Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but Premium users receive great benefits. Premium benefits include:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
How you know this lol?
Steiny is part of the Uptite conglomerate they (plural) just forgot to switch accounts
In one day of setup the PC guys had Chase going 22nd to 4th at San Diego, and a win the following weekend. Then Fahie put their suspension back on with supposedly comparable settings.
I say let PC work with Chase a week or two.
This is almost 4 years old. Kinda funny to hear him describe the data and how they know what works and how the riders aren't very smart.... and then to hear them deny all of this was ever a thing now.
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Free shipping: VITALMX
...or, they say nothing.
I don’t need to switch accounts, this is the only one I post on.
What bike in the 2011-2014 era was really better? 11/12 Honda was good, 13/14 ehh, the L&M or JGR Yamaha was better from 2011-2014? I don’t think so. Factory KTM from 11-14? I don’t think so. Factory Suzuki? Maybe but that was after DeCoster left so probably not. I’m just saying what Weimer did at Kawi is probably what he would done on any other factory team, I don’t think he would’ve done any better. And he rode with no confidence and I know crap that was going on with his lady wasn’t helping at all either. He didn’t do any better once he was off of factory Kawi, shit he still stayed on a Kawi with team Tedder at first and probably because factory Kawi was still helping him a little lol
Why are some teams resistant to testing different parts? Honest question because it either works or it doesn’t, right?
I'd have to look back at the actual races to put the results in context. Chase is known for making stupid mistakes that cause rides that are good enough for a podium to be a 5th-8th way more often than he should. He's not known for riding like a 5th-8th guy ever. This looks different than every other year unless my memory is not serving me well. The best example from last week is that he hardly, if ever, was tripling onto that table top. Chase hits the big lines, period. I never remember him being so off in a race that he's not hitting something like that consistently when the 250 guys are and any of the top 450 guys are. I'd expect him to hit that triple all night, tuck the front in the corner after and get 5th still. Him riding like a 5th place guy and not hitting that triple is not like any Chase I have ever seen. His riding is off.
Darren Lawrence had said the Honda went the wrong direction and they went away from where it was setup when they took over. When Keifer and Matthes rode Jett and Chase’s bikes they both said how easy Jett’s bike was to ride versus Chase’s bike. Last season on KTM suspension techs were saying where he wanted the shock was outside the parameters the shock could work in. I’m sure he left data with both brands but I’m not sure how much of it would be useful. I think he’s looking for a feeling that might not exist.
Hey Kawasaki, hire me to be Team Manager.
I'll run it into the ground for a lot less ..
Have never understood this "outside the parameters" of the shock thing. Those shocks are beefy and we're talking about well under 500lbs between bike and rider. Shocks not much bigger than these on trucks and side by sides take far more punishment all the time. What is it he was asking the shock to do that it was incapable of doing?
poppet valves are limited afaik in what they can do. cant exactly change valve port shape or shim stack sequence/count/thickness/ shim float etc. i cant imagine he couldnt get enough raw damping force out of it, but maybe its a combination of attributes that hes looking for that makes it hard idk
@mototech the fact jetts bike was easy to ride and chases wasnt tells us all we need to know about whats going on. so fking funny to me. maybe someday someone like dv will tell chase to change his technique idk
I disagree, things look different this season. Previously, if he wasn't winning, he was making mistakes. Very rarely did we see him get a top 5 start and then just roll around and get absolutely dropped by Tomac, Webb, Roczen, Hunter, and even JCoop on Honda or KTM.
The Suzuki and the Honda were better bikes, the 11-12 KTM wasn’t a good bike at all. The Yamaha probably wasn’t a great bike, but it wasn’t as bad as James made it look. James wasn’t a good test rider and was lost on that bike. But my point is this, no matter how messed up Jake’s head was in that time frame, they wouldn’t let him try anything he wanted. He was forced to ride with the same link and shock RV used, and that wouldn’t work for Jake’s style and fork setup.
JS7 / Yam deal was always one where I figured that dude rode at such a level, it doesn't surprise me that SOME bikes probably won't work for him. For the other 99%, they were fine. I knew it was the blue pig for many years after James, but I think he literally exceeded the engineering for the bike and it would toss him.
Have a look at how amazing Ryan's 450 actual WAS with Kawasaki (other than when out with injury) Sorry for the budget picture.
James to his own detriment liked his forks extremely stiff, so it made the bike very unpredictable. It was a new chassis with limited data and all the testing was done by normal people. James has never been a particularly good test rider so it was extremely foreign to them. Brayton and Millsaps were both good test riders and liked the bike because they could get it where they wanted it. Both did have the same thing to say, it was a good bike, but when it stepped out, it was going for a ride.
Pit Row
Short answer...Money.. It costs to have an engineer design multiple parts, have them machined or cast/made, and then try them to have a rider not like them in the first few laps on the track. This is why you hear the term "packages" the riders have. They have specific groupings of parts made for a specific handling or power characteristic. The rider likely has 3-5 to choose from and goes with the one they like the best as their "base" setting. Racing serves 2 purposes, one, real world testing of parts for performance and endurance. The other is marketing. If the rider wants to deviate from the direction a decision maker withing the company wants to go with a motorcycle its not good
"I saw he and the team went back to Florida this week, and I saw stock clamps on his bike, so that's where "we're" at."
(Matthes)
If I was on Sexton’s race team I would say put the bike back to where it was when he won and ride the bike and get used to how it reacts and works. After a few races make some small changes and go from there. I don’t think you can get used to a bike that you keep changing.
I don't recall Tomac ever having these kinds of issues at Kawi. We all know he wanted to change certain things, and had little luck doing that, but he seemed to win...a lot.
Seems like Fahie is hellbent on using factory-only parts.
Factory doesn't always mean better. It usually means more rigid/stiff.
Put the bike to 100% stock and go from there (even in race conditions).
There's history of KTM riders using 48mm forks instead of the 52s for example..
After Eli went to Yamaha his father did an interview on the Pulpmx show and, I'll have to paraphrase here so don't hold me to an exact explanation, that they wanted more freedom to make changes to the bike and Yamaha was willing to do that
52's are out and I believe for a few seasons when ktm stiffened the steel chassis. But you are right, there was a transition period where riders were searching and bouncing off the 2 sets
Anderson holding back describing the Factory Kawi compared to his Suk: it wasn't awful 😄
If an 8y old semi-privateer bike has a better engine than what a factory team and bike can build, ffs.
Kawi japan needs to do something about how they run the team in US.
He also had several rides that leave everyone scratching their heads several times a season. Something that he seems to have eradicated since leaving Kawasaki.
Tomac is an all time great, RV is an all time great, they won on the Kawasaki, that doesn’t mean that everything was perfect and there wasn’t room for improvement
The first I remember hearing about the "bigger and beefier isn't always better" thing was Kdub switching to stock fork tubes around 2011 or so.
To be exact, by the second week and the win the team had already converted to their suspension components with the PC direction/settings. the full PC forks were only at San Diego.
Swapmoto just reported Chase has been testing on a relatively stock kx this week.
Post a reply to: Panic Button for Chase/Kawi?