Weekend Window is in Detroit to watch the final round of East SX Lites, with the title up for grabs. These are always exciting and anything can happen.
A few other points about this weekend-
- It's past April 15, so it's "new fuel weekend" for the race teams. This means the deadine is past for the fuel suppier to get the offending chemical out of the fuel that caused all the problems starting at A3. The new cans were spotted outside Reed's semi and were labeled Pro 4.1. So OK, they are racing dot 1 fuel and not dash 1. Nice huh?
- Weather is great outside!
- AMA Racing's Steve Whitelock held a round table with media after the track walk to go over the meetings in Spain last weekend. It went pretty well and he explained to the US moto media how the process worked.
- Motocross dot com's editor Tim Olson is replacing Terry Beal at Yamaha. Congrats to Tim.
Quick summary of the more controversial part, the 350/450 thing:
What happened last weekend in Spain is the FIM and AMA Racing agreed to work on problems together, and they have already asked the MSMA to take a proposal to OEMs to make 350s or something close available to racing.
This is not a demand and they can't and don't want to tell OEMs to not make 450s any more. They are just saying together, "Racing wants 350s, give us 350s, or something close."
The MSMA actually met for 7 hours before the meetings because they had advance notice of the concerns. Then the FIM and AMA brought up the issue in a GP Commission meeting and agreed. Then they held the round table you read about on WW. Lots of meetings.
Resistance on the team side is quick. They are questioning the logic and the items that came up in defense of the 350 proposal. These are like "do the 450s really tear up whoops, who says only a few guys can really race them, who says they are too powerful, don't you know how expensive it is to change things, etc."
Whitelock explained their side and said he will probably be in the followup meeting in June.
As far as the AMA side, they are convinced 450s are too much for racing, and after last weekend, you could say the train has already left the station. The FIM agrees and the issue is already on the table in Japan.
