St Louis Friday

The St Louis supercross is parked and ready for Saturday! The real cold isn't scheduled to arrive till then. So far, it's not so bad.

RC is in, Stewart and Reed are ready. Byrne's been here since Thursday and is ready for sure. Wey's still out due to thumb surgery (and he's a proud papa too, congrats).

Butler Brothers MX lost two guys to concussions at Atlanta (DeHaan and Skinner) and then Bryan Johnson injured his kneecap practicing during the week, right after their team high (and his career best) 7th at Atlanta. They went from 5 guys to 2.

Who started a rumor Alessi was out? Both were hanging around the pits Friday at St Louis getting ready for tomorrow.

St Louis has an indoor convention center-like pit area, so no matter how cold it gets, the party is still good inside. The trucks have to come in at a schedule all morning Friday, and according to Live Nation's Bob Wright (Kyle Lewis's father in law), they were all right on time this morning and things were as smooth as ever. The only truck that missed time was Big B at Kawasaki, 3 minutes off. So that was the joke around there Friday, Big B and his 3 minutes. (Not mentioning the rest of it..:) )













Bob Wright watches the track area as riders do a demo for media on Thursday, and he parks trucks on Friday. (PK Photo)

If you are in the pits Saturday, stop by Tamer and ask Marsack's dad (#79) if he ever got that clutch off!

KW's mechanic is Lars Linstrom, son of Gunnar, as in Gunnar Gasser, the trick throttle everyone had to have back in the day. Gunnar was also one of the orginal Husky heros that made the move from Europe to Southern California.

St Louis has a lot of deep loose dirt, and there is a sand section. It should rut up pretty good and make for good racing. There are two good whoop sections in a row, so that's going to be a place no one can afford to be the weakest.

Lites? Yeah Lites. Collier and Tickle Explain All

Weekend Window starts out St Louis weekend with a peek into a real press day. Press day is when a couple of teams agree to arrive at the venue early and ride and talk to local papers and TV about AMP'd Mobile Supercross.

At St Louis press day, we find Lucas Oil Yamaha's Sean Collier and Broc Tickle, and Rockstar Suzuki's Michael Byrne. Let's sit in on the meeting and see how it goes...

The best part was Collier and Tickle talking at the same time to explain what a "Lites" division is.....

Team Lucas Oil Yamaha guys Sean Collier and Broc Tickle at the table:

Q: Let’s start with you, Sean.
A: I’m Sean Collier, 21, I have been racing about 14 years. Professionally, this is my 4th year.
Q: And you are..
A: Brock Tickle. T.i.c.k.l.e. 17, this is my first full year as a pro.
Q: No R?
A: No, not Tickler, just Tickle.
Q: What division do you race in?
(Both Collier and Tickle begin to answer questions together-)
A: Lites.
Lites East.
Q: What is that?
A: Lites ah, in motocross…
Lites means…
There is 250 the Lites and then there is the supercross class.
So we are like supercross Lites.
Like there is a Busch race and the …..
It’s a smaller class.
Yeah.
We ride a 250cc class motorcycle and the other class rides a 450cc motorcycle.
Four strokes.
OK…..
Next up, Michael Byrne:
Q: Your name is Michael Byrne?
A: Yes, B.y.r.n.e. I’m 27.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Australia.
Q: Australia! You are an old timer. How long have you been doing this?
A: In America, 5 years. I won three Australian championships before I came over here.
Q: So why did you move here?
A: These guys are the best in the world. I didn’t have anything left over there.
Q: Is this a lucrative sport?
A: It’s getting that way. Most of the guys make a pretty good living, most of the guys in the top ten.
Q: Like 100K a year?
A: The top three guys make millions.
Q: Do you get endorsement deals?
A: Yeah. Clothing, helmets, goggles, a few.
Q: Are you becoming well known in the US since you started riding this year? Do you have a nickname?
A: I guess so. Burner.
Me: If you have a nickname, you are in!

USA Today, Nice to Meet You Sir

USA Today treated Amp'd Mobile AMA Supercross right with a front page Sports section feature yesterday.

Live Nation's Denny Hartwig gave USA Today's sports writer Gary Mihoces and photographer Erik Lesser the red carpet tour of the Atlanta supercross, and they made a weekend out of it. Actually, they even posted a photo gallery of the track being built!

The end result is probably the best we have ever seen out of a national paper about the coolest sport there is.

USA Today Links:
Link to Story

Link to Photos

WW Photo by PK.

Atlanta Supercross Notes

Stewart won Atlanta by digging deep when he got slowed by lappers and RC put the heat on with about 6 laps to go. It was a great race! RC admitted he felt a bit rusty from not racing but said no excuses, Stewart won it. RC has three more supercross races to go, Orlando being his last.

Stewart made up 5 of the points he lost to Reed last Weekend at San Diego. His points lead is now 17.

Townley had winning speed in Lites but something broke on his motor that Pro Circuit said they were sorry for but prefered not to say! In other words, oops, never mind.

RC got a resolution of support from the Georgia State senate handed to him at the show opening! The Georgia Senate actually voted to proclaim RC the G.O.A.T.!

Great Moments in Supercross 3: RC and RC

RC signed a jersey for his grandfather "Pa Pa" Carmichael at Atlanta.

We saw Pa Pa at RC's 100th win at Budds Creek a few years ago. He said of the MXoN at Budds this year: "I will be there! I already bought my ticket. Ricky is racing, if he don't I'll whoop his ass!"

WW Fuel Biz Wrapup - Meeting With Steve Whitelock

"Hey this has Methyl Bubba-All in it, what do you want me to do with it now?"

Meeting Summary from Atlanta:

AMA Pro's Steve Whitelock held a meeting with media at Atlanta to explain their recent press release about Hill and Wey's fuel, the oxygen, and what really happened and why they returned the points and purse.

In a nutshell, if you read Weekend Window, you know already so we won't beat it to death!

Whitelock used his meeting to explain step by step how he got from the AMA rulebook to a standard specification for testing fuel, and how that specification has just 13 approved oxygenates. As it turned out, the fuel that was in Hill and Wey's bike was good on oxygen, and the discrepancies in testing led them to discover the error happened indirectly because of the fuel's oxygenate, whish isn't approved. Doh!

That means everyone with that stuff in their fuel is illegal too, and that means just about everyone!

Now what?

The way out - give everyone till April 15th to formulate fuel to the letter of the specification. VP may or may not have a headache on their hands, and a lot of inventory, not anyone else's issue anyway.

A transcript of the meeting will be out later, but the best summary was at the end that Whitelock gave TV (It's talking in soundbites, but it works.)

Quick "Grocery List" Rundown of the facts, from Steve Whitelock to TV:

"We tested the fuel.
We found that in our opinion it was out of spec.
When we did more investigation, we found that it had an illegal substance.
When you take that illegal substance and know what the oxygen mass fraction is and do the math, it comes out that the oxygen in the fuel was correct at 3.6%.
But, at the same time, we have an illegal substance in the fuel.
So now, we have to have everyone formulate their fuel for after April 15th so that they don't use that illegal substance in their fuel, that they use only one of the 13 items as specified in the (ASTM) D4814.

It wasn't the rider's fault. It wasn't the team's fault. It was the fuel manufacturer's fault. Almost every manufacturer in our paddock uses this chemical. Therefore we are going to give them until April 15th to get it out. No penalties.

Every time we test fuel now, we are going to identify every substance in the fuel."



A few points:

So where does all that "dash 1" and whatever else fuel go that contains the offending oxygenate that no one knew about until now? Burn it by April 15 or pour it in your car or something.

Teams are going to need to get used to whatever replaces this fuel by then too.

The meeting wasn't about the fuel found in the BBMX bike of Jason Thomas. That one was a simple bad mix from the supplier that most teams don't test for. (Should you really need to be a chemist to race? kind of thing.) JT$ still loses points and purse, and VP will re-emburse purse as a courtesy. So BBMX and JT$ lose 6 points and live through a big headache.

Whitelock took issue with some of the earlier points on Weekend Window that were blogged as this was unfolding. Specifically the speculation that the chemical makeup of these fuels can change under racing conditions, and that may explain a change in test results due to nothing more than riding your bike. As WW dug around on this, some teams said they have seen it and some said they didn't. In any event, it's not what was going on this time. Fair enough. Blogs are stories in the making and sometimes they are criticized for jumping to conclusions - which wasn't the intent. With a blog, tomorrow brings another twist in the story! That's why we love blogs anyway, right?

The 25-point question for the podium guys is what happens if something like this happens again? Has the AMA added a review to these tests, or if things are out of spec, will they get DQ'd? Answer? Whitelock said it's up to the teams to stay in spec, and yes, DQ's are still what happens, not research. This one was unique because the problem had spread to nearly everyone.

Overall, the AMA put this one to bed for now pretty well. There were some blue shirts carefully listening in on our media meeting, and when it was over, Whitelock got an earful from them too.

They closed the door and went at it. That means it's business as usual!

Heavy Battles In Lites

Some quick notes:

SX Rookie Ryan Dungey lived up to Makita Suzuki's high expectations of him with a win at the east regional opener at Atlanta. The buzz is Roger sees something in this guy, and he must know.

Townley looked like he had the speed to win but something on his bike broke.

Mike Alessi got the holeshot and battled to hang on to the lead but mistakes cost him positions he didn't get back.

Georke was on the gas and says he's going for the win next weekend.

AX star Darcy Lange is about to have his best supercross season ever.

Sipes rode well considering how soon he came back after that bad fall.

Motoworld racing looks solid with Brayton and Jesseman.