Smith Optics Track Walk: A3
For today’s Smith Optics Track Walk, 125cc SX winner Matt Walker takes you through a lap at this weekend’s Anaheim 3 Supercross. Remember, this weekend’s event is also the first Breast Cancer Awareness race, so if you’re planning to attend, wear some pink!
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Every year in Monster Energy SX, the Dirt Wurx crew adds a new twist to their track designs. One year it was a wall at the end of a set of whoops; another year it was the infamous option lane that seemed to always be in Anaheim. With the bikes getting better every year, Dirt Wurx has to make these changes to try to keep the riders guessing, and the new trend this year is rhythm lanes—long rhythm lanes. As we saw at San Diego, they’re also adding huge doubles. Let’s see if the pattern continues into A3.
The start at A3 is the weirdest one so far, breaking the mold of the traditional 90-degree left-hand first turn. This start has a slight dogleg left followed by an immediate right-hand bowl corner. Expect to see a lot of action here. If a rider gets a bad jump, it’s going to be hard to make it happen with this kind of first turn.
1. Lane one starts out with a small double into a small table. Premier-class riders will most likely turn this into a triple onto the table. After that comes another tabletop that looks to be at an angle. After they triple out of the corner and land on the table, riders will probably hop off to the next table, then over the single that follows. This leads into a dragonback-single-reverse dragonback. Riders will skip off the top of the first dragonback over the single, then jump the whole reversed dragon into the corner.
2. This is where the mechanics stand. This is just a small straight into a typical jump over a tabletop. Nothing special here.
3. Some passes may be made in this switchback corner.
4. This lane starts out hard. Speeds will be slow heading into a long whoop section. Riders hit whoops in fourth and fifth gear, and it’s going to be hard to find that gear out of these tight corners. After the whoops is a triple into the corner.
5. This is the rhythm lane I was talking about. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the top riders will triple through this entire section. For real. It looks possible!
6. Here’s a big triple out of the corner.
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7. Lane seven starts by going under the over-under bridge, then hitting a small double. This is followed by a small, fast straightaway, which leads into another small double into a right-hand bowl.
8. The lap closes out with a small seat-bounce double out of the corner into the finish-line double.
