Stadiums are stadiums. Supercross tracks are supercross tracks. Yes, there are elements that make each Monster Energy AMA Supercross round unique, but the AMA Pro Motocross Championship really bakes the feel of the facility into the overall feel of the event. When you’re in the stands of a dome like Detroit, Indy or St. Louis, you can sometimes forget which city you’re in. No one will ever think they’re at High Point when they’re at Hangtown.
Here are the feels from each of the 11 rounds of the AMA National Motocross Championship.
Fox Raceway
In motorsports the opening round is often the most anticipated, as opposed to the Superbowl or World Series in traditional sports. Anaheim 1 is a big one in this game, and the opening round of Pro Motocross, the whole “let’s take it outside” vibe is something you can’t replicate. The opening laps of the motocross season that tells you it’s different. Guys are feeling things out and not in full send like the supercross races you’ve watched for five months. The track is wet, the lines aren’t there yet, no one is quite sure how they feel or how their bike feels, let alone where they stack up against the others. At Fox Raceway, you get that “ahhh, this is different” feeling.
Pala also has the Southern California heart-of-the-industry thing, which is probably more significant for the riders and teams who can commute to the track from home. But it does lead to more legend-sightings in the pits, and more industry brass on hand. Lately, you’ll note some dudes cruising in from the mountains on adventure or dual sport bikes.
If you’re going, cram in visits to spots like Pro Circuit or Troy Lee Designs, and Old Town Temecula is a cool little spot for restaurants and hangouts, and the Pala Casino is right down the road from the track. The track is only a few minutes from SoCal civilization, for better or worse. Depends on your style.
Hangtown
Hangtown can proudly boast it has existed even longer than the 50-plus years of the AMA Pro Motocross Championship itself (and, if that gets mentioned, someone old-school will remind anyone who will listen that Hangtown started at a different track in Plymouth). NorCal doesn’t actually get a lot of big races; you’ve got Oakland or San Francisco in supercross, and this leads to a pretty big and rabid crowd. Also, the track has gotten a lot better over the years, the dirt has improved, and the sight lines are great, because it’s basically a flat area on one end and a giant hill on the other, so you can see a ton of the track in front of you.
Hangtown is part of a California State Park, surroundings are different than a typical motocross track. There’s proper state park signage, there are park rangers, and off-road sections on other ends of the property. Just feels different than most of the other races because of this. It’s also the only event on the schedule still run by a club, the Dirt Diggers North Motorcycle Club, which is now well into its third generation of moto enthusiasts.
This is not a “middle of nowhere” race. Folsom and Rancho Cordova have some cool stuff nearby, and if you really want to make a trip out of it you could get to the Bay Area and the Bay Bridge for a quick side-day trip.
Thunder Valley
Highly underrated as a venue, probably because even after nearly 20-consecutive years on the schedule, the name doesn’t ring out like some of the iconic tracks. But this track is cool, the sight lines are good (like Hangtown, most of the track is on one hillside) and the overall scenery unreal. You often get great racing here, also. Not sure if that’s due to the layout, the dirt prep or the elevation slowing the bikes, but you get some gnarly battles here.
This track is right next to the highway, which means easy access. Then there’s the overall surrounding the whole area… Hey, this is the heart of the Colorado Rockies. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t explore the mountains, or Denver, or any of the other amazing things in the area, like the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre. You haven’t seen mountains until you’ve come here.
High Point
Here we go with the old-school feel. When you’re at High Point, you feel like you’re 100 miles from anything, which is part of what makes the Nationals what they are. That foggy, slightly chilled morning air is a staple of places like this or Unadilla. Just driving to the track on that crazy mountain road is part of the atmosphere and if anything about the race became too sophisticated, well, it would actually make it worse.
Back in the 90s, when High Point raced on Memorial Day Weekend, it could rival RedBud for crowd support. Like a lot of these old tracks, things eventually got too crazy, and the event had to decide if it was a race or a party, and for sanity’s sake, it went heavier on the racing part. Then, to make the overall AMA travel schedule better, the date moved back into June, which also helped reduce the odds of a springtime High Point mud race, which was quite common.
Losing that Memorial Day Weekend party vibe dampened the wild High Point crowd for a while, but it has slowly started making a comeback with the new Father’s Day Weekend date. Last few years the crowd has been sneaky big.
As for the track, it’s changed a lot through the years, mostly to try to improve spectator viewing, put obstacles where the fans are, and improve the pits and access. All of these tracks have had to change with the times. High Point might have evolved the most, but it’s starting to find its place again.
While the track feels like it’s 100 miles from anything, it’s actually about 15 minutes from our Racer X HQ in Morgantown, WV, and the West Virginia University spot means plenty of things to see and do. You just won’t sense any of that when you’re at the track. As it should be.
Southwick
Southwick’s Moto-X 338 almost died once, so let’s not take it for granted. You might think this race is all about the sand track vibe, but it’s actually the personalities and people that define it more. New England has always been its own little private motocross enclave. Those faces come out en masse in Mass. and it’s so cool to see Keith Johnson (and his dad Rick), John Dowd, Doug Henry, Mike Treadwell and more actually working hands-on during the weekend.
Two shocking things about The Wick 338: its right in the middle of town. There are homes and baseball fields basically right next to the track! Also, the actual track area is tiny. Few make as much happen in as little space. The riders will tell you the sand isn’t actually as deep as it looks. Whatever, it still looks cool, and it still breeds unique results compared to other rounds. Also, New England is beautiful this time of year, and every house nearby looks like it came from George Washington’s time. It’s hard to sum up Southwick in words. You just gotta see it and hear it.
RedBud
You all know about this one. It’s super-sized motocross. Massive space, massive track, massive jumps, massive crowd—the centerpiece of the whole series. Part of the magic of RedBud is how the land in this area is totally flat, which means unlimited stretch out room for camping and parking, and space for a full-on secondary night track. Yet somehow the big track itself has hills! It’s like God threw down some elevation change for no other reason than to create LaRocco’s Leap. Also, Tim Ritchie managed to take a hard pack track and create deep soil by dumping sand on it. And he found all that sand on the property! Again, God must love RedBud.
If you’re not staying at the track, South Bend, Indiana is the home of Notre Dame so you can find stuff to see and do about 30 minutes away. But if you’re going to RedBud, you should really try to stay at RedBud. You know what I mean? It’s America’s birthday weekend!
Spring Creek
This is like an amusement park of a track. You wanna check out the whoops? Mount Martin? A lot of cool features here, plus some awesome dirt. Also, neat how the track slowly built its own little historic legacy via Ryan Dungey, the Martin brothers and the Chadapult. Now it has ghosts in the hillsides just like Southwick, Unadilla and Washougal.
Also, when we talk middle of nowhere, we mean middle of nowhere. Millville, Minnesota is quaint. If you need civilization go to Rochester, home of the world-famous Mayo Clinic. But this one is all about the track.
Washougal
You’ve heard it 1000 times: The prettiest track on the circuit. It’s hard to describe what that means. Honestly if you’re at the Thunder Valley, you can look in the distance and be more blown away by the view. Washougal and the great Pacific Northwest is surrounded by trees, so you can’t see as far. But those trees create an evergreen vibe. The drive to the track is amazing, and if you have time to stay in the area and explore the Columbia River Gorge or Mt. Hood or any of that stuff, you’ll never forget it. There's a reason manufacturers have spent decades doing photo shoots of motocross bikes on this track, and street and adventure bikes on the mountain roads nearby.
Like Hangtown, this area doesn’t get a ton of big races so you can tell this crowd’s heart is in it. Lots of ghosts and local lore in the hillsides, too. Washougal is one you just gotta see and do at least once.
Unadilla
Most people, when they look up motocross in the dictionary, expect to see Unadilla. The name and the history are just so synonymous with racing in America. Other tracks have history, but Unadilla has all these crazy stories of Hannah-versus-De Coster, and Trans-AMAs, USGPs, the first Motocross of Nations ever held in America... Squint when looking at photos and you can see Jett Lawrence traversing what looks to be the exact same ground as Marty Smith. There’s something to that.
It probably helps that the area is so quaint. This is just old-school, sleepy farmland, and that foggy morning chill on the race weekend defines this place as much as the terrain. Unadilla is supposed to feel no different in ’68 or ’88 or now. The facility has actually undergone many upgrades even over the last 10 years, but that’s just the background. Unadilla is Unadilla. If you know, you know.
Budds Creek
A good all-arounder, it’s like Budds Creek took the greatest hits of other tracks and put them on one record. It has hills and off cambers, it has “chocolate cake” dirt, it has some history from running MXoN once, and its central location means everyone from Pennsylvania all the way down to Florida somehow considers it a local race. Also, it’s definitely not middle of nowhere, as Washington D.C. is nearby. Budds is all of the stuff you love, and nothing that you don’t.
Ironman
This facility actually has its own history via the absolutely massive Ironman GNCC that’s been running there since the mid-90s, but as a motocross facility, it’s slowly making its way. As a new generation of riders comes through the ranks experiencing Ironman through local events, Loretta's qualifiers, the Scouting Moto Combines and that GNCC (a pretty popular off-season one off even for motocross racers), it will get further baked into the fabric of the sport.
Riders have really come to love this track, so it starts there (took a while to get there, the first few years of this race were always lashed with rain). Like RedBud, you get this perfectly flat spot for camping and parking and then all of a sudden, the track itself has huge elevation change. Also, Ironman is back to running the series’ finale, which adds to the lore. And, because that big GNCC paved the way, the local town (Crawfordsville) loves when the races come to town. Not a bad place to see some number-ones get handed out, and if you happen to somehow still be in the pits when the racing is over, you might catch some riders and teams letting their hair down in ways you won’t anywhere else. When the finale is held in California, everyone can just go home and celebrate there. In Indiana, what happens in Indiana stays in Indiana!