Jake-Gate!

Andy Wigan

When Jake Moss was stripped of his Hervey Bay MX Nats SuperPole win, was it fair play or a case of bungled officialdom?

Campbell Mining Suzuki rider, Jake Moss, was a little upset in the wake of his third place result at the Hervey Bay MX Nats a couple of weeks back. And you’d have to say with pretty good reason. When organisers disqualified Jake from the SuperPole for allegedly running off the track, he lost five points that initially came with his pole position (which, incidentally, was some two seconds faster than the lap times posted by Billy Mackenzie and his brother, Matt). But not only did the decision cost Jake $500 worth of GoPro SuperPole bonus money; it also cost him the round’s Overall win and more than $8000 in sponsor bonuses.

Here’s the confusing thing for us, though. Immediately after the SuperPole, Jake insisted his GoPro helmet-cam footage was viewed by officials to confirm that he didn’t, in fact, run off the track. Which they did. Jake claims the vision clearly shows that, at one point on the track, he went slightly outside a temporary track marker, but inside the permanent tyres that traditionally mark the edge of the sandy Hervey Bay track. “At Hervey Bay, when I asked the officials about the rules; about whether the marker or the tyre actually defines the edge of the track,” Moss explained, “they told me that both markers and tyres define the edge of the track. How the hell can that be?” It’s a damn good question. “Where they claim I ran off the track, I was just following the line, and the footage clearly shows that I ran inside the tyre and still hit the up-ramp of the jump immediately after it,” Moss went on to explain.

Transmoto contacted Jake Moss and WEM’s Kevin Williams this week to see whether there’d been any developments or clarification on the issue. “Mate, I’m over it now and just have to let it go,” a clearly dejected Jake Moss told Transmoto. “I mean, this is a national event and yet it doesn’t seem to me that the officials are treating it with much importance. On the day, the officials told me that it’s actually the bunting that defines the edge of the track. And yet there was no bunting ever put up at that spot. So they simply ruled that the temporary marker defined the edge of the track for that Hervey Bay round. And now they’ve made their decision and handed Billy the cheque and points, I don’t think they want the embarrassment of reversing it. They even took the GoPro footage down from the MX Nats website. Why do that if you’re confident you’ve made the right decision? Y’know, the really crazy thing is that, after that SuperPole, officials put more tyres (not track markers) at that point to define the edge of the track. Which contradicts what they’d previously said, doesn’t it? Plus I now know that the MA rulebook specifies that tyres officially mark the edge of a motocross track in Australia.

“Anyway, like I said, I was angry about it at the time. I’ve just got to get on with things now. But I don’t think it’s been very well handled. The other thing I’ve come to realise this week is that, if officials did overturn their decision, I’d actually be taking points away from my brother, Matt – even though he would retain the red plate. Complicated situation, huh?!”

We were able to get in contact with WEM’s Kevin Williams, and you can hear what he had to say on the matter here. As we head into the final three rounds of the 2013 Monster Energy MX Nats, it’s increasingly clear that the outcome of this year’s MX1 title is likely to be determined by the riders’ SuperPole results.

For a detailed interview with the Moss brothers at Hervey Bay (where they actually directed the Transmoto microphone at each other), click here. Don’t forget to grab the current MX1 and MX2 standings ahead of this weekend’s round, too.