More From Phoenix Supercross - Feature Review - Dirt Rider Magazine

Round two of the Amp'd Mobile AMA Supercross Series saw a new winner, which was significant. It was also significant because Phoenix saw the first in what may be considered a new generation of supercross tracks.After Anaheim I, many of the riders were up in arms that the track was poorly built, and the AMA agreed. At Phoenix, the media got a chance to sit down with AMA MX/SX Manager Steve Whitelock and talk to him about why they're making changes, and what changes are being made. "Well, I think you guys saw last week's racetrack. It put some of the stars on the ground, and that wasn't exactly what I had in mind for A1," Whitelock said. "I need them on May 7th in beautiful downtown Las Vegas, so I was a bit concerned. But I think they've come back and built me a good race track here. We've got little issues, but there's always little issues with these funny racetracks with split starts and stuff, but I think we're opening up a dialog and we're going to talk with more riders as we go along. And as I said, if they've got a problem, they should go up and talk with me. Don't be afraid of me. It's their racetrack, and it's our job to give them the best, safest racetrack and a racetrack that they can race each other on, and not race the racetrack. Right now, I think at Anaheim we had a racetrack where they raced the racetrack—they're not racing each other. I think at Anaheim they were too busy paying attention to the track."Like in that little speed section , that's what they're calling it , it's just what I wanted because you can momentarily lose concentration. If you think about a lot of the racetracks we put them on, you have to concentrate 100% of the time that they're on the racetrack, and that's a hard thing to do. It's too hard on them. I think no mind can stay that focused for that long. So, with giving them a few places to figure out where they are, and who is where, it's much better than, 'Where's that front wheel? Where's that front wheel? Oops!' If you look, the only time they ever take tearoffs off is when they're in the air. They don't get a chance to rest their brain. It's important that we come up with these places."Another thing I said to a couple of guys—I'm not perfect on the facts, but I think I'm pretty close—I said something to one of my hardcore road-race buddies that we can't be putting our stars on the ground, and his reply back to me was, 'That's the nature of motorcycle racing.' So I just sat there and thought about it, then asked, 'Hey, in the last five years, how many times has Valentino Rossi been on the ground?' He sat there and stuttered. And I said, 'If you think about it, in the last five years, he has been maybe 8 times total on the ground, and in the race? I can only think of three times in the last five years that Valentino Rossi has fallen off in a race.' That's the kind of figures we need to work with because that man is riding at the highest level of competition in road racing, and these guys are riding at the highest level of competition in supercross or motocross, so I need to be able to look at that and think of it that way."So that's what we're going to try to do. We're going to try and give them race-able racetracks that they can use and race on and race each other on."When asked if this is why the AMA put out a press release earlier in the week expressing their concern with the tracks, Whitelock responded: "There was starting to be a lot of chatter about, 'Aww, what's the AMA going to do? Nothing, like they normally do?'" Whitelock said. "No. We're not going to do nothing. I had to let everybody know that I'm concerned. Also, good or bad, my board of directors was at Anaheim I, and they expressed concern that things weren't right and they wanted me to get on it. You listen to your boss, so I said, 'Okay!' I talked with Graber, he wrote the press release, and he asked me lots of questions, but we tried to build that press release where we're not blaming anybody. This is something that's growing, and it's growing because the damned motorcycles are getting so good. They are getting to be really, really fast, quick-accelerating things that they can put together groups of jumps that we never dreamed they could. Now we just need to look at our spacings. If you look at the guys at Dirt Wurx, they know what kind of dirt they're dealing with, how much traction the dirt's got, because they've been doing this a long time. They have little formulas that they say, 'At this track, they're 27 feet apart, and at another racetrack they're 24 feet apart because the dirt is good.' So, we need to start looking at those things again and say, 'Christ, these 450s are SO fast and accelerate SO hard and can do things that we never dreamt they could do...'"Like I said, our game is motorsports, and we're letting them build better and better and better motorcycles that make more and more power, and we're not restricting them, and the way we're trying to restrict laptimes and speed on the racetrack is to make the racetrack more difficult. That's no good, because in every other motorsport, what are they doing? Restrictor plates, capacity's down, all kinds of things. So we've got to not restrict the racetracks and not restrict the motorcycles—because that's what makes this so much fun because the customer is getting such a good motorcycle out of it—but we have to find ways to keep them up in the air longer. That's one way we can slow down laptimes. When you're flying, you can't be accelerating. Or spacing out the jumps where they can't put a quad together when we only imagined it was going to be a triple. So we're looking at all of that stuff. And that's what we're up to. And it's going to take us a couple, three, or four, or maybe six or eight races to get it right. It's going to be a learning process."With having the stars race these 450s, it's way different, and I think the 450s that the guys are riding, if you call Ricky's, Chad's, Kevin's and Bubba's bikes 100%, there's a whole bunch of bikes out there that are 95%, and then another little group that's 90%. So we've got a lot of guys going really fast, which is what we want, but we want them to be doing it safely."The AMA has always been there to look over things, and we'll go out and talk about the angles of the faces and that stuff. We don't get into the technical mechanics of the spacing, but we are now because we have a different situation. Duke always addressed those things. Last year, we looked at all that stuff.Another thing I said last week was, if Anaheim I would've been round 13, we probably would've been okay, because no matter how much they prepare or how much testing they do, after they've done it 13 weeks in a row, holy smokes, they're magic. There was a race last year where we lost Friday practice, and Ricky, Chad and Bubba came down the tunnel together and went at it the first lap of practice. They cleared every obstacle, hit every whoop section perfectly, didn't overjump anything, and they probably went within a half a second of their fastest time on the first lap!It's because, after enough weeks and enough seeing these things, they can walk around and go, 'I'm going to land here, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that...' So, maybe if A1 would've been round 13 Houston or something like that, we might've been great, but we can't have that. We need to think."SoBe/Samsung Honda's Billy Laninovich said before the race that the track was easy, but that everyone had to race the same track. He obviously did fine, hanging on for second and his first series points lead. "I liked the track last week," Laninovich said after the race. "It was tough, and it separated a lot of the guys. But I guess they don't want them all tough. It made for good racing. You can see, the 250 class was good racing, and in the 125, there was four or five of us battling the whole time, and I know that the fans like that kind of stuff. They don't want somebody who will just check out. But the track was easy, but it was easy to make mistakes—it broke down a lot. You get wheel-spin and it got pot-holes on some of the jumps and stuff like that."Kawasaki's James Stewart fell down on the start, but still recovered for third, even though he thought the track was too easy. "I've been fortunate I haven't been back there all year, but I thought it was a good race—a smart race," Stewart said. "I thought I made some good passes and stuff, and I just tried to get up there because I knew how easy the track was, and once people got away, it was kind of hard to make up time. My strongest point was the whoop section tonight—I made a lot of passes through there. So it was good."Yamaha's Chad Reed didn't think the track was any better or worse than normal. "I don't know? Did it look any different? Or did it make any difference? I don't know," he said. "Last weekend, everybody complained, but mostly I think that it was the same as always. I don't think they ever really finish the tracks too great, and I think last weekend was just the first race that they really made it a problem, and I think that was it. Everybody was nervous, everybody wanted to do good, everybody was on new bikes, and the problems were magnified. I don't think it's any better or worse than normal."Ricky Carmichael had to be happy with his first win of the season. "Yeah, I was happy. I was pretty upset after the Heat ," Carmichael said. "I knew I was better than that, so I tried to make a turn-around, and I still didn't get a great start. I just tried to plug away and make good laps—make no mistakes. The track was definitely easy, but it was also easy to make mistakes. I made a few myself, but fortunately they weren't big ones."Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki's Grant Langston said it was tough making passes on the Phoenix track after he stalled it early on. "They told me when I got back going, I was 15th," Langston said. "The track is pretty tough to get around . You had to be somewhat aggressive and commit—like, scrub a jump, get real close to a guy, and then sneak up the inside and basically take his line away. So I started making some passes, and then I heard the crowd cheer, and I didn't know what happened, then all of a sudden I saw Short and Villopoto in front of me, so I figured they must've had some problems too. So I was like, 'All right! We're back in this!' So, once I saw them, it was a bit of a relief, and at that point, I was thinking I needed to get around some of these guys for a good points situation. So, next I saw the white flag and I was able to get around a couple guys and get on the podium."Red Bull KTM's Nathan Ramsey, who won the Lites main, liked the track much better, although he thought the track itself was harder to ride in some ways. "The track had a little better rhythm to it than there was last weekend," Ramsey said. "I think the one thing about it was that it was really hard to push on because you couldn't really trust your bike as much as you wanted to because the ground was a little inconsistent and would fall away or slip out. I just tried to be as smooth as I could. I made a couple mistakes—nothing too major—and I just tried to put in some really smooth laps and keep my eyes on everybody and just cross the checkered flag first."Ramsey wasn't a fan of the split start, though. "Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the split," Nate Dog said. "It's just, if you watch, there's so many pileups. It's a lot tighter area, and you've got two different sides, so a pileup can clog one whole side up, and then the other side could just have a huge lead. So it gaps everybody if there's a problem, and then if everybody makes it through, you have another first turn to deal with when you get to the next turn, so it's a tough call. I would definitely pick the conventional start. And in the races, it kind of worked out a lot better than I expected. It started off that going to right was way better, and then they threw a couple haybales to split the lanes a little better, and it started being a lot more even. In the race, it's okay, but on the start, it's just too chancey."Langston didn't see much of a point in the split either. "I think you can look back and count how many laps I did today, and count how many times I went left and how many times I went right and it was probably 50/50, so I just tried to avoid—because, the way those turns were, if you started out going to the left or to the right, the very next turn was a 180 flat turn, and if you're right on someone, you'll run right into the back of them because it almost came to a stand-still, so it was a little frustrating," Langston said. "There was no berms we could've banked off of. I just always heard my dad saying, as a kid, 'Whatever you do, don't follow.' So, I tried to keep that in mind. Once I was behind these guys, we would go a different direction there, but when it came back together, I was right back behind them again. I was just like, 'Man, come on, just slide out once—give it to me.' But that didn't seem to happen, considering how easy it was to make mistakes, once we were together, there weren't many mistakes being made. It was a tight race."We caught up with Ryan Clark, whose team—Team Solitaire—is sporting a brand-new big-rig. "We're moving up in the world. Just with the help of Rich from BikeSellerz.com, I was able to really up the program this year, and all of my sponsors that have been with me from the beginning really stepped up to the plate," Clark said. "They knew from the get-go that my vision was to be a full-blown team out of a semi and everything, and this is the first year we were able to kind of make that step. I just wanted to make sure I had the groundwork in place before I bit off too much, but I have a great crew this year and our driver and our mechanics are doing an awesome job. The whole program is really coming of age, I guess, which hopefully will enable myself and Buckelew to get some good results this year."And with Justin Buckelew on the team, the team's not-so-Solitaire anymore. "Yeah, we'll have to think about a name-change I guess, but I just love everything that it represents with my humble beginnings and where I've come from," Clark said. "Five years from now, I hope to say that we've made just as much progress in those five as we have in the first five. I hope we're a force to be reckoned with in the future."Paul Lindsey's MotoworldRacing.com team is on Yamahas this year, and he loves it. "Obviously I made a switch from Suzuki to Yamaha, and I couldn't be happier," Lindsey said, with his Denver Broncos jersey just visible under his team shirt. "We started out and won on Yamahas and the door opened up for us to come back, and we couldn't be happier to be back with them. We had a good run with Suzuki for four years, and it was just time for a change. The Yamahas are incredible in '06 and we're pretty pumped about it."On the west coast, MotoworldRacing.com is supporting Justin Brayton, Richie Owens and helping Andy Bakken. "All three of them are riding great, they love the bikes, and Brayton is somebody who a lot of people don't expect much from coming from Arenacross, because he was injured," Lindsey said. "But he's back, he's healthy, he loves the bike, and he loves racing supercross instead of arenacross, too." And back East, MotoworldRacing.com will have a heck of a lineup. "Chad Johnson, who's leading the Live Nation Arenacross Series, along with Stephane Roncada and Tucker Hibbert," Lindsey says of who will be riding for him back east. "Tucker has been down living and training with Eddie Casillas, and I think he's another person people don't expect much from, but I'm excited to see what he can do."Lindsey probably won't have all six riders on for the Nationals, but it depends. "It's going to depend on injuries and whatnot," Lindsey said. "Technically, we're just helping Andy with supercross right now, but he's a bench rider for us, and Richie's deal is supposed to be for SX also, but he's a good outdoor rider and we'd love to keep him on—but we're not sure if he's going to ride a 250F or 450, because he did really well on a 450 at the last round. But unfortunately, the likelihood in this sport of having all five guys out there at once can be pretty slim, so we're going to play it by ear. Oh, and go Broncos!"Bloodshot's Kenny Miller filled us in on the four-stroke growing pains his team has experienced with Tyler Evans. "We wanted to ride two-strokes this year, because we went to Canada on the four-stroke and it wasn't looking good, but it's one of those things that we just have to do," Miller said. "Everyone's doing it. He's a big kid, and that two-stroke doesn't pull him around like that four-stroke does. So we're a couple weeks out from getting it working just right, but we'll figure it out."Bloodshot will be adding a rider when the series heads east. "Schnell, our 125 guy, he's going Arenacross right now," Miller said. "He'll be joining us for the east coast on a Bloodshot/Rockstar 250F, and he's going to be running it. We wanted to do a semi this year, but we just didn't get the money in time. We had sponsors that didn't come on board until the last minute, but we have the money now, so we'll have it next year, and maybe we'll have 2 or 3 more riders then. It's going to go from there on. When Tyler's done, we aren't going anywhere. This is a team that's going to be around. We're the black sheep of this sport, and I wouldn't do it any other way. It's our way or no way. We keep it professional, but at the same time, we have fun. It's a low-pressure team because our riders transcend results. We have lots of fans, and although we want good results, we don't need them to have fans. That says a lot about our fans. We love them. We have the best crowd, and we take our time with every one of them."Tyler Evans was a little sore before the race, but he felt his 450 racing was improving. "Physically, I'm all right. My knee's still a little sore, but it's getting better, day by day," Evans said. And how's the 450 coming? "It's still coming. Hopefully, we'll be a lot better in the next couple races. Each week it gets better and better. We do suspension testing this week. It's a total different riding style. I'm real aggressive, and with that thing, you can't be because it's so meaty. You have to ride a gear higher, and if you over-rev it, it doesn't go anywhere. I've got to get back in the top 10. Even a heavyweight gets knocked out once in a while. Not that you want to, but that's the way it is sometimes. It's a give and take with that thing. Some spots it's good, and some spots it's not. The start is number one, but I'm shitty at starts anyway, so either way."Michael Holigan's BooKoo Honda team has another new sponsor for 2006. "One of the great ones we brought in this year was RCA," Holigan said. "In the past, we had a different electronics firm, and we had this deal cooking for a while, and it was great to be able to bring it together and bring it out in 2006. Right now, this first season, they're just getting their feet wet in supercross and understand the sport, and they're coming out to Anaheim III. At the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, we're going to try and do some special stuff that week all around the race itself. They're really neat in the fact that they understand the NASCAR model and how to work with other team sponsors, so they want to sit down with all of the sponsors at Anaheim III and talk about how we're going to get together to leverage their marketing dollars to most effectively help each other."Holigan's main man, David Vuillemin, took a heck of a digger in practice. "I came up short ," Vuillemin said. "I tried to triple in like the other guys, but I guess I need a little more power. I ran out of power, or maybe I spun, I don't know what happened. I went over the bars pretty bad. Then I rode to the end of practice with no visor, and that was kind of fun. I'm fine. I just bent the levers, no big deal. My ribs hurt a little, but nothing major." If you want to see the photo of the crash, check out his website, www.dv12.com.After a pretty strong ride at Anaheim I, Eric Sorby got a ride with the MotoSport.com/MDK/MSR Honda team in Arizona, filling in for injured Danny Smith. Sorby won his heat race, but missed the top 10 in the main event. Smith reportedly suffered back pain in the main event in Anaheim, eventually leading to a fall. When he had it checked out, it turns out he has a ruptured disc, according to a source. He will be out indefinitely. Unbound Energy/MotoXXX's Timmy Ferry was back after his early exit from round one. His wrists were still sore, but he indicated he was feeling much better. He made the main, finishing 15th.SoBe/Samsung Honda's Jake Weimer also was feeling better from the sore ankle he had in Anaheim. He fell in the first turn in the main event, but recovered for 11th.Rumor report: Despite his holeshot and fourth-place finish in Phoenix, we may see Jeremy McGrath on a CRF450R by Anaheim II.After the race, Makita Suzuki's Ricky Carmichael said he was a little sick this week. "I got a little sick this week, so I'm a little under the weather, but I felt good," he said. "Luckily, I'm getting over it, so it's just in my sinuses, but I feel good. I'm happy for the win, and it was a fun race. It was good for the fans."Carmichael says his bike is causing his poor starts. "We changed some things after the US Open, actually—we had a problem with the four-stroke bogging, and we changed a few things," RC said. "Unfortunately, the downfall is it's not as good on the starts, but the thing doesn't bog, so that's nice. It's not cutting it, though. This isn't the way that you want to do it, and it definitely increases your chances of something going wrong. These guys are on their game, so I can't have any slip-ups. I have to do something."Carmichael says his pass on Chad Reed for the lead was aggressive, but necessary. "For sure, I had to make an aggressive move," Carmichael said. "I told him on the podium that he got me in the heat race... I don't know, I don't want to go, 'Oh I got you, he got you,' this or that. But I did what I had to do, and it's over and done with. I've got a lot of respect for Chad as well as James, and we're up here because we both want to win. I don't think we're deliberately going to go out there and just ruin each other—I'm not going to. We did what we had to do—he won the heat, and I was able to capitalize and win the main event."Carmichael also said that he liked the right in the split-lane start area, once he passed McGrath for second. "I didn't feel comfortable when I went to the left," RC said. "I didn't feel comfortable on the flat turns. I think that I wasn't riding those very good today, and I started thinking, 'Man, maybe with the double , it's gotta be faster to double instead of single-single.' You just eliminate a little more. Then it sets you up for the double and sets you up for that turn really good, and it seems like when I was doing that, it made it a little easier to stay behind him. I lost a lot there—he was really good through that section, and I figured I had to switch it up."After losing the lead to Carmichael, Reed kept his head in the game. "I never felt like it was over," Reed said. "I knew the track was slick, and I knew my pace was good, and he didn't just leave me or anything like that, so I had one more shot at him, and I ruined it again, so that was it. It's those little mistakes that I need to take away."Reed says he's ready for the battle ahead. "I felt good. I pretty much forgot about December, and I put it off to my 2005 season—it wasn't such a solid season," Reed said. "So it's a good way to end it. But honestly, I just want to turn it around—just be there in the points. I think these two are even, and I'm one point behind, so it's going to be a title fight. We had a packed press conference at Anaheim Stadium, so it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it."James Stewart has changed a lot. Once known for his impatience and sometimes wild riding, when he went down in the main event, all he was worried about was the championship. "I think last year, and maybe a couple years before that, I would definitely have pushed the issue," Stewart said. "I just don't see it, in the fourth race of the season, I just didn't see trying to make that... Maybe I make a pass or whatever, but it just wasn't worth to me going down. I knew once I was coming up, I could see where these guys were, and I knew these top guys were up in the lead, so I just made my way up to third and stuff and settled there, but I was definitely thinking about the championship—trying to stay up."I was looking at Jeremy , and I was trying to figure out where I was, and he was just telling me what place I was in because it was kind of crazy back there, but he did a good job at letting me know what was going on during the race," Stewart said. "I thought he really helped me a lot. It was good. I basically have got to thank my mom and dad for keeping me grounded—hearing 'championship' during the week—it definitely paid off during the night, being back in the back of the pack. It's going to be a long season, so it's going to be fun."I mean, I never want to think about going down in the first corner, but I think, from watching these guys—watching all the old races and stuff—I know what it takes to win a championship, and that's to be up on the box every single weekend—not to have 1st, 1st, 1st, and then a 15th. I knew automatically when I went down that I needed to get up here and collect points. That's what I did."Nathan Ramsey won his first race of the season, after finishing with two crashes and a broken helmet visor in Anaheim. "I think it was a bit of a flip-flop from last year. Points-wise, I'm a lot better off coming out of this race," Ramsey said. "I can't wait for the day where we can sit around talking about all of the good ones I've had. I don't know. It's going to take consistency, and the 12th place last weekend wasn't good, but I think some things have come back around this weekend and we're back to close to an even playing ground again, so I just want to get out there, get some good starts, and put in some good rides—ride 15 hard laps, and ride like I know I can."Ramsey loves his KTM this year. "I can't even remember what that bike was like," Ramsey said. "It's really good. Last year, just jumping on it, right away I was pretty impressed with how it was, and it was one of those deals where it had just came out, and they were still trying to get things going, and we were a little bit behind all year and it just continued to get better and better. This year, it's really good. I really believe in the bike and the program that Larry and everybody puts together at KTM. There are a lot of hard workers there—guys that won't give up. They just keep working and working. I feel privileged and honored to be part of a team that puts that kind of effort into it. It's not easy for me to slack when I know these guys are working so hard."Billy Laninovich now enjoys his first points lead of his career. "Yeah, I'm excited," Laninovich said. "I'm not thinking about it too much—we still have six races, and I'm sure we're going to be going back and forth, but my whole goal this year is to be consistent and just do the best I can."He held off a group of guys in the main event. "You know, that was probably one of the toughest races I've ever done," Billy said. "Those guys were all over me, but halfway through the race, I got kind of comfortable and I just relaxed and just rode my race. I'd pull away a little bit, then make a little mistake and they'd catch back up to me. It was tough to make mistakes. The track was real easy. We were all really close on times and stuff."Grant Langston has been among the fastest riders two weeks in a row, but both times had to come back from nearly dead last. He got a fourth from dead last in Anaheim, and a third from 18th in Phoenix. "When I stalled it, I think I just slid the back end around, and when I came to drop down off the berm, I don't know if I had my foot on the brake and dumped the clutch or what, but I stalled it," Langston said. "I didn't really take a minute to try and figure out what I needed to do, I just pulled the clutch in and started kicking away. But they don't start in gear. So then I rolled all the way to the face of the jump, and then when it didn't start, I almost fell over because I was kind of balancing on that jump. I had to get in neutral and kick it, and once I put it in neutral, it was actually pretty quick. But on the first lap, that all probably happened in a matter of seven or eight seconds, but 10 or 12 guys came by at that point. Coming through the pack, I was just thinking I had to go for it—charge—and get as many points as I can. When I saw the top guys in front of me, I figured something had to have happened then, but it was actually a bit of a sigh of relief, thinking, 'I'm not the only guy who's mid-pack.' Then, it was funny, because once we got through a lot of those mid-pack guys, it was just a big bunch of guys again. It was pretty fun."