USA Insider No.117: Track Master

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto’s USA Insider presented by Lucas Oil. Penned each week by our man on the ground, Transmoto’s US Correspondent, Jason Weigandt, the USA Insider presents the story-behind-the-stories of the AMA supercross and motocross scene.

With the Monster Energy Cup just over a week away, life is action-packed down in the hub of supercross activity – Southern California. Starting around October 1, tracks have been buzzing as riders dust off the cobwebs of their supercross set-ups.

Today, I talked with Marc Peters, who is the man tabbed by each team to build these tracks. Yes, building a test track should be a top-secret business, but oddly just about all of the tracks are located right next door to each other, so teams can literally spy on each other during each riding session. And they pretty much all tab Peters to do the build and maintenance, which seems crazy. “They really seem to like our program,” says Peters. “We’ve got more tracks and more requests to get work done than ever. And they all want something done ASAP.”

That’s the case now, but it was dead out there all summer long while teams were in motocross mode. After a summer baking in the California sun, Peters says it literally took a full month of watering to get these tracks soft enough to work with again. Now that they’re back up to spec, two trips around in a water truck can flood a track and make it overwatered. But back when he started rebuilding them, Peters was running 20 trips a day around each track, just soaking them!

Now they’re healthy again and activity is going strong. You’ve got Ryan Villopoto and Jake Weimer at Kawasaki’s track off the side of a highway (known as K1, this is the only track that is actually not next door to the rest) as well as the K2 track, which the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki riders use. Right next to it is a Honda track, a Suzuki track, KTM stuff – you name it. In addition, other teams have made deals with public tracks, like Milestone MX, to build supercross test tracks. Peters says there are more tracks, more equipment and more people out there maintaining supercross test tracks than ever before. It’s a strange way to gauge the health of the sport, but by this measure, American supercross is going strong.