New Kid
If there still weren't enough variables to keep things interesting, let's throw in a rookie ready to enter the pro ranks at full throttle. The Factory Connection strategy is to sign and develop amateurs in their final non-pro year to a three-year contract. This gave Eli Tomac a chance to attend test sessions with the team in 2009 to smooth the transition. This strategy has paid off in the past, with Trey Canard winning the East Coast Supercross Lites title in his rookie season, and Justin Barcia leading the majority of his first pro race and later nailing down an overall win at the Southwick National in his rookie Outdoors. Tomac comes in with the same desire to win and shares with Barcia the distinction of "fastest lap of the week" at his final Loretta Lynn's amateur national. Eli has the added benefit of his father, mountain bike legend John Tomac, who is Eli's trainer as well as assisting Eli in developing the machinery to work best for him. The testing days would also serve to allow Eli and the techs to get a feel for one another's vocabulary for bike dynamics, something necessary to communicate what the bike is doing and to determine what changes the bike might need on any given race weekend.
New Block
Another switch-up to the already-complicated schedule is Brett Metcalfe, who finished the 2010 Supercross Lites East season with a race and series podium. He will make his step to the 450 class this summer. With zero race experience on a 450 in the U.S. (a fact that changed one week later when he won a Saturday REM race at Glen Helen against Mike Alessi, also besting 250F riders Tommy Searle and Tyla Rattray on his gate), Metcalfe will single-handedly represent the team in the 450 class since Windham will not be racing the Nationals this year.
Divide And Collaborate
I met up with Tomac and Metcalfe, team owner Rick "Ziggy" Zielfelder and a handful of race department techs and mechanics at Pala Raceway for day one of their testing blitz. To keep the days efficient and productive, the team breaks the testing down to two-rider sessions, squeezed in throughout the supercross race schedule. Tomac would share in the discoveries of two prior team test sessions already completed-three test days with Canard and Barcia after the Jacksonville SX, and three days with Canard and Wharton before the Houston SX round. Metcalfe could lean a bit on Dan Reardon's '09 MX settings and two seasons of supercross under Kevin Windham, but otherwise everything was on him.
Pala Raceway provided some speed and some air, but a Wednesday open track day doesn't come close to the rough conditions the Nationals would dish out. The two boxvans were loaded up midday and the search for bumps took us to the natural-terrain MX Heaven track in Perris, California. The riders shooed two horses and a pony off the track, then pounded out motos until the sun gave up. It was a long day for the support team, and more so for the riders hitting the roughest sections at the highest possible speed-all the while keeping much of their concentration on evaluating the bucking bike beneath them.
The riders are free to select the components and settings that work best for them, but the 250 riders' setup picks were all becoming a mirror of the others'-with slightly stiffer spring rates on Wharton's bike being the only significant difference between them-a sure sign the team was finding the machine's sweet spot. Ziggy believes in "blind testing," so he'd send the riders out often without telling them what changes or adjustments had been made to the bikes. When the rider pulled in about 15 minutes later, Ziggy would ask questions, being sure not to lead the rider to any conclusions. His calm manner didn't diffuse the pressure-these subjective decisions made on a windy hill in California would determine the equipment that tackled the U.S. soil at speed all summer.