Let’s steepen the jumps up for SX 2025

Needs dragon backs, longer woop sections, more woop sections, less flat 90 degree corners, over unders and a few split turns/rythms every now and again to mix it up. Oh and Lime

Jump faces on a pro sx track are already steep....making them steeper will turn them into wall jumps.

90 degree corners are shit, shoot for less if possible.

Also break up the rhythm on tracks...a rhythm section is shit...everyone ends up doing them. Break the rythyms everywhere, it'll slow the track down and force the riders to get creative.

Make it 7 whoops. 
Then you could triple quad. 🙄

This is true, but I’m assuming the OP means steep slower jumps like two stroke days.
Back then they also had sections that, for want of a better word, were ‘un-rhythm’ sections. Sections deliberately built so they didn’t flow.

But no matter what, whoops need to be longer than nine, not jumpers and always have a bowl turn after. Damn I’d even settle for a really old school long stutter bump section at this stage.

They need to do them ..make it or break it jumps..to separate some riders..

Find some epic outdoor venues in the countryside. Incorporate the landscape as much as possible. Find areas with different terrain to test the riders in varying conditions, race over say & Sunday & leave the track ungraded.

oh and travel outside of USA 

Just make each track different. As in whoop sizes and spacing, less repetitive track features and a unique obstacle for each venue.

I like the thought behind it, but proper do or die sections sometimes mean worse racing.

Like if there was a section where only Chase and Jett (plus Kenny, Eli and Anderson when they're feeling spicy) could do it in race conditions, it'd lead to more separation.

There was nothing that sounded better that a factory 2-stroke going through a set of stutter whoops!

I've always wanted to see an over/under where they had a 270-degree turn right afterward, like a corkscrew. Jump to the top, turn downward to the left, track ends up going right. I think it would make for awesome block passes. 

There was something like that at Glen Helen maybe 10-12 years ago for Day in the Dirt, or some other one off event.  I can't remember what it was, but Red Bull was definitely involved.

Yeah, I’m sure filthy Phil would be on board with that!… now that he’s retiring

Make tracks how they used to be.  Dozer whoops, dragon's backs, have actual hardpack venues again.... the tracks for the most part all rutted up this year after the first practice.

Tracks from 2000-2015 shouldn't be more technical and challenging than 2025.

I'd like daytona to be a day venue again as well, but doesn't seem likely.  

Restrictor plates on 450's...or all riders on 250's indoors, keep a development 250 class and a premier 250 class.  The torque of the 450's makes every obstacle easy regardless of rider skill or whether they cleanly make it thru the previous turn.  Bring consistency back into the equation.

Along with making the rhythm sections more unpredictable and longer whoop sections, as others have said, I think arguably the biggest issue has been the dirt. Ridiculously chewed-up rutted tracks are meant for outdoors. It used to be, there might be a select few SX venues every year that were known for getting rutted, but the majority of the tracks were truly hard-packed and allowed for the riders to actually move around the track rather than just getting through it. You can see it in races from 10-20 years ago... Ricky, Stew, Chad, Villopoto, Dungey... they were all criss-crossing each other and using up the whole track to attempt passes and find speed. There weren't many races that turned into rutcross, where the winner was the person who could find the smoothest ruts and simply not mess up.

Yep bring back the lime

I loved doing those so much at a 226 MX park in NC. I rode that track every time they had a race for a couple years just so i could rip my YZ125 thru those things! 

Bring back the Joker Lane….. and maybe add a mandatory back flip jump that must be done once per heat and main. 

Were the jumps really steeper back then or did it just seem like it cause the bikes and riders weren't as refined as they are now?

They were steeper and taller. They didn’t have the typical 3 and 5 footers every track. They had whoops into a double into whoops into a bowl turn. Or a set of 14-15 whoops into a triple at the end that you had to hit with speed into a bowl. Some would double roll inside and some would rail the outside. 
 

Whoever is in charge of designs has to be handcuffed. Before the season the tracks were boring on paper and now they are so cookie cutter it is lame. 
 

List of changes

-250’s run 2 coasts with 4 races just that coast and 4 east/west combined. 
-450 is just too much indoors. But OEM will never change. When you can be stopped and jump a triple in 1st gear it’s an issue. So what to do?

-No more start grates, holeshot devices, and starting lights on the fenders. Not much we can do about restricting maps for starts but the rest will bring more technique back in play. 
 

-The tracks….. more dirt, more 180 bowls, less 90, real whoops more than 9 should be 12-15 built by loader. Work the tracks in more or add lime. Less cookie cutter designs and bring variability. These are the best riders and they should be seeing something new and different each week. Slow them down by having steeper jumps into and out of corners to slow riders down into and out of rhythms. Bring back over under bridge, dragons backs, and the tracks will have longer lap times which means less laps, which means less maintenance, and crazy roughness for supercross. If using same use it in a straight so the riders can get after similar to Jacksonville. 
 

-tv production focus on the actual racing and less fluff. Stop catering to the “new” viewers. In reality, nobody likes things dumbed down and it makes our sport look bad. Not to mention it is just laziness on the production side. Be creative and change the program. Change the graphics and be smart about the timing of replays and interviews. Plenty of downtime to put them in a proper slot. Announcing will change in a year I am sure. Someone just retired who would make our sport look and sound more professional. 

Did you go to any races this year? They made them less steep this year. 
 

The tracks this year were atrocious. 

Uneven whoops - height and spacing. 

Make Whoops DNGR Again!

make CC'S equal again 250 vrs 250 

add 125 class as a feeder class

more whoops , more over and under sections , corkscrew turns and 180 bowls , NON flowing rhythm sections.

Couple years ago Cooper webb crashed off the dragon back. Vital fan boys = they are dangerous don't belong on track. 

Another top rider crashes in the whoops vital fan boys = whoops are dangerous they need to be shorter and smaller. 

Now you all want the opposite back. Make up your mind fickle biatches. 

This thread reminds me of one of my all time favorite pictures.

No, only a few people went that direction. Anyone who actually knows the sport and has races understands what a dumb idea that was 

There's only so much space on the stadium floor.  When you think about it....the only place to go in order to lengthen the tracks is up.   I say steepen everything, slow it down, and occupy the air!

I've seen this picture used before as an example of how the jumps used to be steeper but I've never seen proof that he's on a "jump" and not just a "wall".

If the jumps used to be that steep it should be easy to dig up other photos of dudes from that era with their nuts on the handlebars during take off right?

I still think if you take today's riders and bikes and put them on the tracks from back in the day that so many like to claim were "harder" that they make it look like a joke just like they do the tracks now.  The only difference would be they wouldn't rut up so bad cause they used to use Lime.

I’ve been saying this for years.   Steeper….SLOWER…. More technical sections!

but no.  Woops are the problem,  nor the wide open rhythm lanes with zero room for error. 
 

this sport 🤡

Besides steeping the jumps, i think they need to stack less jumps through the lanes like back in the early '00s, that's why we see quads all over the place because we have more jumps through the rhythm sections.

I've also noticed that's one of the reasons we have these super small "sx triple jumps" or finish line jumps, because they stack a double or small triple before the jump.

FELD said they had data for riders crashing on long whoops sections, but i wonder if they are counting futures too for those numbers (which yes they crash a lot on dragons and whoops). If true that would be totally unfair because we want to see the best riders in the world on the best tracks in the world, not the best riders in the world on some friendly amateur tracks