Round two of the FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) took place in Abu Dhabi this past weekend with some surprises in qualifying, the races and more. We chatted with principal owner Adam Bailey about the race in the new country, the series in general, rough riding and more.
Racer X: Abu Dhabi, your first time there. First time supercross, as far as I know, has been there at all. Thoughts on crowd reaction, race thoughts, arena thoughts, all of that from you. What, what do you make of the going to this country?
Adam Bailey: I mean, “Wow” I think is what I would say and there's, there's plenty to talk about, that's for sure. But first of all, and most importantly for me, the crowd loved it. I think that was great. I think the reaction was incredible. From the moment bikes hit the track, literally the sighting lap to the SX2 first race. We changed the format a little bit so I maybe I’ll just go back on that. We specifically, and the promoter on the ground there specifically, wanted a really short night program.
I was gonna ask you about that…
Because it's a new audience and, I mean, they had never seen any event like this before, so they kind of said, well, we don't want people to get bored and I tried to explain, well, they're not gonna get bored. So, they said let's shorten it up even more and make it just a two-hour event. So, um that's why the heats and the, the SuperPole happened earlier in the day before the gates were open. So, they said let's do that stuff before anyone's in the crowd and then we'll just get straight into the mains essentially when the crowd's there and, you know, there's no chance of them getting bored.
So, we're kind of open to it, “Okay, let's give it a trial run” that's what they know, the local audience. It was a little bit odd for me, obviously, I'm used to seeing kind of the, the night start off with heats and then getting into the mains and all that stuff. But that's why we did it that way.
So, then the first bikes on track that the crowd saw was the sight lap for the SX2 first main. And they were just like going bananas on the first sight lap and I think they saw someone jump the triple and they went nuts. And I was like, “I don't think that they know that it's just the site lap.”
I think from that side of it, from the entertainment aspect, I had a lot of people, they hadn't seen supercross or motocross before at all, like no experience whatsoever. Their reaction was fantastic, so that was great. I mean, it was certainly a lot of action which we'll get into.
The venue choice, it was always going be for us, we didn't have a say in that as far as the promoter. When you go to these countries, there's curveballs, you go to different countries, there's curveballs that we just don't experience at home. And one of them there was that the equipment that turned up was just like, incredibly substandard.
It broke right?
I mean, they continued to break it like the very first skids gear that turned up was like, I mean, it looked like it had just been out in the sun for like 30 years and the track builder was like, we can't work with this. And then they had, I think, a 7.5-ton excavator was the other machine. You’d normally have 20-ton excavator. We provide the list of equipment required like part of the deal. And in the contract is, “Hey, this is all the equipment we need.” And then at that point, they just couldn't find anything that was suitable, like it just didn't exist there or it's on projects,
I've got to give credit to that to the track crew because it would have been an easy time to really get upset about it because it was clearly not ideal and it took them twice as long to build the track just on the basis of the size of the equipment, but they kind of persevered and did the best they could.
Well, it looked a lot like Bercy to me in the tightness and everything else and was it a supercross track? No, but we've seen great racing on tracks like that. But anyways, how were ticket sales?
Really, really good. There were a little over 7000 people there, which in that part of the world that's big for a first-time event. What was fantastic about it is a really diverse crowd, like super diverse, you know, like you just saw people from all countries a lot. I thought it may have just been full of ex-pats and British and British Americans, Australians and things. But actually there were quite a lot of local people and wearing the traditional Pandora and all that stuff, which I thought was really cool. I just thought, it's sort of breaking down barriers of these people that clearly would not be interested in this normally. I thought that was great and then to see them being so positive and into it, it was exciting also.
Vince Friese was all over social media. Your race was all over social media because of Vince. We know the way he rides honestly, I watched it, saw all the things and I've had Vince's back for a lot of things because, you know, he's not a popular guy and so it's easy to pile on. It's easy to do the social media thing and make fun of him.
Having said that, getting punted by Joey (Savatgy) and then just not pulling off the track and pulling in front of Joey again is just a clown move and you guys did penalize him for rough riding.
You guys had the word super villain on your promotional stuff coming in. So, I don't know if he took that to heart or what, but where do you stand on what he did out there?
I mean, I appreciate it as a promoter and a marketer. I appreciate the fact that someone's willing to be the villain. I don't like that everyone’s just gonna be everybody's friend, then that doesn't make for good entertainment either. I think he went too far, you know, if every single rider and every single person, everyone's saying it, then maybe, you know what I mean? I thought Dean (Wilson) handled it like a champ I mean, he took some accountability for getting nailed by Vince.
This is me personally and I don't make the rules nor enforce the rules. I think that's clear to say. I have people peppering me at the time, but I'm not the guy. I can't say, “Hey, Vince is disqualified for what he did.” Like, we engage FIM for that, that's their job, you know, literally to enforce the rules. So, from a personal opinion, I had less of an issue with him slamming in the corner as I did, you know, hearing him jumping across in rhythms or looking across and doing that kind of stuff I feel like if people are feeling unsafe racing with him then I don't want that. I just think he certainly is happy to play the villain role and I think there's good entertainment value in that, but at the same time, I don't want anyone getting hurt and I don't want any, anyone thinking that they are gonna get hurt. I said the same to Tony Alessi, you've got to dial it back a bit.
I enjoy the entertainment aspect and he doesn't mind getting hated on which I think that's great because I feel like in the sport it can be too vanilla. I think everyone being friends with each other is a bit too vanilla from a sporting and entertainment perspective. But in terms of that, the safety and integrity of the racing, has to come first too, right?
