Racerhead #51

First, I want to thank the several hundred people who have emailed me since my friend Donn at TWMX mentioned this 250-two-strokes-in-the-250-class rumor, then the EternalTwoStoke.com folks posted my email address…. Wow, that was a lot of mail, all positive, all helpful.

On another note, against my own better judgment, I agreed on Monday to pull out a paragraph from last week’s Racerhead in which Steve Matthes wrote, “Moto XXX as we know it is dead.” Jordan Burns, one of the team owners and a longtime friend of mine, was upset because they were trying to pull sponsors and things together for the very capable privateer Daniel Blair, who will now apparently be at the West Coast SX rounds for Moto XXX.

Since my decision to help the team by taking the unfortunate news out, there’s been a lot a sniping online from people who either don’t like Matthes’ style or don’t trust his reports. He does not deserve the criticism or the insults he’s getting as a result of his report and my action. I happen to both like his style and trust his reports, I just wanted to give Moto XXX a chance to make something happen and then announce their new deal on their own terms. Unfortunately, unless something extraordinary happens in the next 15 days, Moto XXX will not be the big-rig, multi-rider, full-season privateer juggernaut that it was just last season. No, it’s not dead, but it’s nowhere near what it’s been in recent years. It’s no ones fault but the economy and the high cost of racing at this level, and I hate that it’s happening to everyone from Moto XXX to Suzuki’s amateur support program.

Okay, here’s some good news in uncertain times: American Honda just posted their amateur contingency and support programs, and they are once again strong. That’s a big Merry Christmas from the Red Riders for everyone. Click here to check it out.

The FIM released some supplemental rules for the 2009 world championships, and a couple of them caught my eye. Remember when James Stewart got outside assistance at the MXoN when he could not get his bike started in the final moto after he crashed? That is now a no-no: “Marshals are not allowed to assist riders to re-start their motorcycles.”

Also, “Long hair must be contained within the helmet.” This one is most likely aimed at the girls in the FIM Women’s series, and it makes perfect sense to me, as a spinning wheel or sprocket could potentially be problematic and dangerous with any crash, though it would not in the NFL, where Pacific Islanders like Troy Polamalu are allowed to run their manes as long and fluffy as they want. They just have to remember that their hair is considered part of their uniform, and if they are tackled by it, it’s not a foul!

Vote for Erin Bates for Playboy's Sexiest Sportscaster for 2009.

Jennifer Hughes, Ryan’s much better half, dropped us a note and some very unique photos—for Southern California at least! “We heard it was snowing out at Rynoland, so we picked up the kids and headed out to Anza where our track is. It is 30 minutes east of Temecula and we had so much fun! It was dumping snow when we got there and even more when we left.”

The snow also consumed the practice tracks for the Alessi clan up in Victorville, as Mike told Eric Johnson in yesterday’s Racer X Online interview:

“It’s actually pretty bad. I’ve never actually seen it snow here in California. This is the first time, so it’s actually pretty amazing. There are six or seven inches of snow on the ground. It’s pretty deep, man!” Check out the whole interview HERE.

Mike handled it better than little brother Jeff, who managed to get his truck stuck in the driveway!

Tony Alessi, who sent us the very cool photo of his snow-covered track, dropped me a line to say that the track should be good to go for the weekend (barring another heavy snow) and that any pros who were rained out on their own tracks can come ride. Email him at ktmj@aol.com.

On one occasion last year, the Alessi practice track hosted enough riders for a supercross main event: Chad Reed, Josh Hill, Jason Lawrence and a host of others. Sounds like Victorville may be the place to be the week leading up to Anaheim 1.

And speaking of Anaheim, great tickets are still available at Tickermaster, or you can go visit www.supercrossonline.com.

Okay, we are all scared to death that the next motocross movie is going to be Supercross: The Movie Part 2 or Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle 2… But then there’s Winners Take All (which is still one of my all-time favorites) and that Motocrossed movie was actually pretty cute. Now comes High School Musical star Corbin Bleu in Freestyle, which, judging by the trailer here, doesn’t look half bad.

Here’s the thing: I have seen Corbin, a huge star to most of the 8-to-18-year-olds in the world, at lots of races in the last couple of years, along with his dad. He was at several SX rounds, the nationals, and even Loretta Lynn’s for a while. I don’t know that attendance alone gives him street cred, but every time I saw him, he was watching closely, cheering guys on, and really seemed to be a fan. Hopefully, this movie will bring us some new fans and more movie chances.

My old friend Warren Price is at it again, this time with a blog about his “deep throat” moment, discovering through a friend-to-remain-nameless that he should go ask American Honda factory rider and Team USA star Jim Gibson if he would be racing in Europe in 1983. Gibson was on the move, of course, getting ready to team up with Yamaha, which had world championship success the previous year by bringing another American—Danny “The Door” LaPorte—across the pond.

Ironically, this post goes up the day the real “Deep Throat” (the Watergate-related one, not the Linda Lovelace-related one) passed away at age 95. Mark Felt was the real name of the man who helped bring down the Nixon presidency in the early 1970s, and he was immortalized in the book and subsequent movie All the President’s Men. It was only a few years ago that the man who told Woodward & Bernstein to “follow the money” finally stepped forward and took credit for his actions, which had a huge effect on this nation.

Finally, it sounds like Robbie Reynard is going to be racing in Germany come January. Robbie is expected to ride the three-night Dortmund SX on January 9-11. RR, by the way, still holds an AMA record. FLASH TRIVIA: What is the record?

First correct call gets 2 pit passes to the SX or AMA National of their choice.

Malcolm looked very fast. Word has it that he is training a little and starting to take his racing as serious as his big brother. James and Kyle were all business with Aldon and James’ mechanic taking lap times for the riders.

In between motos it was off to the garage for the bikes to be tweaked and the track watered. As the riders rested and caught their breath, Aldon went over their lap times and talked about consistency and ways to lower the times. Rest was short and sweet and then it was back out to the track.

During the last set of motos I actually had to work a little. While Aldon filmed the riders for later studying, I had to take lap times. All I had to do was push a button on the stopwatch and relay the numbers to the mechanic, but somehow I was nervous. I felt like a part of the team for a few laps as I looked at the stopwatch and barked the numbers to the mechanic to relay to the pit board. Man, I could do this for a living! James was trying for his fastest times of the day and was just shy. I guess I should have hit the watch a little sooner to help him out. Man, I hope I wasn’t late on the trigger!

James was so damn fast. I have never seen a rider with as much confidence on a motorcycle as I saw in James yesterday. When he would stop and talk to Aldon, he was like, “Man, I really think I can quad that section and then triple over there, and hey can we get a water bottle holder put on my bike so I can take a drink over that jump.” He does stuff with the bike that just doesn’t seem possible.

After watching James ride (he was consistently 3 to 4 seconds faster than Kyle, and Kyle was flyin’ too), I can see a runaway season this year. The way he gets to practice and the facilities he has just isn’t fair to the rest of the riders. I guess that’s what you get when you are the fastest man in the world.

Big James didn’t say much but you can be sure he was the first to greet/interrogate me when I came through the gate. He was actually very nice and gave me a ride on the mule out to where the guys were, but he didn’t say much. Just dropped me off and was back to pushing dirt, rearranging gravel, and watering the track. I didn’t get to interview James as planned yesterday; he had to hurry up and get the Lamborghini (or was it the Ferrari?) to Orlando for some new wheels. Aldon took me on a tour of the compound, which is pretty impressive. The houses are modest and very nice, but in true motocross fashion, the garages are much bigger than the living quarters. James and his fiancee built a house right behind the house James grew up in.

Once James bugged out for the day I got to spend the rest of the time with Aldon. We talked about boring trainer stuff for a few hours, and we even went shopping for James’ birthday, which is on Sunday (he turns 23). What does a trainer get his rider who can’t find his wallet because he forgets which of his cars he drove last? Workout clothes, of course! James has invited me back today to sit down for an interview since he had to leave early yesterday. He certainly is a very nice kid with the confidence and drive to stay at the top of this sport for a very, very long time.

Sounds like it, Tim. Now here’s Steve Cox.

Last Tuesday, I literally drove through snow to go to the MCR MX team intro in Victorville, California. Since my wife is from there (she’s a high-desert hottie), usually when I head up there, it’s for family stuff that I normally go to begrudgingly. Originally, the intro was going to happen at the supercross track at Competitive Edge MX Park just a few miles up the road, but the Sunday and Monday prior brought extremely cold weather and snow to the area, so they moved it the Hilton Garden Inn.

It was actually a pretty cool event (no pun intended). The two team owners – Mike Genova and Andy James – are good friends and businessmen that always wanted to have a motocross team of their own, and now they do. MCR stands for Moto Concepts Racing. Genova owns a company called Leisure Concepts, which he says is the world’s largest spa accessory company, and Moto Concepts is a bit of a spin-off of that company. James owns a company called Northwest Steel Fabrication, which fabricates steel structures like bridges and buildings. They both hope to bring their business savvy to the moto world.

On board for 2009 are five-time French SX champ Ben Coisy, Aussie SX star Daniel McCoy and Cole Siebler on CRF450Rs, and Jeff Alessi on a CRF250R. Alessi will be riding the Lites West and then probably staying in the 250cc class outdoors, although that’s not a definite. All four riders are planning to ride the complete AMA National and Supercross Championships in 2009.

Moto Concepts is the major sponsor, although both Genova and James hope that changes by 2010 or sooner, once people see how well their team is run, and what kind of results they can pull down. Other sponsors include MDK Motorsports, FMF, Fox Racing Shox, Fly Racing, Pirelli, DeCal Works, Smooth Industries, Vortex, Alpinestars, Motion Pro, Utopia, Guts Factory Grip Seats, Boyesen, VP Racing Fuels, Sunline, TCR Wheel Lacing Specialists, RK Excel, Motorex and Gold Fren.

Last Saturday, Yamaha held a TT-R ride day at the Fox Design Center in Irvine, California. Warren Johnson from Fox was on hand, as well as Yamaha’s Tim Olson, who brought out the electric-start TT-Rs for the invitees to ride. They left out the TT-R230 this year, as the track was in the courtyard at the Fox building, and the 230 was deemed too big. However, the TT-R125, TT-R110 and TT-R50 were all on hand. I wasn’t planning on riding, but I was talked into it. The track was really fun, actually, and I only hit one fence. The 2009 TT-R125LE (big-wheel model) retails for $2999 this year, and TT-R125E retails for $2699, the TT-R110E for $1949, and TT-R50E for $1299. And as was already pointed out, they all feature electric starters, which is a fun feature.

Olson also didn’t seem to be planning to ride, until Johnson brought out a Ricky Carmichael helmet for him to wear. Then, Olson couldn’t resist. Even Cycle News’ Jean Turner was goaded into riding despite a hurt shoulder, although there was no such luck for Transworld’s Kyle Cowling. I thought I heard him say something along the lines of the bikes being too big for him….

The weather was nuts in California this week, making the guys who train in Florida look like geniuses. It snowed all over “sunny” southern California, and rained everywhere else. Sheena Schaefer, Brett Metcalfe’s fiancee, sent over a few photos showing what they were doing while the snow had basically shut down all of the tracks and Brett couldn’t ride. Check them out. The one photo looking over a lake, that’s Lake Elsinore! It’s just nuts to see snow that low in California. Metcalfe is back riding again after his ankle injury, too, but on the day Sheena snapped these photos, he was only riding sleds!

The weather made it tough for all of the California-based racers to practice, as Mike Alessi said in his interview. It’s especially hard, as Alessi points out, on riders who have been injured and need all the time they can get to get ready for the ‘09 season. Hopefully, the crazy weather clears up by A1, although I’m not sure we’ve ever had a snow race in supercross before….

(David Pingree pushes Steve out of the chair and starts typing)

While the rain out here makes it difficult to ride a supercross track, it does make for some of the best motocross riding all year. I had one of those amazing days this week with all of my Troy Lee Designs/Honda riders. We headed up into some secret hills to a secret spot and cut in what I believe to be one of the best natural terrain tracks I’ve made in years. Dunlop’s Jay Clark was there too, as was Factory Connection’s Trey Canard. It was epic. With Anaheim only a couple weeks away, all of the guys need to be riding supercross. So, like a whole bunch of other pro riders, my guys headed for the desert. There a track called Moto Land in Arizona that has a full-scale SX track and they are open for business. The folks in Casa Grande, AZ should do some autograph collecting this weekend.

Feel like a trip to Puerto Rico? I got this email from my buddy Gabby this week:

“Travis Pastrana & the Nitro Circus along with the MTV crew joins us in Puerto Rico in an event for the ages.We are having a SX track with a small oval car track inside, ready for some really tight racing (Nitro demolition derby) some freestyle by the man himself, and SX racing, all under the lights. The track was designed and built by the Professor Gary Bailey specially for TP. None other than David Bailey “The Icon” will be in the house along with his son Sean for his first off-shore SX race.”

For info or sponsorship contact Gabriel (Gabby) Catala: 787-627-0150 gcatala20@hotmail.com.

Might be fun.

If you were planning on attending the FMF Whiskey Tango ride day, well, you were disappointed this week. The snow in the area put the brakes on the Flying Machine Factory’s plans. But they have rescheduled for next Tuesday so don’t be too upset.