Saturday’s round of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship was held at Spring Creek Motocross Park in Millville, Minnesota. It’s a rider favorite on the calendar, solely because it is a fun track to ride. Racing is very much a job and fun is really not a concern on Saturdays. The Spring Creek track is one that riders actually enjoy racing and riding on. The dirt offers great traction, variation between the clay and sand sections, and the elevation is always a plus. It really is the perfect combination and I would put it up against any track worldwide for fun factor. The interesting aspect to me, and what I want to discuss, was how the dirt shaped up, how it was prepped and how it wanted to be ridden this past weekend.
This subject was mentioned a few times, most notably by Grant Langston in his analysis on television. The dirt at Spring Creek was watered heavily and ripped super deep, making for deep ruts and soft sections. As many riders stated, including Joey Savatgy in his post-qualifying interview, keeping momentum up in the turns was paramount. The dirt was very soft in the turns and nearly every turn was followed by an incline, it was hard to re-establish momentum if lost. Keeping the momentum up made it easier to clear the obstacles and also created less need for hard acceleration through the soft ruts. For the 250 guys, it was a crucial part of how to attack this particular track.
So how do you keep the momentum up in conditions like this? There are two different ways to attack a soft track. Those two different approaches couldn’t be more properly illustrated than watching Ken Roczen and Eli Tomac. Both riders are going incredibly fast and make up two-thirds of the world’s best riders (Ryan Dungey is out with injury, and Tim Gajser is the other member).
For Kenny, he is the epitome of working with what a track gives him. He is always just underneath the top of the berm and is very “light” in the ruts. He doesn’t override the track and you won’t see him blowing berms out. He typically brakes earlier than most and then glides through the turn and picks up acceleration on the way out. His style is similar to road racing in that way. He will flow around the track with less braking and less accelerating than most but his overall speed is greater. He avoids burying the bike in the deep ruts and soft berms, so he doesn’t need to rev the engine very high on exit. While many riders go hard on the brakes, make their pivot and then hard on the gas (I was terrible about doing this), Kenny allows the bike to move freely by simply staying off of the brakes and throttle. His corner speed stays very high and the bike’s suspension is free to absorb more bumps because less stress and energy is being forced onto it by the engine’s RPM (yes, suspension works better when an engine is running at a lower RPM, believe it or not).
It’s important to note that this technique requires incredible balance, though. Kenny is riding through the turn at a very high rate of speed and his ability to not use the brakes is purely dependent on his balance. He has to keep the bike leaned over and perfectly placed in the rut. He makes it sound easy and look easy, but it’s not. The next time you are out riding, try to rail through a deep rut as fast as you can without using your brakes to slow down entering the turn. After you high side over the rut, pick yourself up and ride back to the truck, then think about Kenny blowing past rider after rider doing exactly what you just tried. It’s poetry in motion when the he has everything clicking.
Eli is a different bird altogether. Eli’s technique is much more angry and aggressive. Eli attacks every track like it owes him money. His RPM range is always higher than Kenny’s and his braking is always later in the section and with more authority. His approach is much more the “beat it into submission” than Kenny’s “let’s work together to solve this.” His braking point will be much further into the turn, then he’ll coming to more of a stop, and follow it with a violent explosion of acceleration on the exit.
Make no mistake, we’ve seen Eli log incredible lap times using this style and there have been times where he’s been untouchable. The only trouble with beating a rider like Ken Roczen with this approach is that when the dirt gets very heavy, accelerating back up to speed is tougher. Kenny didn’t slow down as much so it’s an easier and quicker process to reach maximum speed. Eli came into the turn faster but slowed in the turn and thus was slower to get back up to speed as well. It would be interesting to see a LitPro on both riders. I bet Eli is quicker at the turn entrance but Kenny is faster in the middle of the turn and a few feet out of the turn.
Eli’s technique is still a viable way to race on most tracks, evidenced by his own elite level in the sport. Ricky Carmichael also raced this way and he did fairly well by most accounts, right? The biggest problem in Ricky’s case was when traction became scarce at tracks like Unadilla or Washougal his method became less effective. His battles with Kevin Windham on those tracks were a direct result of their completely opposite ways of attacking a track.
Kevin would carry momentum and easily regain his speed. He was incredibly talented with throttle control and letting the motorcycle float through corners. Ricky would attack like Eli does, but also would deal with excess wheel-spin on the exit because of his aggression. So, the situations are similar but different. Eli suffered from soft dirt slowing his pace while Ricky would suffer from a lack of traction in his racing days. Both situations equaled the same result, however, in that the rider who would carry more momentum (Kenny and Kevin in this case), could more easily accelerate back to the highest speed possible, causing big problems for their competitors. If you add that up in corner after corner, it becomes easy to see where the time is made and lost.
This differences in approach can result in different results at different tracks. At Southwick, for example, Eli was able to blast his way around the sandy track and use that aggression to his advantage. He beat Kenny and the track, refusing to let either opponent deter his preferred methods. RC was able to force his will in almost every situation regardless of the conditions, too. This weekend, however, we saw how working with the track, instead of forcing things, can make it possible reach an incredibly high level. Roczen’s performance early in the second moto was one of the most brilliant displays of riding I have ever seen. It wasn’t the suffocating aggression that Tomac offered in the first five motos of 2015. It was efficiency defined and the results were impossible to ignore.