joshua R Hill- The “R” in his middle name stands for Randy. Serious.
3 18 David D Millsaps
4 5 Ryan M Dungey
5 29 Andrew T Short
6 23 Justin D Brayton- His finishes this year? 8-8-6-6. Consistent!
7 9 Ivan Tedesco
8 27 Nicholas A Wey
9 10 Thomas K Hahn- I spoke with Hahn after the race for a bit, he’s frustrated a bit with his rides but I think he’s doing fine for his first full season. He thinks he’s doing crappy ‘cause he’s gotten some top fives before.
10 26 Michael Byrne
11 14 Kevin W Windham
12 55 Kyle P Chisholm
13 62 Jason W Thomas- This is what the rolling tank does, he gets crappy starts and goes the same speed every lap. This week he was seventeenth after lap 1 and he did a bunch of .56’s.
14 876 Cyrille Coulon-This guy travelled 3000 miles to race around with his buddy he sees every weekend in France.
15 877 Fabien Izoird
16 67 Chris Blose- Chris was up front for a bit before something happened to him. He’s been getting good starts.
17 921 Manuel Rivas
18 82 Jesse Casillas- Casillas has been close almost every week and finally, he gets in.
19 57 Jarred Jet Browne
20 644 Kyle D Partridge
I’m not sure what’s up with the people who are in charge of getting the riders pictures up in the AMA live timing and scoring but I think they need to get a little more updated. Hansen’s picture was from his Yamaha of Troy days in 2002 when he was “Little Hanny” and not “Lil Hanny”. Must be the same guys that are in charge of archiving results because those are ridiculous as well.
Parade lap was still really lame but Josh Hill saved it by doing some sick wheelies through the whoops. C’mon guys, get crazy-balls upside down!
After a couple of weeks of Angel Dogs at Anaheim Stadium, I sampled a Giants Dog in San Fran and I must say, it was better than the Orange County version. Charger Dog this weekend? I would it’s a strong possibility. Stay tuned to Twitter feed (Pulpmx) for the shootout results.
A while back I got an email from a long-time fan named Pat that really wanted to explore supercross behind the scenes and stay in the pits from dawn till dusk. So thanks to Feld for hooking me up with a VIP pass for Pat and he sent me an email this week saying he had the time of his life. He had purchased some tickets for the race and used the VIP pass to get in and out of the pits with ease. Thanks Feld!
That’s all I got this week, thanks for reading and see you in San Diego. I still don’t have a cool TWMX email but I think someone is working on it. For now, email me at steve@directmotocross and we can chat.
