Posts
3890
Joined
5/1/2009
Location
Morgantown, WV
US
Edited Date/Time
3/4/2013 6:51pm
If you were sitting at home watching Steel City, it probably looked pretty dry at the end of the day, and in some parts very hard-pack and slick. That's what happens sometimes when you get as much rain as the area did on Thursday, when it dumped all afternoon. So in order to make the track race-worthy, they had to push a lot of mud off on Friday and Saturday morning. Where do they put? Out in the water truck lanes.
Then it got hot. Incredibly hot. Hotter than Texas. So then the track dries out, much faster than the piles of mud off to the side. And when the water trucks are dispatched, they started getting stuck. It made watering later in the day a real challenge.
The Steel City track crew consisted of Jeff Russell of High Point and Loretta Lynn's, Marc Peters of Petersbuilt -- arguably the best track architect in the business -- Sam Gammon of Victory Sports, and the whole rest of the MX Sports crew. You couldn't assemble a better crew in motocross.
But in the end, when the sun is baking, you have to make the decision whether to either push all the heavy mud back out on the track, or just manage it as best as you can. We chose the latter. The people at the track and in the pits all told me we chose well (though Chad Reed was not a fan of the prep and mud from early in the day) and we saw some pretty exciting racing, as well as some runaways. It's the nature of the business.
Given how it looked Friday morning and how it turned out on Saturday, when a very big crowd enjoyed a long, hot day of racing, I thought it was a good job in unusual circumstances at Steel City.
DC
MX Sports
Then it got hot. Incredibly hot. Hotter than Texas. So then the track dries out, much faster than the piles of mud off to the side. And when the water trucks are dispatched, they started getting stuck. It made watering later in the day a real challenge.
The Steel City track crew consisted of Jeff Russell of High Point and Loretta Lynn's, Marc Peters of Petersbuilt -- arguably the best track architect in the business -- Sam Gammon of Victory Sports, and the whole rest of the MX Sports crew. You couldn't assemble a better crew in motocross.
But in the end, when the sun is baking, you have to make the decision whether to either push all the heavy mud back out on the track, or just manage it as best as you can. We chose the latter. The people at the track and in the pits all told me we chose well (though Chad Reed was not a fan of the prep and mud from early in the day) and we saw some pretty exciting racing, as well as some runaways. It's the nature of the business.
Given how it looked Friday morning and how it turned out on Saturday, when a very big crowd enjoyed a long, hot day of racing, I thought it was a good job in unusual circumstances at Steel City.
DC
MX Sports
The Shop
If you check out the One Lap video from Friday (http://www.vitalmx.com/videos/member/Untitled,4212/GuyB,64), you can see that the track was a bit of a mess following rain on Wednesday and Thursday. It certainly could have been a whole lot worse.
DC,on a side note. I have noticed this year that there doesn't seem to be as many porta john's at the races. Am i imaging this,of have they been cut back for some reason? I am speaking specifically in the pro pits and the industry confort zone areas. I remember at high point they were 2 inside the comfort zone area and none at steel city. I believe they were a couple inside the zone at southwick also?
As far as porta jons,I didn't notice.It was so damn hot I only needed one three times all day,sweatin' it out,I guess
This is MOTOCROSS.[/b]
Only complaint I have was the easy-up tents in the infield obstructing views. They made an announcement that security would be having them taken down, but I didn't see any going down. Maybe a solution would be to have some "cooling zones" under a tent with a few mist sprayers and ban the easy-ups all together. I ended up taking the kids to the van after the practices to cool off for a bit.
Great track and probably the best over-all viewing of any national I've ever been to.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this outdoor season, MX Sports continues to increasingly make the Nationals an incredibly satisfying, professional and entertaining package.
We deal with "Hot and Dry" here all the time, and there is just no way to keep up with Ma Nature.
People bitch about dry-slick but what do you do? Put water on top of that and you have a hockey rink.
The only place that looked like it could have used a shot of water to me was at the end of the start at turn 1.
The dust blocked the veiw completely at exit. But I'm not going to complain because I know how tough is is.
Pit Row
Wny not just leave it as a mudder...
It's ok to have a Mud race... And at any even i've been too, the track is chewed up after practice and racing... Add some sun, awesome, rough track..
Good question but there's mud and then there's midwest mud. Much better racing was expereienced this weekend since they scraped the muck off the top. Resulting track conditions just looked like real MX to me and certainly nothing that the modern era four stroke can't handle. Back in the day real men were racing 500 cc two strokes on surfaces like Steel City with nary a whimper.
Boring Old Guy Story-In the 70s at Highland Hills, sight of the historic Jammer/Tony D photo, we raced there frequently and man what a track. One Sunday the track was just hammered by a summer storm and the mud made conditions terrible. My dad, Big Art, suggested scraping the track in the morning but his suggestion was ignored. Couple of practices and people are stuck everywhere. Big Art then pressed the issue and they begrudgingly scraped and voila' the track turned out bitchin'.
End of the day one of the club members thanked my dad for being so persistent.
I don't care that it's hardpack like it was... And I wouldn't care if it was an absolute grease ball mud race...
It's motocross...
Not SX with no jumps on the same freaken surface every week... Red Bud looks amazing, but why are we trying to make every track just like it... Apart from dust for tv, I think the tracks should have some characteristics that make them unique
I'd love to hear what Broc Glover says about Tyre choice overall... I'm guessing he can justabout spec a single control tyre type for the whole year!!!
Inconsequential Vital-posters have been crying for a hard-pack National track variation. Now they got it! Great racing all year and great presentation.
See ya'all at Pala!
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