USA Insider No.135: All Dried Up

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto’s USA Insider presented by Ipone. 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.

There’s a strange deal with the race tracks this year in Monster Energy AMA Supercross. The course builders have gotten so good at the process of storing and maintaining dirt that the tracks have changed quite a bit. Cities once known for soft, rutted soil now feature dry, hard surfaces, and the riders aren’t exactly pumped on it.

Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side, and no one was pumped to race on rutted tracks, either (some riders might have done better in ruts, so they might have selfishly preferred them for results purposes, but seriously no one ever dreams of racing through footpeg deep holes). The Detroit track this weekend is a perfect example. Back in the day, AMA Supercross visited Pontiac, Michigan, which was a very popular stop. The dirt was soft and rutted, and it took a real special skill to negotiate it without incident — especially since, back in the day, they would run Saturday/Sunday double-headers at the event. In 2006, they moved the race to the beautiful Ford Field in downtown Detroit, Michigan. By then, course builders had learned a lot about dirt treatment. Nowadays, they work drying agents into the dirt to remove the moisture. They get the dirt into the building earlier so it can sit inside the heated dome and dry. And, they find better places to store it. For example, we’re going to Toronto, Canada, this weekend, and that dirt would literally freeze outside all year, then get trucked into the Rogers Centre were it would thaw and melt during the races. Now, they store Toronto’s dirt under a bridge so it doesn’t get hit by rain or snow all year. Simple as that. Toronto’s dirt isn’t nearly as wet.

We can throw one more factor into this mix. Monster trucks, known specifically under the Monster Jam brand in the US, are a huge deal, and SX usually just follows in that wake (both Monster Jam and Monster Energy AMA Supercross are owned and operated by Feld Entertainment). Feld will often rent a stadium and the dirt for a long period and then hold the Monster Jam and SX events back-to-back, so they can leave a crew and the dirt on hand. There was a Monster Jam event at Ford Field the weekend before the supercross, and a night of monster trucks spinning and sliding all over the floor just further dries and scrubs the dirt.

The result? A hard surface. Most said the Detroit dirt was the slickest of the year, slicker than even stuff from desert climates out west. Worse, supercross bikes handle that stuff poorly because they require stiff suspension for the steep jump faces and whoops—so they corner badly and just bounce over the choppy bumps that tend to form on hard dirt.

Meanwhile, the skills required to negotiate rutted terrain are becoming less critical. The Atlanta and Michigan races used to be rutted, but that’s no longer the case. Toronto this weekend and St. Louis the next could still provide soft, tacky dirt, and open stadiums await outside New York City and in Seattle. Regardless, the overall mixture of the race tracks is tilting in a new direction, and the riders and teams will have to learn to adapt.