One Step Up, Two Steps Back?

There have been some changes in the world of motocross that I think have had some positive effects but also have negative in other aspects. Track preparation is one of those changes? You are asking yourself, “is this guy crazy--of course, tracks are prepared better now than ever.” Well, not so fast. Again, I had the chance to ride motocross in 2 different eras, the 70s and the late 2000s. Back in the early days of motocross promoters tried to keep the dust down and usually turned up the soil a bit to smooth out the bumps from the last race. They even sometimes brought in some wood chips or soil to work into the track to make a section or 2 deeper and loamy. What makes my perspective crystal clear is that I rode in both eras almost “overnight”. See, I didn’t ride much in the latter part of the 80s, the 90s or the early 2000s. I think I saw a stark contrast that may be lost on riders that rode the same tracks week after week, month after month, year after year.


There is surely some good that has come about with the increased promoter interest in track preparation. I’m amazed at how quickly and simply they can put water down on a track these days. Red Bud, for example, like many other tracks, has water truck access roads running alongside the track where the water truck can easily cruise along and spray a nice coating of H2O to the entire track in a pretty short period of time without ever having to drive on the track itself. These access roads allow the water trucks to quickly hit the trouble spots no matter where they are on the track without having to navigate the entire track to get there. Other tracks have tremendously powerful pumping systems that get the water to hoses positioned around the track. It isn’t the garden hoses and sprinkler heads that we felt lucky to have in the 1970s. The obvious result is that at good tracks today there is much less dust than we saw in years past. Dust was always a reality in motocross and made the all important start, that much more important. It isn’t a thing of the past, but nearly so.

A related but, I think, less positive aspect of modern track preparation is the trend to “rip” the tracks really deep. Good tracks have always disked up the soil, but lately the trend is to rip them calf-deep and pour on the water. This method helps the track maintain the water and cuts down on dust---as I said, a good thing. What’s more is that motocrossers have always loved to tear into deep loam. A nice roost shoots up in the sky, the engines sound better as they reach for every last bit of horsepower and riders love the feel of blasting through fresh soil. What could possibly be bad about that? Well, in my opinion, a track that is ripped too deeply results in a track with fewer racing lines. These tracks develop a couple of lines in each turn and even down each straight. The problem is that if you get out of the line, you are harshly penalized by deep, wet soil that slows you down tremendously in comparison to the worn in lines. Picture the typical turn on today’s ripped national (or local) track. In a 20 foot wide corner there may be a good inside line and a good outside line, each of them with about 2 feet of racing surface. Fully 16 feet of track go unused. On a track that is not ripped so deep, many more options are presented to the rider. Often you can use ALL 20 feet of the corner. Start inside-stay inside, start inside-drift outside, start outside-cut across the middle to the inside. A track with more options allows for better racing. This is why first turns are usually prepped a little differently or prepped more often on race day. A proper first turn cannot have 1 inside line and one outside line. You’ve got to have room for 40 riders to fly around there elbow to elbow. Almost without fail, when I watch national coverage on television and hear the commentators talk about the track being “1 lined”, it is because most of the track is so over-prepped as to be almost unraceable or at least too penalizing to those that stray. When I’ve seen races where everyone feels the track offers multiple lines and good racing it is inevitably a track where the corners are open to many choices by riders. Ripping a track too deep and overwatering it while ripped may cut down on dust in the 2nd motos but it in essence makes the track ride as though it was a mud race for a part of the day. Riding in rutted corners and grooved straights is nice every once in a while, and great skills for riders to attain, but race after race of 2 lined corners and 15 ruts grooved down the straights is not really a great way for riders to let it all hang out. Oh, I almost forgot—the tracks are prepped like this everywhere except for the freeway like jump takeoffs and landings. Heaven for bid a track gets so rough that you can’t jump 100 feet every lap and show the drain plug on a tabletop between nearly every corner.

In the end, I think that modern promoters have used their heads to make their tracks very accessible to watering and they’ve done a great job of making them loamy and appealing to the part of each of us that loves to tear up virgin terrain. However, as is usually the case, too much of a good thing is usually not that good. Rip the tracks, keep the watered and give riders something to dig their new tires into, but don’t overdo it. Let the tracks develop racing lines from fence to fence and let the riders hang it out instead of slot car racing their way from jump to jump.