JimDirt wrote:He was on fire ! , though i was hoping Kenny would have been more of a fight for him , but i like them both , and he earned it !
Only bad thing about that race was a lot of the field in both classes dropped out , 450 Moto 2 there was only around 25 riders left at the end , never seen a Nat with that many casualties , riders just pulled off and gave up , Malcolm Stewart said "he hopes they lock the gates and never open them again !"
I guess the dirt was the issue not the layout or facility , a lot of riders hated the dirt and said it was about the worst they had ridden , several called it like riding on the surface of the moon , it didn't look that bad on TV , but i was not the one riding on it so i take their word for it
20 minutes into the first moto and 15 into the second, fitness definitely became a factor. It was very easy to see which riders were just logging laps until the race was over - essentially just on autopilot because bodies were taxed.
Utah dirt, well, sucks. It was my one and only concern about the announcement to build a track, especially in Tooele County. The track is 2.5 miles from my house as the crow flies, so between that and doing track maintenance for BMX for a couple of year I have some darn good experience with it. It is just the nastiest clay every. Its basic nature is extreme hard pack, talking concrete hard. Once you ride on it the dust is instance. Continuous ridding/walking/tilling/whatever without adding moisture just creates a fine power that closely resembles talcum power - seriously freaky stuff. If you add water you get something that is slicker than ice. So bad that when it rains we just avoid the field until it dries, and prepare for a good laugh whenever we hear a bike out behind the house. It is un-rideable.
The videos of Reed practicing around the time of the Utah SX race show the native Utah clay on the track. A continuous dust trail as he rides, but you get good traction until it is all carved up. MMP reports on there FB page that after taking the advice of 'some Utah Pro riders' they added topsoil. About the dumbest thing ever. As I mentioned, the native dirt is like ice when wet. So these monkeys added topsoil (looks like maybe a foot), and wet down the topsoil. So now you have a moving track surface (top soil sliding on top of the native clay). Totally bonehead move. The only way to really fix the track is to pay some farmer for his prime dirt and replace the top 3-4 feet of the entire track. The next best thing would be to go back to the native soil and treat the heck out of it with a soil stabilizer to control the dust. Problem with soil stabilizers is it just keeps the concrete feel.
I know they have a multi-year contract, and I love the idea of a national so close to my house. But, they need to fix the track.