Not enjoying the Racing as much this year..

You are not alone OP.

The year started out pretty exciting, but it's quickly turned into a snoozefest and boring cookie cutter tracks.   Haven't been watching live and getting to the point of where I'll just watch highlights. 

...and yeah, the Jett hype and obnoxious fans are the worst part of it.     Log on Vital and there's 15 different "Jett this/Jett that" threads at any given point.   Moto forum has turned into a shithole of Jett-73/Deegan-hate/Tomac-finished/Stark threads. 

I don't dislike Jett....but i'm utterly sick of him.     That's solely due to his fans and the media.  

To me it looks like the changes they have been making to the tracks have helped keep injuries down. Keeping everybody healthy and able to show up is progression.   More technical tracks will just create bigger leads and more riders getting lapped.  Like the 90's and 2000's.    Listen to 125 guys talk about how if they just did all the jumps they would be on the podium.  They may make a few more passing opportunities for those top guys if they got a bad start. But They would not result in multiple winners or closer racing. One guy would separate himself. 

More variety in track layout and dirt type might help shift the advantage from one rider to another .  I wonder if getting rid of Darkfish would help or hurt. Since riders would have a harder time knowing which line was faster.  It might be more fun to watch riders on a more technical track, but it just provides more separation . And really makes for worse racing most of the time.  Just keeping more of the guys who have won in the past healthy  the entire season helps increase the chances of having more winners.  They are trying stuff by changing up the obstacles they use. And when You try new stuff, sometimes some of it will not work. 

I haven’t enjoyed as much primarily because the track designs have absolutely sucked this season. I’m ready for outdoors. It’s a shame too because we are going to lose a lot of talent in the 450 class in the coming seasons, and as of now in my opinion, there isn’t really anyone standing out in the 250 class I see being a major threat to Jett. 

The broadcast quality is abhorrent focusing on Jett. I like Jett overall he is an amazing talent but holy cow stop shoving it down our throats it’s obnoxious! This is especially annoying when there is other action happening that I would love to see and you can hear the crowd reacting in the background. The broadcast “team” is too disjointed and it’s gotten worse this year, talking over each other, missing action, toss it to JT, toss it to screech, do some puff piece during the motos… it’s just awful! You can’t grow the product by alienating your core audience, they need to figure it out because it’s just easier to watch the extended highlights on the Choob! 

Oh and stop with the it’s better than it was 30 years ago nonsense… no kidding we all know that! That is a lazy adolescent take on an issue that seems pretty easy to fix. 

I'm not really a fan of any particular rider, but hoping someone like Webb pulls some late race charges like he did in 2019 and 21 to make it interesting

That is the problem with watching the show at home. Get to the races and breath the VP!

Hey, as a Tomac fan, you ought to appreciate the coverage of the battles for 7th place this year.  Your boy was in one last weekend.

Everything was good right up until the kid figured it out. From now until he gets old and beaten or gets bored and moves on it’s going to be great racing for second and thirds 

https://youtu.be/r18-Wo_-mUI?si=jwQQQ4SNM3C-BK-d

I do agree slightly but my take is that weather has played a major part in this, 2 mudders & 1 tamed down to suit the forecast, then others that had wet tracks.

Looking forward to the great outdoors 👍

I rewatched the TC race yesterday and couldn't believe how much racing they don't show. They were literally talking about AP and JA going back and forth, then AP was about to get bye and they switched to ET by himself. At the same time KR caught up to JL, they were wondering how, but they continued to show ET cruising? Finally they switched to KR/JL cruising and totally missed the AP pass on JA. 

Who is in the booth watching the multiple cameras and choosing the one with no action?

Fro didn’t miss a beat lol. 

Racing has been meh and the tracks are god awful. I’ll say this, F1 has the sound and production down for the most part and granted they have a much larger crew. However, we have had the same crew for how long? As well as stadiums that keep the entertainment contained. This should be down to a science and we still can’t even cue the right sound bites at the right time. 

This is what it was like being a Windham fan back in the day, Jeremy would holeshot, and if he didn't he would calve his way to the lead and pull away.

It's Dejavue 

But tougher tracks might only separate the riders more.

Here we go 

After watching some of the videos made for X games by Snowboarders . I noticed how the sound they picked up made the shots  have more impact. Hearing the board slide across the rail, or concrete, etc.  I could give or take the general engine noise. But more specific  sounds would be cool .

So many people talk about how sound is such a big part of why they enjoy SX/MX. I think they should get some better ways to capture the sounds to go along with the super slow mo replays.   Have less general sound and more focused audio in some of the tighter shots. Try and get sound from the bikes landing, get a mic in Eli's airbox. Riders always talk about how they can hear Eli coming. Get that audio for the fans.  

Try and get the sounds of the bikes landing. I was surprised by How I could feel  bikes landing when I went to my first local race.  

We need better tracks. Pay for more consistent dirt at each round, whatever it takes. 

The dull broadcast is a result of being on mainstream Peacock/NBC compared to a sports package cable add-on like FOX sports 1, IMO. 

Super basic and very one lined. It seems whoever can get out front can pull away from the pack. 

Before we long too much for the "good old days" anyone remember how boring it was when RC was racing outdoors?

You knew going into it that everyone else was racing for second, at least until James showed up.

Even during the reign of MC those races were mostly about who was gonna get second, this time until RC showed up.

I agree many of the tracks haven't been great but the weather has messed with that quite a bit.

250 racing has been pretty damn good and I wouldn't go giving Jett the title just yet.

EXACTLY what do people expect?. Half the feild has one foot in to retirement and we have one of the most talented riders of all time that just stepped in to the class.

So i don’t buy in to the most stacked class ever crap when half the class is guys in their 30’s nursing their wounded bodies at the end of their careers batteling against the super talent.

But this talk starts to sound like the ”fans” that blame Red Bull for the boring F1 races. Blame all the other guys for not doing their work instead.

And for all of you who complain about the broadcast talking about the guy who wins/dominate, what do you expect them to talk about?.

"What if" every rider had a gopro that could be accessed live by the broadcast team ?  

I would like to see a former successful SX racer in charge of Track Maps. It has such a pivotal role in the success of the event, it seems silly they leave it to unqualified volunteers.

They would be too stupid to use them. They can't properly utilize the cameras they have now.

Bondos control room....

Adding a one minute minimum lap time requirement should fix everything, and we'll return to old days.

What if they had multiple feeds that you could pick which cameras you wanted to watch on a monitor. You could have multiple monitors/windows going that you could watch specific cameras in addition to the main broadcast. If only such a technology existed to do stuff like that. Maybe someone should invent it.

TM

 I honestly think the track designs aren't the biggest issue. Its the dirt prep. Fix the dirt and all the tracks will be raceable again. Obviously the lap times would be shorter by about 2-3 seconds from what they are, but at least the track breakdown is less of an issue. But then if you fix the dirt, you have to fix the track designs for longer tracks to get back to 1 minute lap times. The ideas we have as the moto community can solve all these problems without creating new ones. The people running the show just have to do it.

450s been a little boring but the 250s have been great! Look how tight the points are. 

On top of that, the rider interviews during the race action are extremely painful and distracting...