Racerhead is coming to you from somewhere deep in Mississippi, where we’re helping Kevin Windham and friends pull off his Party in the Pasture Ride Day/Weekend to help the family of his friend Chris Blankenship, the renowned track builder and dirt artist who worked on Rich Winkler’s Dirt Wurx crew for many years. Chris passed away in August while riding in a race in Missouri, and K-Dub and friends have really stepped up big here to help the Blankenships while having a whole lot of fun in the process. Look for much more next week—I’m on the track marker and flagging crew, so I can’t write much today! But I do want to honor a lost friend and one of the grand women of motocross.
The sport lost a great friend last Sunday when Peg Robinson passed. Peg was the quintessential strong woman behind the motocross man—in her case, husband Ward Robinson and their world-renowned racetrack, Unadilla. Starting in 1970 with their first Trans-AMA race, the Robinsons built their family farm into an iconic motorsports facility, as well known in the motocross world as such legendary lost venues as Carlsbad, Saddleback, and even Namur’s Citadelle. Over the years, Unadilla would host Inter-Ams and U.S. Grand Prix events, and it remains one of the pillars on the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross schedule. Unadilla also hosted the 1987 FIM Motocross des Nations, the first ever held on U.S. soil. They later added GNCC racing, and they held the record number of entries for a single AMA event at 2,078 until just recently. Unadilla has evolved a great deal over the years, but the one constant was the smart and steady hand of Mrs. Robinson.
On a personal note, my dad took me to my first 250 GP at Unadilla in 1985, and it was Peg who made sure we had pit passes so I could get the autographs of my favorite European riders back then, Jacky Vimond and Heinz Kinigadner. And when I started shooting photos for Cycle News and Dirt Rider, I sent my requests for credentials to longtime Unadilla PR men Rich DeLibertis or Frank Gerace, but I know it was Peg Robinson who gave me the okay. And when we started The Racing Paper, which ultimately became the magazine Racer X Illustrated, Peg always let us come to the races, hand out papers and stickers, and basically just make us feel like we were as important as the Motocross Action wrecking crew (which we weren’t—not even close!).
In recent years, Peg, as well as Ward, stepped back and allowed their children to take over and move Unadilla forward, just as we’ve seen with the Ritchies of RedBud and the Huffmans at Washougal (the Martin boys will likely do the same at Spring Creek for their parents, John and Greta). But you still always knew where to find Peg: right there in that little enclave of campers next to the big barn, listening to the radio chatter, keeping an eye and an ear on things. While it takes a small army to make a big race go off without a hitch, it also takes a mastermind, a great organizer, a big-picture thinker, and a hard worker. Peg Robinson was all those things and more, and I am very sorry she’s gone. I’m also very lucky to have had the privilege to know her. Thanks, Peg, and Godspeed.
Here’s Racerhead.
GOOD AND BAD FOR GEICO HONDA (Weigandt)
Good news for GEICO Honda and Malcolm Stewart, who shacked up this week for a 250SX West Region deal. We know everyone wants to see Mookie on a 450, but the team folks assure us this deal is 250SX only. However, we'll just guess (ourselves—no one has told us this) that if Malcolm really killed it in supercross, the team would find slush-fund money and get him on a 450 outdoors. This is a good team with good people and good support, and we doubt they would leave him in the ditch if he delivers big from January to May. Stewart logged three podiums out west last year, which is good, but a race win would probably be needed to keep this going.
That's the good. The bad news is GEICO's main 250 guy, Justin Bogle, is struggling with a shoulder injury and looks to be shelved until the East. Bogle had that huge crash last December, and apparently there is still some residual damage from that. He was dealing with aches and pains all season, but when supercross testing began last month his shoulder felt really bad in the whoops. It's now clear that he has a partially torn labrum and will need surgery, but he should be back for the East Region. Yes, even though Bogle is the defending East Region champ, they wanted their big gun to race the West Region. At least they have
TOMAC MOVES OVER (Steve Matthes)
Something that I wrote about as a possibility a while ago has turned into reality for 2015. The GEICO Honda team is taking it’s 450 truck off the road and putting it’s 450 rider, Eli Tomac, into the Factory Honda truck with Cole Seely and Trey Canard. It wasn’t very feasible for the GEICO guys to use all those resources for one rider and the relationship between Honda GEICO has been so good that a nice compromise was worked out. Tomac’s bike will sport the GEICO graphics and the only issue was Amsoil is the sponsor of the GEICO guys while Pro Honda Oils was the oil sponsor of factory Honda. But it was all worked out in the end so the big #3 Honda will be parked over there this year.
JAMIE’S BIG DEAL (Weigandt)
You've probably heard about the big NASCAR brawl over the weekend between Jeff Gordon and Brad Keselowski (with an assist from Kevin Harvick). The real winner of the fight was ESPN pit reporter Jamie Little, who stayed right in they fray—with her microphone out to get the audio—the whole time, then quickly got to Keselowski to put together a post-race/post-fight interview. Jamie got a ton of attention for this and said on Twitter that she ended up appearing on nine different shows on Monday to explain what went down.
Why do we mention this? Longtime fans remember that Jamie got her start in supercross and, yes, with Racer X—she penned several feature stories for the magazine back in the day. She handled podium interviews at the races before moving into the TV pit-reporter role for supercross, which aired on ESPN back then. The SX success led to the NASCAR gig. ESPN's NASCAR contract is up at the end of this season, but Little wasn't a free agent for long, as Fox Sports snapped her up for their 2015 telecasts. Who knows? Maybe we'll see Jamie dispatched to a supercross or two again, just like the old days. Right now, she's never been more heralded for her pit reporting chops.
USA SHINES IN ARGENTINA (Jared Bolton)
With the ISDE coming to a close, the American World Trophy team sits second behind the always-strong French team. The French are fast—in fact, they should have a Jimmy Johns sponsorship because they’re just plain freaky fast. However, a big part of their success is the fact that they’ve been able to keep their machines together and stay consistent. That’s a huge key to success at the Six Days.
The American team has had a few issues thus far, with Zach Osborne’s race ending on day one with a mechanical issue. They also lost time on the second day when Charlie Mullins suffered a pretty hard crash, which took its toll on him for the day. To top it off, Taylor Robert suffered a stiff time penalty on day three. However, the team has still been putting in solid times; even with the penalty, Robert has been on fire all week, as well as Kailub Russell, who sits fourth overall and has even snagged a test win.
Even more impressive has been the American Junior team. Grant and Steward Baylor, along with Trevor Bollinger and Justin Jones, have all put in solid rides throughout the week, but the biggest thing for them has been their consistency and good fortune. While Bollinger did suffer a time penalty for being late to a test earlier in the week, the team has still been riding great and keeping their machines together. Sometimes it’s not always about being the absolute fastest, but about putting in good times and making it through the entire six days of racing.
Although the World Trophy team has never claimed an ISDE win, the American Junior teams have. First Junior Team to win was 1991 in Czechoslovakia with the team of Steve Hatch, Jimmy Lewis, David Rhodes, and Chris Smith. It didn’t happen again until New Zealand in 2006 with Russell Bobbitt, Ricky Dietrich, David Pearson, and Kurt Caselli fielding the Junior Team.
Back when it was still known as the ISDT (International Six Days Trial), American riders took the “Silver Vase” honors on home soil of Dalton, Massachusetts, via Dick Burleson, Malcolm Smith, Ed Schmidt, and Ron Bohn. This year the American Junior team is on track to take the win for the first time since 2006, and with the one-year anniversary of the passing of Caselli coming up, it would be a pretty fitting way to honor the former American team captain.
BERCY, KIND OF (Matthes)
By this time next week, I’ll be over in Lille for the annual Bercy Supercross. Well, sort of. The “Bercy” Supercross has been moved to Lille (about an hour outside of Paris) for one year while the arena undergoes some renovations, so this year the riders will be greeted with a bigger track and a stadium that is covered but has some open spots here and there. Bring the parkas everyone!
Justin Brayton, Eli Tomac, Justin Barcia, Weston Peick, Malcolm Stewart (although with Mookie getting the GEICO ride, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him not make it), and a few more America racers will be going up against Christophe Pourcel, Jordi Tixier, and Dylan Ferrandis among others. All you needed to say was Barcia will be there for me to be in. Bam-Bam is always fun at this race, and I’m hoping he’ll have his full homeless person look going on to make it even better.
We here at Racer X will be providing updates right here, on Instagram and Twitter, and all that from Lille.
PJ1 PODCAST (Matthes)
I really enjoyed doing the podcast this week with the original members of PJ1 Yamaha which was a team formed in ’96 and lasted just one year. It was also the spot where I got my first mechanic job alongside Anthony Paggio who now works at Oakley. Thanks to rider Jimmy Button, Paggio and Alex Mcelyea for taking the time to do this and lay out how the team started, how it went and how it folded. Good times indeed!
RANDOM NOTES
As a way of paying tribute to Peg Robinson, our own Andy Bowyer used this week’s Rev-Up column to share some of his favorite Unadilla memories.
That’s it for Racerhead, thanks for reading, see you at the races.
