There’s a team of people behind the scenes orchestrating the logistics of Monster Energy AMA Supercross, many with some of the hardest and most thankless jobs in racing. One of those soldiers is Rich Winkler, the man tasked with building the battlefield.
Winkler has been in the game since the early 1980s, and through his company, Dirt Wurx, has constructed hundreds, if not thousands, of tracks. He fights variables such as weather, dirt supply, stadium deadlines and strict budget requirements every week, and just as soon as the 450SX checkered flag comes out, Winkler and his crew begin the process of tearing down the track they just built.
You’ll never please everyone in a business like track building, but Winky (as he is known to his friends) and his crew are getting some good reviews this year, with track designs that seem challenging and creative. We talked to him just prior to San Diego 2 for his take on this season and to learn a little more about what happens behind the scenes.
Racer X: Rich, how has the season going for you guys?
Rich Winkler: It’s going really good for us. I thought we came up with some really good track designs this year, and in some cases they are really different than the past. You know, it’s always a little bit of a struggle in that we have done this for 26 years now and bringing some fresh ideas in is sometimes hard. We also have to work everything through the AMA and FIM and the promoters for final approval, so there are a lot of eyeballs and discussion that goes into what we do, and before we do it. We’re not free to just go crazy with the designs. But this past summer, and as we normally do, we got together with Kevin Crowther and John Gallagher from the AMA and FIM, and we all met with Dave Prater down at Feld in Florida. We spent a couple of days going over things, just prior to doing any of the individual track drawings. At that time, we were all in agreement on the basic drawings for 2016. We were pushing some cool stuff, some of which were designed by the younger guys that work for me.
We saw some of those designs at Oakland and Phoenix, didn’t we?
Yup. The Oakland and A2 tracks were designed by my guy Alex Gillespie. He has been with me for a while now and was a pro rider himself. But it’s getting tougher and tougher to do the 17 races and then Monster Energy Cup, and keep it fresh and different every year. My younger guys, Bobby Childers and Alex, have both come up with some good stuff this year.
That “no triple” track at Oakland looked cool from the stands, but the double off the start was about the same size as your average triple. Was it just missing the middle jump?
[Laughs] Correct. It was dimensionally identical to a triple, but we thought it would be cool to integrate it into the first turn, then have them ride across a landing. That was one of Alex’s designs. Also, the dirt in Oakland is good, it got rained on a bunch ahead of the event, so that helped make the track really good, and I think our changes were well received.
You guys have seemingly cheated El Nino this year. California has had above average rain so far, but luckily not on Saturday nights!
Yes, for sure. I think all of the California events this year have had really good dirt. In a normal year, Anaheim and San Diego can get sort of blue groove, but this year they all had some really nice texture to them, and rutted up well. I think the combination of not going to Anaheim three times and having more space between the SoCal rounds has actually allowed the dirt to be a little better. With Monster Jam running on the off weekends, sometimes the dirt can get to look like adobe—but not this time. However, we were fighting the battle with possible weather each week, but we got lucky and it didn’t rain on the day that counts, Saturday.
I was blown away by how the A1 track looked on Thursday—with literally several feet of standing water. But then you guys had it transformed by Saturday to where it almost looked like it needed water. Lets talk a little about how you guys manage the weather.
In general with major weather issues the most important thing is to get the track built and covered. So for A1 this year, we knew we had possible issues. So we were switching airplane tickets and sending all my guys early. We were really lucky that it was the first round, so my guys were not coming from another venue. So we all went out earlier than normal with the goal to get the track built and covered, and then let the weather do what it was going to do. Despite being the New Year’s holiday and all that, all my guys were onboard. By dark on Sunday, the week before the race, we had everything that could be built up and running and fully covered. That was actually the earliest I think we have ever finished a track!
But no matter how much you tarp and cover, water sits in the low spots. So once it stopped raining, we were all out there digging trenches and pumping it out. The bottom line was that on Friday when we uncovered the jumps, the integrity was still there. The floor in-between some of the jumps and some of the lanes were really wet, but we brought in some sand that we had out in the parking lot. We then used the skid steers to bring in the sand and spread it out, and that really helped to dry out what was still muddy and wet. The skid steers are really good in those scenarios. Looking at it on Thursday, it looked really bad, some of my guys were posting funny pictures online, but we knew that it would come around by Saturday.
I saw some of those pictures and thought, “Well, that does not look very good!”
Well, if we really were worried about it, you can bet that we wouldn’t be putting anything up and would just working away to make it right! But we are all racers at heart and the guys were having some fun with it.
Will we see any more track changes coming?
Well, a couple of years ago we tried a different style of design in the stadiums. We put the major rhythm lanes in the middle, we ran a tool and our linear footage was about the same. We realized that there are really only three track configurations that are used while in the football stadiums. So this diagonal design allows us to change it up. We basically have two long diagonal lanes, as opposed to being parallel. Dallas next week will have this design, and we have two or three more to go. Detroit goes back into the stands again, but this year it is a big sweeping Talladega type turn. I know the straight up and down thing that was iconic to the old Pontiac Silverdome, and it was popular, but it wasn’t good for the racing. So we tried to change it up this year, and it’s a big sweeping turn, which hopefully will open up a place where people can pass. Toronto is back on the schedule, and that stadium has the biggest floor we go on. But, you know, it takes something big to get me fired up after all these years, and I’ve been really proud of how things have gone so far. The work has been fun and everyone seems upbeat, so that makes it all worth it.
I know in years past people have been critical of the tracks, but it seems like it is hit or miss.
Well, you know how it is, there are years where you can’t do anything right—it’s part of the age we are in now. One guy posts something on the Internet or in social media and all of a sudden everyone is piling on. It has been up and down, but this year, I have heard very little negative. Early on, some of top guys complained the whoops were too easy. Well, that is by design. Back in the ‘90s, there were years when some of the top guys were already out at A1. So we kind of purposely go mellower with the tracks at the first few events, and with the hope that we can try to keep guys healthy as they get up to pace. As the season progresses, we will start making things a little tougher, things like the rhythm sections and whoops.
The Glendale track was perhaps the fastest supercross track I have ever seen.
For sure, that was super fast. You know, it’s a fantastic stadium—it was all new to me. The building staff really wanted the event and they were great hosts. The footprint of stadium is 40 percent longer than your normal football field. Normally, most [football] stadiums are 80,000 square feet. But Glendale has an extra 35,000 square feet on that one end zone. So when we looked at it, [Feld’s] Dave Prater was into the crazy long start. We normally just don’t have the room to do something like that. But then we also had some fast rhythm lanes. For TV, we have to keep lap times right around one minute so we can fit all the racing into the night’s broadcast. When they first started riding, lap times were around 1.05 or so, but by the end of the night, they were down to the one-minute mark. TV got a little nervous. But I told them, if you have that luxury of space, we gotta use it. It was fun, and the whole time we were there, we were kicking around ideas for next year.
You are from New York originally, how did you get your start working in the sport?
Well, I started off like everyone, wanting to ride. I got a lawn mower mini-bike back in like 1969, then I moved up to a ‘72 Husky, then I got a Maico. I turned expert locally and got some help from Maico USA, and just had the racing bug real bad. With my parents blessing, I took a year off from college and chased the Nationals. It was a huge adventure, but I knew I wasn’t good enough to make a living as a pro rider. So I was sending resumes to all the advertisers in the back of the magazines. In 1981 I got a call from a guy named Mike DiStefano. He was basically the Dave Prater of Mike Goodwin’s company (supercross promoters). They were looking for a guy, and I said I would like to try out. I was 19, I had only been on a plane once, and I flew out to the Kansas Supercross and worked the weekend. I got to meet all the AMA guys, and six months later Goodwin’s office called and said if I moved to California they would hire me.
Wow! Not too many people are left in the paddock who can say they worked with or around Mike Goodwin.
Yeah, he was a character for sure. A real showman. In fact, one time he had me researching what kind of permits and fencing we needed in order to have live lions wandering around the infield of the track. He wanted guys racing while the lions ran around! Goodwin was a showman for sure. I worked three years with him, but then moved over to work with CE Altman, who ran Pace Motorsports. I have to say that of everyone I came across, CE Altman was a mentor and a hero for me. I think he also served a similar role for many guys in the sport, even guys like Bob Hannah. He was an absolute hero in the business and someone who I really looked up to.
When did you start Dirt Wurx?
Pretty much in 1991. Unlike today, where there is only one promoter (Feld Motor Sports), we had four back then. Basically Goodwin and Mickey Thompson on the West Coast, CE Altman in the center of the country and the West brothers on the East Coast. So you had four companies doing four different things. John Savitiski was the closest person to running the show for the tracks, but nothing was consistent and the quality of the track ranged from event to event and depending on the crew that was hired. That didn’t make things very safe or consistent for the riders or the series. So I realized that if there was one guy who did all the tracks, and that they were built on time and within a budget, that the series would benefit from the consistency. And that’s how I got my start.
The tracks have certainly evolved over the years.
If you watch that famous Anaheim race from 1986, you can really get an idea of how things have changed. With a track like that, well, today our guys would just jump whole lanes! Back then, it was really a different riding style, it was more like a cut and thrust riding style, that the two-strokes helped to promote. But now, the four-strokes carry so much corner speed, cutting under and cutting back out of turns actually makes you go slower. I think a good example is Cooper Webb and his battles with [Christian] Craig. They were doing it a lot this year, old-school style, but you can see when they do it, they are actually slower and not carrying the corner speed that is so critical to doing fast laps.
I understand you are quite the collector of vintage bikes?
Oh, boy, I guess so. I have about forty-some odd vintage bikes. Not every one is Tom White quality though. It all started some years back, I built an old Maico and went vintage racing. Because I worked on them myself when I was a kid, I totally recalled how they went apart and came back together. I just got the bug and got into it. I didn’t go crazy and buy every year of every model, but just focused on the bikes that meant a lot to me. I just wanted stuff I rode as a kid. Maicos, CZs and Pentons. But then my first bike was a Rupp, one of things with a lawnmower pull starter. I started getting into those bikes as well, but working on them and finding parts was much harder. Then I met a guy named Mike Palmgren who did restoration and had restored some bikes for the Honda Museum in Japan. I really didn’t know much about the mini bikes, but Mike did and was willing to work on them. So now my collection of little bikes is bigger than my collection of big bikes. It is really an interesting story as Rupp was the American competitor for the Honda mini trails. At its high point, Rupp was selling 60,000 units a year, which are actually some really big numbers. But then Honda came out with the XR75 and the American company could not compete, so they dropped off. But Mike and I have had a lot of fun working on various restoration projects.
Well, I am running out of space here, but I have some rapid-fire questions for you.
Go ahead!
What track has the oldest dirt?
Good one. Well, the Detroit dirt came from Pontiac. So that dirt has seen guys like [Jeff] Stanton and [Ricky] Johnson. Also the St. Louis dirt is from the first time we went there. I would say those are the two oldest. But they are always being screened and added to and freshened up.
How many events do you do?
With Feld we do thirty events a year. That includes Monster Energy Supercross, the Monster Energy Cup and some Monster Jam events. Sometimes we are in two or three cities per weekend. We also do private track design as well as some occasional overseas events.
Best track ever?
Tough one, too hard to say.
Worst track ever?
Well, I would say that the worst track for us (building it) was Charlotte Motor Speedway back in 1998 or so. It was held on the banked oval. It was pouring rain, and on a 15 percent banking. The dump trucks were literally sliding sideways. It might have been a good race to watch, but it wasn’t a fun track to build.
What is your favorite stadium?
To work in, I would say the coolest is in Indy. It is a badass venue. Also, last week in Glendale was awesome.
How many dump truck loads go into the average track?
It’s in the ballpark of 400 loads. It varies on building, but we are normally 6000-7000 cubic yards or 10,000 tons of dirt.
Well, that’s a lot of numbers! And here I thought you were guys just pushing around a bunch of dirt.
I wish! We are playing in a different world than a guy making a track in someone’s yard or field. We have very strict constraints with respect to time, budget, plus the finite space of a stadium and the deadlines of our next events. Plus you also have to consider a million dollars of turf that is sometimes under the track, which has to be decked and protected. That alone is 650 sheets of plywood, and keep in mind you can’t drive trucks or equipment on plywood, so you have to spread the dirt over it before doing anything! There is so much that goes into it, and hopefully we do a good job—and perhaps that’s why we have been in business now for over 26 years.
