And then just down the road in South Carolina there was the announcement that Indiana's promising young pro-am Mark Fineis has signed a development deal with the Muc-Off/FXR/ClubMX Yamaha team, which will see him race SX Futures program in Monster Energy AMA Supercross for the first part of 2024, and the full AMA Pro Motocross Championship and (if all goes according to plan) the SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX). Fineis joins Jeremy Martin, Garrett Marchbanks, and Phil Nicoletti, and all three of them could teach him plenty about the big leagues.  Weege says there are also rumors the team might bring Jett Reynolds on board, too. ClubMX also announced a two-year extension with Yamaha recently.

This weekend also means the return of the FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX), which will take place in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. That means Ken Roczen, red hot in the SMX playoffs, will be back in action, along with Nicoletti, Joey Savatgy, Vince Friese, Shane McElrath, Max Anstie, and more. The WSX series has had some difficulties since the opening round in Birmingham, UK back on July 1 (which Roczen won) but promoter Adam Bailey has been working hard to get things turned around. He's got some new partners backing the series, as well as a surprising new TV broadcast team in Paul Malin and Grant Langston. Malin is the longtime MXGP-TV host and GL was the longtime color analyst for AMA Pro Motocross. Knowing them both well, I can't wait to hear them call the races together—they are two of the best bench racers in the history of the sport, as well as two true motorcycling Hall of Famers, Paul in the UK and Grant here in the U.S. Only pit reporter Kristen Beat remains from the previous team, which had two other very good broadcasters and bench racers in Ralph Sheheen and Jeff Emig (who is also in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame). The WSX Abu Dhabi GP will stream live tomorrow on WSX.TV and then air on Sunday on Fox Sports 1. Langston sent me some photos yesterday of the paddock's pre-race visit to some extremely fast and furious looking rollercoaster rides that he shared with Roczen, Anstie, and Beat and it looks like everyone is having fun over there.

This weekend will also see the 39th Annual Dubya World Vet MX Championships out at Glen Helen Raceway, an event that the late Tom White founded nearly four decades ago. The races will be streaming live on Motocrossactionmag.com and will include the Pasha Racing for two Pasha 125 races, one for +30 Pro and the other +50 Pro, the Cup of Nations for international teams, plus all of the usual classes. They will also be awarding Troy Lee the Edison Dye Motocross Lifetime Achievement Award. Here's the design of what the course will looked like for this weekend:

Finally, I am headed to Loretta Lynn's Ranch this weekend, not for a race but a wedding. Griff Cotter, a lifelong friend and member of both the Racer TV staff and the Racer Productions/MX Sports team, will marry the lovely Rylee Boggess tomorrow. The aforementioned David Eller, the Phoenix Honda team owner, will be there so hopefully I can get more of the scoop behind all of the doing in the Carolinas. But in the meantime, it's probably best to throw it over to Jason Weigandt for more on Big Thursday...

Rise of Team Phoenix (Jason Weigandt)

Only on Halloween would you get a phone call from Davey saying, “Hey, Weege, I got a message from Jason Lawrence saying he’s headed to North Carolina to test for Phoenix Honda. He said if Racer X wants to talk to him, that would be cool. He gave me his number, give him a call.” I mean, is this actually Jason Lawrence or is this someone dressing up and pretending to be Jason Lawrence? JLaw has been way, way off the radar for years and now he’s not only racing but asking for some press? Trick or treat, great costume, go get some candy.

Not long after that, I got a text from Phoenix Racing Honda owner David Eller inviting me to his shop, and I assumed it was because he wanted to talk JLaw. But David was actually working on another project, one you heard Matthes mention last week here in Racerhead. The team was getting very, very close to signing Dylan Ferrandis. There was hope that Thursday would be signing day, but when I got to the shop in the morning, there were still some details to iron out. I can tell you it’s very close to being a real, signed, done deal, but right now Dylan has signed a Letter of Intent. Obviously, if you’re Dylan, you want to get this process done, get a bike and start testing and training for 2024. I think that will all be buttoned up soon. In the meantime, the team released a teaser video and some pics of Dylan when he first tried the bike last Friday. Dylan has already gone to his social media to say he’s joining the team, so while the contract might not be fully done, it looks like he’s found a home.

I discovered quite a bit about this Ferrandis situation. Yes, this is a Phoenix Honda deal, and it’s not, for example, Honda HRC building Dylan a works bike and rolling it under the Phoenix tent. But, it appears the team’s technical efforts have been bolstered by Rick “Ziggy” Zielfelder from Factory Connection, the co-founder and co-owner of the old GEICO Honda team, as Davey mentioned. Ziggy wants back in the game, Dylan trusts Ziggy, and Ziggy and FC have some tricks up their sleeve. Maybe this team will have a little of the old Kevin Windham/Mike LaRocco 450 Honda vibe to it? Plus, Phoenix does have communication with the factory team, so between Honda’s guidance, the team’s own resources, plus Factory Connection, there seem to be no doubts they can build a bike that can win races with a rider like Ferrandis. What I like is that this isn’t Eller just opening the check book and giving Dylan an offer he can’t refuse. We’ve seen private teams try things like that and it rarely works. This is Dylan willing to forgo a big salary to get on a bike and team he likes and betting on himself to make money in bonuses, plus, remind the industry of his value going forward. Dylan thinks the Honda is the bike he needs, and he thinks Phoenix and Factory Connection can build it right, even if it’s not the full factory machine.

As for JLaw, I would not have bet money he would finish a two-hour GNCC race, let alone come back asking for more. Well, indeed, he has. You can watch my full interview with him on the Weege Show but suffice to say he’s going to take a look at arenacross and a lot more. It will take some work, though, because Jason hadn’t been on a supercross track in over 10 years, and the intensity was so much on day one that he actually started throwing up! Jason said he wants to work with Phoenix because it races so many series, and he’s thinking of maybe something like a Ryan Sipes program of racing anything and everything. I’m also impressed how humble he is. He’s not making any claims about racing Monster Energy AMA Supercross or Pro Motocross at the top level anymore. Look, we all know it’s too early to really count on JLaw being back for the long haul. Still, this was a big step, and I think we could all agree his life could be good if he can stay focused on riding dirt bikes.

Dubya USA World Vet MX At Glen Helen (Keefer)

Looks like I am flying solo this year for the World Vets. My partners in crime have all bailed on me so it looks like the family and I are doing the vets solo this year. Steve Matthes is not racing due to some weird elbow injury that I have never heard of, Newf is still recovering from the Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations, Gauldy is... Actually, I don't know what the hell Gauldy is doing this year! John and Kristin Anderson have been doing a great job at keeping Tom White's favorite race of the year alive and well. I always loved seeing John at the track and he always had time to talk for a few. I always appreciated that from him. Even though I am burned out and slightly tired, I am making my way for the biggest Vet race this side of the Mississippi. I rode the track today and it (like usual) will be a rough as hell so look for me to be milking the "day after race" soreness to the wife for a few days! The reigning champs of GUAM will not be racing this year as Dubach is only racing the 60 Expert and 50 plus 125 Pro race. Sean Lipanovich had some knee problems at MXoN so he is out this year! Good luck to ALL the teams competing this year and hope everyone has a fun/safe weekend of racing. We all have to go to work tomorrow! Saturday afternoon Troy Lee will be inducted for the Edison Dye Lifetime Motocross Achievement Award so look for guys like Mitch Payton, Jeremy McGrath, and Jim "Bones" Bacon, among others, to be there to congratulate one of the legends of our industry. If you're in the Southern California area and looking to watch some good racing, head out to Glen Helen Raceway to watch some old moto racers battle it out on the roughest track on the West Coast.

SwitchbackMX Gobbler (Mitch Kendra)

If you live in the southwestern area of Pennsylvania/eastern Ohio or anywhere near Butler, Pennsylvania, head to SwitchbackMX this weekend for their annual Gobbler race. ATVs and side-by-sides race Saturday and bikes race Sunday on the GP-style track that features moto, woods, and the indoor track. Go check it out if you've never been!

The Motocross Mystery of 1976 (DC)

One of the things we like to do in the off-season is clean up some old photo files and race archives. It's also a time to work on some of those long overdue story ideas, like one I am working on now for the magazine about the introduction of 125cc racing back in the early 1970s. Last week I got an email from Gary Semics, the former factory rider, globetrotting racer, and motocross instructor with a question about The Vault. More specifically, Gary wanted to know why he wasn't credited with the win at the 1976 New Orleans 500 AMA Pro Motocross National. Gary told me he could swear he won the last three rounds of that series on his Kawasaki, though he did narrowly lose the series title to Husqvarna's Kent Howerton.

I went to The Vault and saw that Howerton had finished 1-4 in the motos on the day, while Semics went 2-3. When you add up the championship points, Semics had 25 + 18 for a total of 43, while Semics posted 22 + 20 for 42. That meant that Howerton out-pointed Semics for the overall by a single point. But then Gary pointed out that according to Cycle News, as well as Motocross Action magazine, he was listed as the winner, and he may even still have the trophy! So, I turned to my fellow moto historian Larry Lawrence for back-up, and he too looked at the points and figured Howerton the winner. But when he pulled out some old AMA record books and media kits, they all showed Gary Semics as the winner that day, not Kent Howerton.

Finally, after a couple of days of digging, we realized the quirk: The Vault adds up moto scores automatically and lists the results according to the number of championship points earned on the day, per AMA rules. But back in the day—as in, the early days of AMA Pro Motocross—they used what's called an Olympic scoring system when the finishing positions in the two motos (or even three in the very early days) are added together, and the low score wins, which is the system most amateur tracks use, as well as the AMA Amateur Nationals at Loretta Lynn's. In the case of the '76 New Orleans race Howerton's 1-4 = 5 while Semics posted 2-3 = 5. If there is a tie, the better finish in the final moto breaks the tie. 

And there it was: Kent Howerton maybe have scored more championship points, but according to the 1976 AMA rules, Gary Semics won the tie-breaker by beating Howerton in the second moto, and this he really did win the overall that day. (A very similar thing happened in 1989, only it was in reverse, after the AMA changed the rule to what it is today: Jeff Stanton was originally declared the winner of the Gatorback 250 National opener with 2-2 sores, only to have Honda team manager Roger De Coster point out to the officials that Jean-Michel Bayle should be the winner with his 1-3, which gave him 45 points to Stanton's 44.) 

We have since corrected our mistake on New Orleans 1976, and here are the actual results:

The Mystery of #1 (DC)

 Yesterday, I found out I wasn't alone in using the off-season to do some investigating, house-cleaning, and reminiscing.

Lars Lindstrom is the team manager for HRC Honda, and he and his team are coming off a heckuva season, winning all there Monster Energy AMA Supercross titles, both AMA Pro Motocross Championships, and the new SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) in the 450 class. So, between the Lawrence brothers and Chase Sexton, Team Honda has a bunch of new #1 plates to proudly display. That in turn meant making some room in Honda's meeting room where they have kept all of the companies #1 plates in AMA Supercross/Motocross, going back to 1973 with Gary Jones, and including all of the #1 plates from such Honda legends as Marty Smith, David Bailey, Rick Johnson, Johnny O'Mara, Jeff Stanton, Jean-Michel Bayle, Jeremy McGrath, Ricky Carmichael, and more. While doing some rearranging of all those plates, its Lars came across one that raised a flag—a red one, not a checkered one. 

As you can see, it says "#1 250cc Motocross, Gary Jones, 1974." Lars, whose father is an American motocross pioneer, AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer, and a Honda team manager himself, knows the sport of motocross, and he knew that while Jones won the '73 title for Team Honda, he switched brands in the off-season that followed and raced a Can-Am in 1974 when he won his third straight 250 title. (Jones also won the first AMA 250 title in 1972 on Yamaha, as well as the de facto '71 title based on being the top American in the old Inter-Am Series, also on a Yamaha.)

The funny part of all of this, to Lars anyway, was the fact that this '74 AMA 250 National Championship #1 plate has hung in Honda's meeting room in the race shop for decades... He's going to give Gary Jones a call and send the plate over to him, as Can-Am left the sport long ago and probably doesn't have a place to show it off anyway!

CR-E (Matthes)

With more and more Stark Vargs coming across my IG feed, it seems that the Swedish/Spanish company is finally getting more electric MX'ers out there in the wild and then this past weekend we saw the debut of Honda's CR Electric Proto with Trey Canard over in Japan. This is a pretty big deal to me, an OEM having a bike this far along in production to race it. I've ridden the old Alta a bunch and these bikes are a lot of fun, there's a bunch of things to figure out before they're going to race against the ICE bikes but until then, things are exciting for sure. We had Canard on the phone on PulpMX Show Monday with Lars Lindstrom (manager HRC Honda) and I tried to get either one of them to tell me about the plans for production but neither guy would give it up. And maybe, like the automatic transmission CR back in the day or the aluminum-framed 1991 YZ250, this CR-E will never see the light of day, but I doubt it. I think there's a real place for these electric bikes in the world, either in their own classes or the ability to ride in populated areas. I'm excited for the future to see what everyone is going to do.

You can watch/listen to Canard's call in to talk CR E and more in the video below. Go to about three hours in.

AC222 (Mitch Kendra)

On the topic of new bikes, Antonio Cairoli, Ducati's new ambassador/tester, posted the following on Instagram with the caption that translated to English as: "A new adventure all Italian." And whoever took the photo made sure to barely crop out the bike! Hopefully we will get an up-close glimpse of the full new motocross bike soon...

RE-RACEABLES (Matthes)

It's the off-season which means let's watch some old races, right? Weege and I with special guest Jason "JT" Thomas jumped on a Leatt Re-Raceables to talk about Washougal 2006. What a race between Stew and RC and what we talked about on the show was what races those guys had all summer long. RC got the better of the #7 most of the time (not on this day though) but watching those two go at it was something else. Have a listen.

Toronto 2014 (DC)

And speaking of great races, in the cannon of amazing supercross races that James Stewart rode, the 2014 Toronto SX at the Rogers Center certainly stands out as one of his finest rides. Riding a Suzuki RM-Z450 he was almost last going into the first turn, at the very back of the pack, in a race where he was hoping to take over second on the all-time 450 SX wins list from Ricky Carmichael. Each had 48 wins at that point, and in order to break the tie, James was going to have to pass all of the heavy hitters that were in front of him: Ryan Villopoto, Ryan Dungey, Justin Barcia, Ken Roczen, and more. Despite the bad start, the win was still "Stew-able" in James' mind, as he had a few tricks up his sleeve in regards to the rhythm sections on what was a rather busy race track. Over the course of the last 15 minutes of the race Stewart would put on a virtuosos performance, uncorking incredible combinations as he ate up rider after rider.

"We are looking at one of the greatest performances of all time," said guest commentator Kevin Windham, who had joined Ralph Sheheen, and Jeff Emig in the booth for this race, and that was before James even reach the leader Barcia.

"Stewart has found a way to redefine this whole race course."

"He's in his own world right now," added Emig. "He's in the zone."

By the time James took the lead the TV crew was running out of accolades for just how incredible James was that night, and at that particular point late in his career. Stewart, who won the previous round in Detroit, would also win the following round in St. Louis, for an even 50 SX wins. But that was it for the fastest man on the planet. He would never win another SX main event after this late-season run, and he would actually only win one more outdoor race as well, the High Point National a couple months later.

A decade later James and his team at Bubbda's World and Seven decided to commemorate this last, best race of his SX career by tracking down the actual blueprint of the 2014 Toronto track and making custom prints that James signed and numbered. They also added his best lap time of the night—the sixth lap of the main event—which he clocked at 0:50.913 seconds. They sent a few out as gifts (one of which Racer X Magazine was lucky enough to get, frame and hang on our office wall) and the rest can be purchased for the Stew-inspired $259.00. If you've got a supercross fan in your life, this would make an amazing Christmas present. Because 10 years later, Stewart's 2014 Toronto SX win of March 22, 2014, still resonates as one of the all-time best supercross performances ever!

LE AUTOGRAPHED JS FINE ART TRACK MAP PRINTS-US

And if you want a refresher on just how impressive this race was for James, here's the 450 main event:

Early Moto-X-Mas Gift Idea (DC)

Speaking of great Christmas ideas…

Godspeed, Tim Gibbes (DC)

The motorcycling communities of Australia and New Zealand lost a legend this past week when Tim Gibbes passed away at the age of 90. We had mentioned Tim before in our MXGP-TV Trivia, as he was the first Australian to ever score a point in Grand Prix motocross, when he scored two points at the 1961 Swedish 500ccc Grand Prix. He was a pioneer who gave to the sport in many ways. As I wrote a few months back:

"Tim had an amazing journey as a true motorcycling pioneer, becoming the first Australian to win a gold medal in the ISDT in the mid-1950s (before he ever raced MX in Europe) and then of course the first to score those GP points. From there he would also eventually become a stunt man in the 1960s' Steve McQueen film The Great Escape. Once he went home to Australia he did a lot of things, promoting and teaching and all."

According to Scott Wilkins of New Zealand, "Tim basically got motocross off the ground in New Zealand after marrying a his Kiwi mate's sister (Joan) and moving here. He started an international series and then kept giving his time  to motorcycle racing this year. His passion and commitment were unmatched here. He was a life member of Motorcycling New Zealand and of course in the Motorcycling Hall of Fame. He got the first NZ ISDE and Motocross of Nations teams together."

More recently, Gibbes founded and organized the New Zealand Motocross Grand Prix at Woodville, which is the largest annual race of the year. 

Read Tim's obituary.

And this is an documentary about Tim Gibbes' long and wonderful life in motorcycling:

RIP Troy Assemany (Weigandt)

Sad news we're just beginning to unpack here, Troy Assemany, a long-time fast guy from Michigan and one of the great characters at all the big amateur races throughout the country, has apparently passed after an accident at the racetrack. I remember Troy as the long-time truck driver for the Riders Unlimited/Rocky Mountain KTM team, but the fun thing was that he always brought his own bike in the rig and raced himself! He'd qualifying for Loretta's every year, and he'd stick out because he's usually ride some fire-breathing big bore two-stroke in the Vet classes. Troy would show up at pro races, as well, and was always a fun guy to talk to. I'm sure his roots run deep with motocross up north. Because Troy always kept his stuff (and the truck) so clean, he was known as "Troy Clean" to his friends. Thoughts and prayers to his family and friends.

There will be a memorial race at Tony's home track, Twisted MX in Milan, Michigan. The funds raised will go to his family. Check out the details on the flyer. Godspeed, Troy Clean.

Hey, Watch It!

Welcome to the 450 Class, Hunter Lawrence! 🤝

Max Vohland FIRST DAY ON SUPERCROSS!

Is THIS Motocross Heaven?! | Club MX Open House

GoPro: Supercross Prep with Hunter Yoder

Vurbmoto caught up with Ken Roczen as he was prepping for the Abu Dhabi WSX round this weekend:

Alpinestars' "Paradigm Shifting: Towards Greatness." featuring Jett Lawrence:

We mentioned ClubMX earlier with the signing of Mark Fineis and the extension of their Yamaha deal. Here's the latest episode of Club Life: The Off-Season:

Head-Scratching Headline/s Of The Week

"CU Buffs football players robbed during away game at UCLA" - Denver Post

The Stump Grinder followed this story from Day One, to it's welcome conclusion.

"Runaway Pennsylvania pig Kevin Bacon caught after two weeks on the run."—abc27.com

“Study: Auto racing fans in top 10 most stressed sports fans.”

“Tarantula sighting results in car accident in Death Valley National Park”—CNN Travel

Random Notes

We got a cool old comic from our longtime reader Henry Pflanz from "Tank McNamara," thanks Henry!