Posts
4045
Joined
8/16/2006
Location
Mission Viejo, CA
US
Edited Date/Time
1/25/2012 6:02pm
Racerhead #25 June 20, 2008
By DC and Billy Ursic
Printer Friendly
I was hoping to manage this whole edition of Racerhead, but a long weekend at High Point carried over into another magazine deadline, and now I am flying to San Jose on a 24-hour trip to my friend Pete Fox’s wedding tonight. I want to thank all of the fans and riders—from James Stewart to Mike Alessi, from Sean Hamblin and Michael Willard to Ryan Dungey and more—who all said real nice things about the overhauled racetrack out at Mt. Morris, PA. It was a lot of hard work, and thank goodness a lot of friends and families pitched in.
Looking back at the 32nd Annual High Point National, the weekend actually started many months ago. It was at Steel City ’07 back in August, when it rained for about nine days in a row leading up to the race. The track was sub-prime, to be honest, and it was time to make some changes with both that race and High Point, which would be moved to mid-June on the schedule after three decades on Memorial Day.
Marc Peters was the point man with the High Point redesign
photo: Simon Cudby
The first thing I did was call Marc Peters of Petersbuilt MX tracks and ask him to fly back east to check out High Point. We wanted a consultation on a track that had been laid out by a traveling team of Maico riders—Adolf Weil, Sylvain Geboers and Hans Maisch—back in the fall of 1976, and still clung to much of the design they originally came up with. It had been nipped and tucked here and there, but laps times seemed to drop by seconds at a time with every passing year, as the racers got faster and the bikes grew into state-of-the-art 450 four-strokes. Peters flew up, marched up and down the hills for a few days, and said “Okay, I got some ideas. I will be back.”
A few weeks later, Marc and his fellow dirt sculptor Chad flew back and went to work. They were given free rein to do whatever they thought the track might need, because after so many years of being so close to the course, it was time for some new eyes to see it and come up with new ideas. I left them to the track and started mowing grass and moving fences and just trying to do what my injured brother has been doing for years: trying to make it look like Red Bud!
The new High Point layout was a hit with both the riders and fans
photo: Kevin Golier
The place was fantastic on Friday for amateur day, with new hills and off-cambers, plus some cool jump combinations that the amateur-day participants found challenging and fun. But after the race, the NPG’s director of operations, John Ayers, realized that the track times were still going to be around two minutes flat, which is something series points leader James Stewart complained about at Freestone in Texas: the tracks were getting shorter and shorter (and he was getting faster and faster). So once again it was Peters to the rescue, as he and Ayers and my brother-in-law Jeff Russell went into the amateur section of the racetrack, pulled up some fences, moved some campers, and added a whole new section to the racetrack.
Saturday morning looked like it was going to be perfect, but then the rainstorms we hoped we would avoid by moving three weeks back into summer found us anyway. It rained as hard as it did at Daytona, and pretty much only let up for brief periods of time well into the night.
Sunday morning dawned cloudy and overcast, yet everyone was out there before dawn doing what they could to salvage the track. Like the MXoN back in September, we were lucky to have a lot of our fellow NPG promoters step forward to help out: Amy Ritchie of Red Bud was there helping out, as was Greg Robinson of Unadilla, and of course Jonathan Beasley, who went around doing what he could to make the place look presentable. Longtime Ohio promoter Drew Wolfe was on a tractor, and so was Peters, leading Jeff and his dad, plus the Holberts on the equipment, plus the tireless Ayers and his crew.
The track was perfect for the start of the motos on Sunday
photo: Simon Cudby
By the time they were done, the sun came out, a huge crowd rolled in, and the riders looked like they were having fun on the made-over track. If you saw the Racer X Post-Race Show on Motocross.com, you saw a racetrack that looked way different than it did just a few hours earlier when everyone was planning for a big mud race.
I just want to thank everyone who helped out so much in getting High Point through a difficult weekend and helping make the AMA Toyota Motocross Championship even better. Now I’ve got to get Marc to Loretta Lynn’s and then Steel City so we can do it all over again. Marc, a former pro rider who is the son of CMC founder Stu Peters and the brother of Sondra Peters, one of my favorite people in motocross, was as impressive on those tractors as James and RV were on those green machines.
Check out the Speed TV broadcast of the 2008 High Point National—the first round of the Monster Energy/Kawasaki Triple Crown of Motocross—tomorrow (June 21) at 10:00 p.m. ET on SPEED; the Lites class will air on Sunday, June 29, at 2:00 p.m. ET on SPEED. For the complete TV schedule, click here.
By DC and Billy Ursic
Printer Friendly
I was hoping to manage this whole edition of Racerhead, but a long weekend at High Point carried over into another magazine deadline, and now I am flying to San Jose on a 24-hour trip to my friend Pete Fox’s wedding tonight. I want to thank all of the fans and riders—from James Stewart to Mike Alessi, from Sean Hamblin and Michael Willard to Ryan Dungey and more—who all said real nice things about the overhauled racetrack out at Mt. Morris, PA. It was a lot of hard work, and thank goodness a lot of friends and families pitched in.
Looking back at the 32nd Annual High Point National, the weekend actually started many months ago. It was at Steel City ’07 back in August, when it rained for about nine days in a row leading up to the race. The track was sub-prime, to be honest, and it was time to make some changes with both that race and High Point, which would be moved to mid-June on the schedule after three decades on Memorial Day.
Marc Peters was the point man with the High Point redesign
photo: Simon Cudby
The first thing I did was call Marc Peters of Petersbuilt MX tracks and ask him to fly back east to check out High Point. We wanted a consultation on a track that had been laid out by a traveling team of Maico riders—Adolf Weil, Sylvain Geboers and Hans Maisch—back in the fall of 1976, and still clung to much of the design they originally came up with. It had been nipped and tucked here and there, but laps times seemed to drop by seconds at a time with every passing year, as the racers got faster and the bikes grew into state-of-the-art 450 four-strokes. Peters flew up, marched up and down the hills for a few days, and said “Okay, I got some ideas. I will be back.”
A few weeks later, Marc and his fellow dirt sculptor Chad flew back and went to work. They were given free rein to do whatever they thought the track might need, because after so many years of being so close to the course, it was time for some new eyes to see it and come up with new ideas. I left them to the track and started mowing grass and moving fences and just trying to do what my injured brother has been doing for years: trying to make it look like Red Bud!
The new High Point layout was a hit with both the riders and fans
photo: Kevin Golier
The place was fantastic on Friday for amateur day, with new hills and off-cambers, plus some cool jump combinations that the amateur-day participants found challenging and fun. But after the race, the NPG’s director of operations, John Ayers, realized that the track times were still going to be around two minutes flat, which is something series points leader James Stewart complained about at Freestone in Texas: the tracks were getting shorter and shorter (and he was getting faster and faster). So once again it was Peters to the rescue, as he and Ayers and my brother-in-law Jeff Russell went into the amateur section of the racetrack, pulled up some fences, moved some campers, and added a whole new section to the racetrack.
Saturday morning looked like it was going to be perfect, but then the rainstorms we hoped we would avoid by moving three weeks back into summer found us anyway. It rained as hard as it did at Daytona, and pretty much only let up for brief periods of time well into the night.
Sunday morning dawned cloudy and overcast, yet everyone was out there before dawn doing what they could to salvage the track. Like the MXoN back in September, we were lucky to have a lot of our fellow NPG promoters step forward to help out: Amy Ritchie of Red Bud was there helping out, as was Greg Robinson of Unadilla, and of course Jonathan Beasley, who went around doing what he could to make the place look presentable. Longtime Ohio promoter Drew Wolfe was on a tractor, and so was Peters, leading Jeff and his dad, plus the Holberts on the equipment, plus the tireless Ayers and his crew.
The track was perfect for the start of the motos on Sunday
photo: Simon Cudby
By the time they were done, the sun came out, a huge crowd rolled in, and the riders looked like they were having fun on the made-over track. If you saw the Racer X Post-Race Show on Motocross.com, you saw a racetrack that looked way different than it did just a few hours earlier when everyone was planning for a big mud race.
I just want to thank everyone who helped out so much in getting High Point through a difficult weekend and helping make the AMA Toyota Motocross Championship even better. Now I’ve got to get Marc to Loretta Lynn’s and then Steel City so we can do it all over again. Marc, a former pro rider who is the son of CMC founder Stu Peters and the brother of Sondra Peters, one of my favorite people in motocross, was as impressive on those tractors as James and RV were on those green machines.
Check out the Speed TV broadcast of the 2008 High Point National—the first round of the Monster Energy/Kawasaki Triple Crown of Motocross—tomorrow (June 21) at 10:00 p.m. ET on SPEED; the Lites class will air on Sunday, June 29, at 2:00 p.m. ET on SPEED. For the complete TV schedule, click here.
S
The only guy I know that can work a tractor like it's nothin in flip-flops. He stopped to shoot the breeze about the ol CMC days...
I saw that article too in CN--good stuff!
Congrats!
S
The Shop
SH 105
Somewhere Jody just took his shirt off.
is this a misprint ? I thought I read on Hate Time that DC is the one who had you fired from the AMA ?
maybe someone changed the quotes ?
On his web site... he has a few MX tracks I consider paradise.
Costa Rica
Nor Cal
Oakley
Foster County
Castillo Ranch
S... should give yourself some props too. Nice to have you on Vital.
http://www.petersbuilttracks.com/
You want me to go find the quotes and post them ?
Thank God you are not a moderator here or mototalk , Go back to Hate Time if you don't like it, I don't post there anymore.
WTF is going to happen ? Get kicked out of the imaginary click ?
Pit Row
Jimi J
Everyone needs to mellow out, or I'm going to sic this one on you... as soon as I can wake her up.
Post a reply to: My Shameless plug for my brother =)