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They need dragons backs two in a row with a full lane section of whoops followed by another full set. Then a whoops section with a dragons back in the middle. Track all whoops and dragons backs with flat bermless turns.
lame
Bums me out that they don't use this logo anymore:
They want to grow the sport? Stop making every track the same. I haven’t been “Wowed” in years. It’s the same four obstacles every week just in different orders. They say it’s for safety but not guys are hitting things at 100mph wadding their brains out. Sport is ran by ppl who have no clue
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IIRC, they were building in the rain/slop so they didn’t get to use the over/under bridge.
Yeah, DeCoster making sure he has the advantage.... Oh wait.
How are we going to see if it’s the right move? What do we plan on using as the data points?
I’d love to see the data to support the claim of dozer built whoops less than 10 in length being objectively safer. Same for the dragons back. Show me the data, please, that it is disproportionately more dangerous than any other obstacle on a Supercross track.
Just get rid of every gap. Doubles are dangerous. Table tops only.
Need to have another year like 09 where retired riders could design select tracks. The Pastrana-designed layout in St Louis was awesome.
Has anybody explained the why behind these changes? All I see are spectators complaining . Well Phil complained that they were not doing loader whoops. But really I'm happy to see the dragons backs go away. One of the obstacles I never built on any of the tracks I've done. They just don't look fun. Impressive to see the top guys hit them when everything goes well.
I'm guessing they are making the changes for multiple reasons.
Riders and teams voicing their opinions.
And the amount of time it takes to properly groom the obstacles .
9 Whoops is such a small number . I bet at some tracks riders will jump over the entire sections. But if riders and teams had input on the changes and they think they will help make safer tracks, they would have a good idea of what might help.
The more difficult the track, the more it will favor one rider or the other. Making the tracks a little more simple allows the racers to race each other and the track is less of a factor. And to a degree it makes the tracks more relatable. Similar to how Nascar is relatable to a lot of people because a lot of people drive cars, and baseball, football are relatable because of school sports and just about everybody has played those sports at a time. A track that anybody in the stands that rides, could ride. Is going to make the riders look even more impressive . I know its a stretch to say that , but its stuff that has been said about sports that are very big as a reason for how they got there.
A tabletop is a double and if you put a single before it, it's now a triple!
Would love to see tracks like Indy 2009 and St Louis 09 again. Challenging tracks that provided awesome racing. Tracks today are too cookie cutter.
Damn…that's jus’ mean!
I think it was 1994 the Pontiac round had one big single in the middle of the whoops, Guy Cooper started jumping the entire first half of the whoop section and then using the big single to jump out. He did it every lap and MC did it a few times and Mike Craig maybe once or twice. No one else touched it. It was unreal, but then again anyone who has ever seen Cooper race has a story about a ridiculous move like that.
Obviously, there is no way to quantify it but the if our attention spans haven't grown so short, we should remember all the complaining from last year of Deathcross and nobody left to race outdoors.
but how many were caused by whoops and dragon backs?
It reminds me of the argument that right-handed turns are more dangerous, everyone says it, but provides no data to back it up.
Maybe next they can fill in the triples by 2026, especially in the CA rounds.
Pit Row
The whoop limit at 9 is weird to me. The length or number is never really the problem, as far as crashes and injuries go. Obviously their reasoning is related to skimming and not jumper whoops.
If you are good whoop rider, you're going to be on top of them, and if you're REALLY good, you'll still be carrying speed at the end of a long section. So, not worried about this level of guy.
If you're not a good whoop rider, you won't be on top of them and you'll definitely be running out of speed by whoop 9. So if you're off the top of them and not carrying speed, why is the length a problem for this guy?
If you are a pin it guy (can't remember who it was, but one of the A2 futures riders definitely fell into this group), yeah maybe you get lucky for 9 whoops and then yard sale on the 11th. But if you're this guy, and you don't have the common sense to not do that, you're going to yard sale somewhere else on the track most likely anyway.
It's a weird change.
That is a huge change. And we hear it after 4 rounds in an internet column.
Great job guys!
I can't argue with you on documentable facts, what I can do is say: Why not try the change and see how healthy the field is at the end of 17 rounds? Why not see if the easier track does provide better racing? If we get out of the season without 10 factory guys being on the sidelines and the racing action is good all year then we start to have something to work with even though it is impossible to ever corelate the obstacle to the injury in a pure scientific method, there are just too many variables.
If it sucks they can always go back. They are taking a swing at improvements, why not try it?
Because without solid data points it would very likely be a false correlation.
exactly. you can't just change something with no data and see if it works. 2023 was a shit show for injuries, how bad was 2022, 2021, etc. Let's say this year does have fewer injuries, they will no doubt claim it's because of the changes, but what if there are more injuries than 2022, then that would prove the amount of injuries has nothing to do with the changes.
If they released a report and said we had x amount of riders injured at the races, and x% was in the whoops, so we're taming them down, that would make some sense.
What we have right now would be like if a city said, we saw a spike in wrecks last year, so we're dropping the speed limit across the city by 5mph, while not actually looking at particular streets that had an increase of wrecks, or weather conditions, or really anything at all.
I've always wanted them to try an elevated whoops section. It would never happen, but something different. Double off the last whoop. Very sketchy when I think about it.
Is it a tredecuple if you jump them all?
Its Stew-able. But really a whoop section should have a minimum of 12 and a max of 20.
Also why can't they make whoops like 1999 Houston? I know they were small. But 2 wide whoop sections side by side with options. They wouldn't break down as bad because there's so much room, PLUS make them loader whoops.
I really intrigued by the big single in the middle of the whoops. I would love to see it in action.
in 2010 I got to ride the Vegas Supercross the day after the race for the amateur arenacross championship, with the track obviously scaled down heavily.
They had 2 whoops sections, one was tiny, and the other was moderate but had a wall jump in the middle. I was not in any form of racing shape for the main event and towards the end of the race I accidentally sent it on the wall into the second set of whoops - one of the scariest moments of my life.
The last time I remember a single being placed in the middle of a whoop section (20:55)
https://youtu.be/X6StpuRTJLk
It was Stewable.
Whoops maxed at 9 makes me think they "believe" it will help racing with jump 3x3x3 vs skimming to provide "options" Here is an idea, why not let the track provide the option and quit dickin with everything. Bowl turns don't exist outside of 1 because of a net. But they are oddly placed and we keep getting less dirt it appears to build tracks.
Lame Sauce.... the tracks used to show actual diversity in the layout. They are boring.... zero reason they can't go back to previous layouts that excelled. But nope... go down this stupid path
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