86 http://www.racerxonline.com
“You can never make a
track rough enough for Blake,”
Ayers replies.
Monster Energy/Pro Circuit
Kawasaki teammates Joey
Savatgy and Adam Cianciarulo
said they would like the tracks
to be ripped a little less deep,
believing that enough laps and
riders will make the track rough
anyway, but maybe the tracks
wouldn’t end up as rutted. Zach
Osborne and Jeremy Martin say
the exact opposite.
“I can guarantee you my
views are going to be contrary
to what the majority says,”
Osborne, the 250 points leader
at press time, offered. “The best
tracks this year were the ones
where it was the deepest and
wettest in practice.”
Two-time 250 champ
Jeremy Martin agreed with Os-
borne, telling me at Southwick
that a wetter practice leads to a
gnarlier track, which is the waymotocross should be. Marvin
Musquin feels the same: “It’s
motocross, and it should be
tough and technical. The ruts,
when the track is tough like
that, it lets you rely on your
technique and skill instead of
just going wide open.”
Several riders cited the
rutted Colorado track as being
too one-lined; Justin Bogle, the
winner of the fi rst 450 Class
moto, even said that helped
him win, because when he got
in the lead, he hit the same line
every lap and won. Yet outside
of that Bogle win, the four motos
at Colorado actually had more
passing than any four this year.
In contrast, Muddy Creek’s
track was much drier and harder
because a tropical storm was
expected to hit, so the track
operators rented a steamroller
to harden the track and let the
rain roll off. The track survived
the Thursday rain well, and thereal tropical storm never came.
Without the soft, wet conditions,
it didn’t develop as many lines.
“Muddy Creek, we knew
we weren’t getting good lines,”
Ayers says. “I had Mark Barnett
on a dozer working the outside of
that sweeper to try to get a new
line to work. In summary, if you
leave them hard and don’t dig
them deep, you blow the good
dirt off. You end up with a hard,
blue-groove line, and no one will
slide off that line because they’re
just going to lose time.”
“In the race, it got a little
rougher, but there wasn’t too
many ruts on the track,” 250
winner Aaron Plessinger said
of Muddy Creek. (Plessinger,
says Ayers, is another rider who
always sides with rougher be-
ing better.) “I think if they were
to rip it a little deeper and not
worry about the rain so much,
it would have been... well, I
would say a little better.”
But you can’t sum up track
prep just by counting how many
passes you saw in the motos.
Josh Grant thought Muddy
Creek was one-lined not be-
cause of track prep but because
the track is narrow. Alex Martin
thought Thunder Valley offered
passing because of cooler
weather, which allowed the rid-
ers to be more aggressive.
Lots of ideas, lots of theories.The Small Window
There are two other challenges to
perfect track prep: the one-day
format and timed practice. A
decade ago, riders practiced on
Saturday and raced on Sunday,
giving the track crew a day to col-
lect feedback and Saturday night
to implement it. The Saturday-Adam Cianciarulo
slams a deep berm
at High Point,
where a rainstorm
the night before
made for a muddy
practice and deep
ruts and berms all
day long.No matter
how careful
the prep,
you’re al-
ways deal-
ing with
dirt, which
will largely
do whatev-
er it wants.