Martin Davalos has certainly had (Steve Matthes) his share of detractors during his long 250SX career. His team isn’t among that group. Bobby Hewitt has shown tremendous loyalty to his riders throughout his tenure running Rockstar Energy Racing, and that actually shows when you look at his rider lineup. There’s Davalos, who has been run through the ringer and even had a stint with this team a few years earlier. He was actually signed to return while he was dealing with a badly broken foot and ankle at the end of 2014. Even during the 2015, which ended up a zero due to Epstein-Barr, the team’s support never wavered. It didn’t earlier this year, either, when visa issues kept him out of Toronto and cost him the points lead.
When I talked to Martin after his win in Foxborough, he praised his team for coming up with a new setup for the weekend. Teammate Zach Osborne had been doing some outdoor testing and found something, so they slapped it on Davalos’ bike for press day, he liked it, he raced with it and he won. In many ways, the mechanical part made a difference, but the people behind the scenes, who are still pushing, made it happen.
“The guys are working really hard to get my bike better and everything,” he said. “Super pumped and excited about next weekend.”
Sure, every rider thanks their team when they win, and they’re always super pumped and excited about the next weekend. But for Davalos, hope could have gone away the moment the gate dropped in Toronto. This win represents a nice rebound.
Foxborough marked the second time this year I visited the Monster Energy Kawasaki team in search of a “What the heck is going on?” answer to Eli Tomac’s season. Surely they’ve asked themselves that a lot more than I have. The last time I asked was in Glendale, Arizona, and Kawasaki racing boss Bruce Stjenrnstrom said they had just made big changes, and things were about to go the right way. That night, Eli scored his first podium of the season, and it looked like happy days ahead.
That didn’t last.
Finishes of 6-5-11 followed, and while he won Daytona, that didn’t last either. More suspension changes came, but more sub-podium results, too. By this weekend, most figured the focus must be on Lucas Oil Pro Motocross. Wasn’t Eli’s supercross season a lost cause by now?
The team—and Eli—don’t see it that way. One of the biggest changes came behind the scenes. Eli brought a trusted personal suspension tuner over to Kawasaki from GEICO Honda, but with this season on the brink, Kawasaki decided to release him from the team. After that, the squad headed to Eli’s house in Colorado to do more testing, basically starting back at square one. Yes, this was supercross testing, not a head start on the Nationals, and yes, this was Colorado, not Kawasaki’s base out in California. The team is giving the rider all it has, and he’s not giving up on them. Even these last few supercross races, with the title long out of reach, mean a whole lot to them. Mechanical changes have been made, but that only happened through the human element, shifting personnel, making tough decisions, and choosing to keep working instead of mailing in the last three supercross races.
Ken Roczen’s tenure with Soaring Eagle/Jimmy John’s/RCH Suzuki nearly blew up last year. It was a trying season based on Kenny’s high standards, especially as his chance to defend his Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship slipped away. That’s around the time his dad threw serious shade on the team in an interview with a German magazine. Kenny quickly squelched all that, and by the race weekend we saw virtually no drama at all.
Kenny pushed his team. He got them to switch to KYB suspension, which wasn’t easy. He kept pushing and this year they’ve been in stride with him, working and working until now, when they finally seem to have solved all the riddles. Kenny will be a free agent at the end of this season, and as soon as Dungey built a big points gap he could have thrown in the towel, started shopping for a ride somewhere else and set his calendar to 2017. You won’t see any sign of that at the races, in fact I feel like Kenny and his mechanic Oscar Wirdeman are having more fun than ever. Suspension brands and triple clamps might have changed, but it’s the people part that stayed in tact. For these riders, that’s making all the difference.
