GEICO Honda’s Eli Tomac is always a threat to win, which makes it surprising that he went ten weeks between his impressive performance and first career Monster Energy Supercross victory in Phoenix and his second Saturday night in Detroit. What’s the difference? Even Eli wasn’t sure, but perhaps now he’s starting to figure it out. We talked with him down by the podium after the race.
Racer X: Can you take us through the start of the main event?
Eli Tomac: First lap, I don’t know where I was down the first straightaway—maybe somewhere around fourth or fifth—and made some key passes in the first two turns, and then got on to Dungey there and just made the pass over the little quad. I shouldn't say little—it was a big quad. He was doing it, too. I was able to stick it on the inside and do a standard block pass. Just threw it down from there.
Talk about that quad. Did we see it in practice or was the heat race the first time?
I never did it in practice, so it was something that I had to pull during the night show, which is always a little bit hairball. We saw Weston Peick doing it in practice, and that’s obviously, when you see a guy do it, you’re like, hey, I can maybe go bust that thing too. But honestly it almost bit me. On lap eighteen I came like an inch from a Tuff Block and launched off the track. It was almost bad on my part but it paid off on some early passes in the heat race and even in the main. It was good.
It looked like everything was clicking tonight.
It was. It was a track that was good for me, good for my motorcycle. My bike was awesome in the whoops. It seemed like they were kind of sketchy and had big spaces in between them too. They were technical and I was just good through there and everywhere else. I love the sand. I wish we had a big sand turn like that every race. I’m just a sand guy. This was a track I liked.
This was one where it looked like there were split-second decisions everywhere. Pull the trigger on technical sections, stop, go.
It was good that the rhythm had different options where you could go step over into a quad, which I never did. Some 250 guys were doing it. Bogle was doing it. That same rhythm section, there were three options and there was the quad, so it was a good track.
When you have different rhythms, people taking different options, stuff like that, do you guys utilize Dartfish and those video overlay software programs more for stuff like that as opposed to other races?
Absolutely. Our team’s not using it this year; other teams do. We’ve got a lot of guys filming anyway, and there’s so many eyes out there on the track you can’t get away with anything unless you straight up don’t do it. Even if you do it once someone’s going to see the section that you do. There’s no hiding unless you just don’t do it and you pull it out in the main.
You've proved that early on in other days that you’re the fastest guy out there, but you proved it at the end of the night too. What was the difference today?
There’s been multiple races where I’ve been the fastest guy for one lap or in the heat race, but for the main event side I’ve struggled. Dungey’s obviously been the fastest guy through the twenty laps. He’s just been absolutely killing it. For me to finally put all those twenty laps together and click those fast laps off is something that’s just refreshing. When you win it in Phoenix and then you’re sitting there asking yourself at home, what am I not doing that I did Phoenix? It’s a long time coming after ten rounds.
What’s it like on a season this long when it’s every weekend and pretty relentless? Do you have highs and lows in there?
Yeah, there’s times where you get tired and beat down, and you have to just kind of stop and maybe not ride that one day. It’s still a little bit of a learning curve for me; it is my second year, but this is my first year I’ve actually been able to race every race and go through all the rounds. Been to all the stadiums now. Hopefully shooting for another one from here.
Any new revelations with the bike?
No, honestly we’ve had pretty much the same package all along, other than literally one or two shock changes and clicks here and there. It’s been a good chassis so far.
