This weekend’s return to Budds Creek brings a couple of new riders into the series for brief cameos, as Red Bull KTM welcomes new signee Julien Beaumer lines up in the 250 class, and so does Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Casey Cochran. After racing the B class at Loretta Lynn’s, he will make his professional debut after doing five different pro-am classes last weekend, first racing on Friday at Unadilla on the amateur track, and then Sunday in Pennsylvania in order to get the minimum amount of races in, just as Deegan did last year after Loretta Lynn’s. Add in Mark Fineis (GasGas) and we have three rookies making their debut this weekend.(Beaumer and Fineis were both in the A classes at the Ranch). And Canadian champion Dylan Wright is here as well, racing in the 450 class. Wright is on a 19-race overall winning streak up in Canada and just told me in the MX Sports Pro Racing rig that he’s really excited to race both here and at the Ironman in Indiana next week.

Wright is also set to race for Canada in the 2023 Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations in France in early October. The AMA’s Mike Pelletier overhead this part of the conversation and jokingly asked Wright if he happened to have dual citizenship. He was joking, of course, but Team USA’s lineup is still uncertain at this point. But it will be finalized and announced next Friday at the Ironman National.

Before we get into the news of the week, I want to point everyone to a great read on a great story in motocross history: “Ricky Carmichael’s Shocking Switch to Suzuki” by Brett Smith of We Went Fast. It is a deep dive into an incredible moment when RC left Honda at the end of the 2004 season, after winning every title he competed for with them (three MX and two SX) and then went to Suzuki and delivered them every title he competed for (two SX and two MX). It was like the Chicago Bulls trading Michael Jordan to the worst team in the league, and that team and Jordan continuing to win instead of the Bulls. It took Honda 20 years to get another AMA 450 championship, and that only just happened this year with Chase Sexton (SX) and now Jett Lawrence (MX). This is a must-read, and well-done on Brett for taking the time to gather it all up, and the GOAT for laying it all out there.

And to tune into this weekend's Budds Creek National, check out the broadcast/streaming schedule below. 

The One That Got Away... (DC)

You know who should be getting more attention right now than he is? Maxime Renaux. He's the French Yamaha rider than won the 2021 FIM Motocross World Championship in the MX2 class. Right now, he's racing MXGP, but he's just coming back from a major injury, so he's only tenth in the standings. He did win the MXGP of Switzerland back in the spring, but most recently he's only got a third in the second moto at Sweden to show. So why should Maxime Renaux be getting more attention right now? Because as of this moment he is the only rider to have ever beaten Jett Lawrence on a 450 in a real competition. 

This goes way back to the last week of September at the 2022 Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations at RedBud. Lawrence was Australia's entry in the Open class, which meant he would be making his professional debut on a 450 at the MXoN. In the Saturday afternoon qualifying heat for the Open class Lawrence actually got beat by both Dylan Ferrandis of Team France and Team USA's Chase Sexton, but it was simply a qualifier. When it came time for the motos that counted on Sunday, Jett topped the MX2/Open moto, with Sexton second and Italy's Mattia Guadagnini third. But then in the final moto, which combined MXGP and Open, so everyone would be on 450s, the French MXGP entry Maxime Renaux actually held off Jett for the win, with Sexton third and Ferrandis fourth. 

Lawrence parked the 450 after that and went and rode the 250 class in the 2023 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship, winning the 250SX West Region title. But he did not move up for any of the opposite coast races to try his hand on the 450, preferring to wait until summer and then go all-in with AMA 450 Pro Motocross. He has won all 18 motos that he's raced so far, which leaves him two rounds from completing a perfect season. Then he will race the new SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) on the 450 (though he could ride either class). How long his winning streak continues remains to be seen, but for now we can be sure of one thing: Maxime Renaux really should be getting more attention for what he did at the '22 Motocross of Nations!

Vet MX Des Nations at Foxhill (Keefer)

Matthes and I are headed to ride some old bikes and bench race over at the Vet Motocross des Nations at Foxhill in England next weekend (August 24-28). Mike Brown, Zach Osborne, and Tyler Bowers are set to race for Team USA but they will have a whole host of others like Tommy Searle, Mel Pocock, Carl Nunn, David Knight, Alessio Chiodi, and more all fighting them off for their respective countries. This will be my first time at Foxhill so getting to ride with some legends of our sport along with some pretty sweet older motocross machines is going to be pretty damn cool for me! Steve and I will be doing a PulpMX Show Friday and Saturday night (25/26) so we hope to see you out there! 

Also, Jeff Emig and David Pingree are at the World Vets MX at Farleigh Castle this weekend, which is also in England, and they just taped a Whiskey Throttle Show with former 500cc World Champion Graham Noyce. Also at Farleigh Castle for this weekend’s event are Chad Reed, Mike Brown, Kurt Nicoll, James Dobb, and more.

In case you’re wondering, there was a big shake-up in the vets-and-vintage space over in the UK and Doc Wobbles and Dave King are now running the Vet MXdN on their own while the World Vets remains at Farleigh Castle. No matter, both events should be a blast for attendees.

Harri Kullas (DC)

If you were trying to figure out who that fast-starting triple-digit Yamaha rider was in the 450 class at Unadilla, you were not alone. He’s Estonia’s Harri Kullas, a Grand Prix veteran who attended his first-ever AMA Pro Motocross event to check it off his bucket list. He did quite well with those great starts too, going 7-7 for a solid sixth overall. Our longtime friend David Bulmer (A Year in MX) posted some info on Harri on Vital MX:

Tek14 added:

I also found this quite interesting: Kullas also has made 12 appearances at the Motocross of Nations, racing for Estonia eight times and for Finland four other times, as he basically has dual citizenship. Harri is racing the last two rounds of the series as well, though his friend and fellow MXGP veteran Tanel Leok went back home after his 22-18 finishes at Unadilla. We will be talking to Kullas this weekend, so look for an interview here with the Estonian next week. And check out the interview he did with Mitch Kendra ahead of the Unadilla Naitonal where he talked about wanting to come to race AMA Motocross in the U.S. before his professional racing career ended. Read Mitch’s interview with Kullas and Tanel Leok.

Mad Results (Cont'd) (DC)

Last week we told you about some of the crazy results that came out of the mud race (for the most part) that was the Monster Energy AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch. We saw championship-winning moto scores like the 3-8-1 of College (18-24) class winner Jesse Wessell, as well as the 11-1-1 of 65cc (7-9) champion Nico Verhoeven, 85cc Mini Senior 1 (12-14) champion Colby Lessar, who went 5-4-6 to top the overall results. We were really only looking at the champions and not some of the other mad results that came out of the mud. Well, this week we realized that we missed a doozy. Louisiana's Easton Graves is a very fast young 65cc rider. He won the 65cc (10-11) class by sweeping all three motos. He also raced in the 65cc (10-11) Limited class but ended up finishing second overall to a fast young Texan named Jackson Vick, who notched 1-3-1 moto scores. Nothing strange about that, right?

But then we looked closer at Graves' results in his three 65cc Limited motos: 2-1-28... Wait, 28th?! Yes, 28th out of 42. In a final moto that happened as the rain was pouring day, Graves was one of many fast kids who had their third and final moto literally knock them out of the top ten, and even the top twenty. California's Chase Brennan went 4-4-24 for fourth overall, and then Florida's Brayton Kreglow went 5-5-23 for fifth overall. Maybe the steadiest kid in the race—besides the champion Vick—was California's Dylan Graham, who finished third overall with moto scores of 9-11-12. 

Add it all up, and that top five from the '23 version of 65cc (10-11) Limited probably had the craziest results for a top five in the 42-year history of the Loretta Lynn's AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship! 

The Oldest Race? (DC)

Earlier this week there was a special international event in Belgium put on by the Keiheuvel Moto Club which said it was celebrating 100 years in existence on their website. That caught my eye because I don’t think motocross as we know it wasn’t even invented until 1923-’24. Maybe something was lost in translation as it was written in Flemish. So, I reached out to MXLarge.com’s Geoff Meyer to see if he knew more about this club.

“Yes, the club is 100 years old, but I remember doing a story on this race many, many years ago and from memory, the first winner of the international race was somebody like Rene Baeten,” explains Meyer, adding that the club is 100 years old, but not the race—that apparently didn’t start until sometime in the 1950s, when Baeten was the top rider in the world. “Guys like Sylvain and Eric Geboers have won it over the years, and of course in the Everts era, Harry and Stefan each won it a few times. My guess is the race is like 70 years old.

“When I was doing a lot of races, the Keiheuvel MX was always one of the best races to attend because they would always get a huge crowd, most of the top GP riders would attend, and for many riders, the circuit was just a killer, tougher than Lommel I think,” added MX Geoff. “Probably why Tony did so well against Liam Everts and the other younger MX2 boys!”

Yes, Tony as in Antonio Cairoli. The retired nine-time FIM World Champion decided to suit up and race the MX2 class aboard a KTM 250 and ended up winning over Everts, who is currently ranked second in the MX2 World Championship standings. And Jeffrey Herlings was the big winner in the MX1 class after a big battle with Romain Febvre. And in case you’re wondering, Keiheuvel means stone hill in Flemish. But as Geoff explained, there are no stones there, just deep sand!

And it’s a big weekend for both Herlings and MX Geoff, as the new Dutch round of MXGP will take off in Arnhem, not 10 minutes from Geoff’s house. The race replaces the infamous Valkenswaard circuit, where Herlings has been extremely successful over the years. Geoff wrote about Herlings’ dominance at Valkenswaard in this farewell to the old track.

1986 (DC)

And speaking of Loretta Lynn’s, back in 1986 I was assigned to shoot the race by Cycle News, which was a really big deal for me. My very brief professional racing career was over and I was attending college and starting to shoot photo and write more and more about races. Cycle News knew I would be at Loretta Lynn’s anyway, so that’s probably why they assigned it to me! Anyway, I shot maybe six or eight rolls of 35mm black-and-white film and sent them by FedEx to the Cycle News office, which was in Long Beach at the time. They ran just a few of the shots in the story, but it was still really cool to have a by-line in Cycle News. What wasn’t so cool was the fact that I never got the photos back. The film and contact sheets were lost at some point in the vast archives that came with having “the weekly bible of motorcycling,” which Cycle News certainly was.

Fast forward 37 years to just a couple weeks ago. My friend Larry Lawrence is a motorcycle racing historian of the highest degree, and he’s been helping Cycle News’ Kit Palmer and Sean Finley to work through their old archives, scanning in old photos and film for digital use. At some point Larry came across two contact sheets (72 photos) from Loretta Lynn’s, featuring future stars like Jeff Stanton, Damon Bradshaw, Donny Schmit and Jeff Matiasevich, and more. He checked the Racer X Loretta Lynn’s Vault and figured out it was 1986, and then went sent me a link to a Dropbox full of the photos. When I downloaded them and opened the files, I was blown away. I had long ago forgotten about the shots. So, I started posting them on Instagram this week and sharing them with some of the guys featured, including Denny Stephenson, Todd DeHoop, Kris Bigelow, Stanton, Bradshaw, Button, Buddy Antunez, Junior Jackson, Tommy Watts, and more. None of them had ever seen the old photos before, and it turned into a very cool bench racing session online.

So thank you Larry Lawrence, and thank you Cycle News for finally finding those old photos! Now, about the rest of those missing rolls… Fingers crossed!

Young Lions (DC)

A couple of multi-timers on their Y-Zingers, Eli Tomac and Ryan Villopoto.

Hey, Watch It! 

Lucas Coenen's wild crash at the MXGP of Sweden. Luckily, he did not get severed injured.

Has there ever been a professional rider like Dean Wilson, who has made it a habit of seeking out under-privileged enthusiasts and handing them over a motorcycle? His "Deano Chop 15" YouTube channel has several of these videos now, most recently of a kid names James back in Dean's native Scotland whose own bike blew up at one of his schools. The video of Wilson, the former AMA 250 Pro Motocross Champion hooking him up with a brand new 65cc Husqvarna is just what you need to see today:

The Keiheuvel Moto Club in Belgium is 100 years old, and they held a big race on Wednesday in the middle of the week to celebrate. Turning out for the party were Jeffrey Herlings, Romain Febvre and even Antonio Cairoli on a 250! Here's a look at the battles between Herlings and Febvre in the dark sand of Flanders...

Head-Scratching Headline/s of the Week

"Monster Energy®/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki Rider Jo Shimoda Brings Home Two Podiums At Round 9 Of The AMA Pro Motocross Championship" - Kawasaki PR, after Shimoda somehow went 3-3 for fourth overall

“Bizarre moment man is attacked by FURRY after he's caught filming fetish group in Huntington Beach”—DailyMail.co.uk

“Driverless Car Gets Stuck in Wet Concrete in San Francisco”—dnyuz.com

“Beer-Drunk Raccoons Terrorize Germany, Chaos Reigns”—VINEPAIR.COM

"Visitors to sunflower fields urged to stop posing naked for photo shoots"—CNN

Random Notes

Team Belgium was announced for the Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations with Geerts and Everts on 450s, Lucas Coenen on 250, and Sacha Coenen as backup. More importantly, look at those glorious jorts on Team Manager Johan Boonen!

And here are a couple of cool new covers we recently spotted, including Jett on the cover of Cross Magazin and Heikki Mikkola’s ’78 works OW 39 Yamaha on VMX Magazine.