By Steve Matthes

In what has become a great American moto tradition, the Independence Day weekend is celebrated at Red Bud Track N Trail in Buchanan, Michigan. It’s strange to talk to riders and teams and not hear at least some complaining about a track, but I can honestly say that every rider I think I’ve ever talked to has nothing but good things to say about the facility and the track. The track gets very rough and rutty but it’s very fun for the riders and the atmosphere is always cool.

When I was a mechanic there was some complaining years ago about the massive LaRocco’s Leap jump because even if you landed it clean, your wheels and frame would be stressed out to the max and it wasn’t uncommon for riders to break wheels upon landing it clean. Back in the day as a mechanic, Red Bud meant heavy duty rims and new frames afterwards. In the last few years, the crew has made the landing bigger so that you can downside it instead of just dropping out of the sky and save your bike. The downside to this is that if you come up short, it’s going to be ugly and I saw plenty of ugliness on Saturday and Sunday morning.

Clearing LaRocco’s Leap = priceless

Coming up short on LaRocco’s Leap = very pricey

Guess what boys and girls? The Kawasaki boys won again! James Stewart and Ryan Villopoto continued their streak of moto wins to an incredible 23 motos! Maybe I won’t even write anything about each of them anymore, I’ll just save the words and combine their races. The guys rode great, checked out early in each moto and rode away with the moto victories. They looked smooth, effortless and are simply unstoppable this summer and are setting themselves up to meet in battle January 3rd, 2009. RV might be the most hyped up rookie to come into the class since, well James Stewart in 2005.

RV shut down any “I’m going to jump to the 450s when I clinch this thing” talk in the press conference when he basically said that Pro Circuit doesn’t care about the Motocross class and that he wants to be ready when he does make the jump up. So don’t look for him to be on a 450 until Supercross. That doesn’t stop the people in the pits talking about how RV will do in the big boys class. Al the people that are getting excited (this means you, Dr. Steve) need to remember that James and RC both had adjustment problems in their first year in the class. Reedy and MC both transitioned pretty well so let’s hold off on any grand pronouncements.

RV also let slip that he’s been asked by Team USA manager Roger DeCoster about representing the USA in the Motocross des Nations (I’m NOT calling it “of”.) This shouldn’t be much of a shock and neither will the fact that James Stewart will be a member of the team as well. More on the potential third member in a bit.

There was some drama down on the starting line for the first 450 moto. The AMA came out with a rule before Glen Helen that the rider and bike must be down in staging at a certain time or they lose their gate pick and have to start at the back. The rule bit a Hahn brother at the Helen, Jake Weimer last week and this week a bigger fish was caught in the net when Stewie lost his pick and had to start on the far outside. Andrew Short and a few privateers got caught up as well in this rule. It’s been there since the start of the outdoors and the AMA has decided to enforce it because of the motos not going off on time.  The teams were pissed but hey, a rule is a rule and just because you drive drunk repeatedly and then get caught one time shouldn’t make you mad at the police.

Another thing is, being an ex-mechanic, I can totally understand the guys not making the cut-off time for the second moto because it’s really tight for time for everything to get done, but before the first motos there should be no problem getting your bike ready and there on time. If you have to blame somebody (and hey, doesn’t everyone love to point fingers?) I would say it falls in part on the team managers to let their mechanics/riders know that they need to get going.

So on the webcast we were talking about how James would have to come through the pack and it’s not going to be easy, etc., etc… but the Seven pulls a fourth-place start (!?!) and moves into the lead after lap one. Next week they should make him start backwards just for fun. Seriously.

The rider that looked to be the third member of Team USA, Mike Alessi, just like Daniel Powter, had a bad day. After getting the holeshot and his usual second-place in the first moto (if Stewart weren’t here, he would be running away with the series), he didn’t get the holeshot in the second moto and while no doubt still confused about that fact, he swapped after the ski jump and crashed heavily.

The crash itself was bad but the fact that the whole pack ran him over was really, really bad. Mike was knocked out for a bit and was carted off with two broken scapulas and lots of tweety-birds circling his head. You can see the crash on the Racer X post-show here but be warned, if you’re faint of heart, you may want to close your eyes. Get well soon Mike!

Well, I guess I was right in saying a few weeks ago that the Jason Lawrence situation is coming to a head and this week the other shoe dropped. Despite being on probation and being told to keep it on the straight and narrow for the next little while, Jason decided that going into the campground and getting into a fight was a good idea and he ended up getting arrested by the cops. He lost the 25K he had suspended after his Texas fiasco, which was donated to the Asterisk Mobile Medical unit. This was the only good thing to come out of this situation.

After all the trouble he’s in with his personal and professional life and despite (some of) the adults around him trying to help him, J-Law continued to basically act like he didn’t care and was going to do whatever the hell he wanted, whenever he wanted. I think the only thing he was missing was you know those giant foam hands with the finger out signifying number one? Jason should’ve worn a set of those with the middle finger out, because that’s basically what he was telling everyone to do.

What do I really think will happen? Glad you asked, because I bet he doesn’t race this year (maybe the X-games), gets some things straight in his life, gets reinstated in time for supercross, gets hired by somebody if he does get fired (because the kid can ride, no doubt about it), we see some “in the best shape of his life” press releases and life goes on for the 338. No matter what, his career will never be the same and that’s a shame. We need character in the sport but that’s like saying you’re a little chilly and somebody sets a forest fire for you. He’s been a little too much of a “character.”

Man, after all the J-Law stuff our “we feel good about our sport” story went down in flames. On Saturday Sean Hamblin, just picked up by the Factory Yamaha team, crashed on the second jump of LaRocco’s Leap when he attempted to scrub it, caught his peg and came up horrifically short. He dislocated his shoulder and I checked up with him on Saturday night and asked him if he was going to race because I had to pick my fantasy team and he said to take him off it. (I really cared about his shoulder as well, honestly.) His goal was to race and stay in the top ten so he can take Saturday’s off to rest his shoulder.

Sean told me that it “hurt like hell” and they couldn’t give him any drugs for it because he was racing. He popped it out AGAIN on Sunday morning, and ended up having Doc Bodnar and Eddie Casillas work together to put the shoulder back in place.

Sean toughed it out big-time during the race and after crashing and getting banners caught in his wheel in the first moto, which Davey Coombs ran across the track and cut out for him with a knife a fan threw to him over the fence. Hamblin was so far back that he could probably see James coming up behind him better than the next guy ahead of him. He put his head down and got 20th for one point.  Was it outside assistance? “Sean didn’t ask for help, and I thought it was a safety issue,” DC told me.  “It was obvious he wasn’t going to quit riding, and the last thing anyone wants to see is a guy’s wheel lock up over a big jump because he’s dragging some banners in his sprocket.”

The next moto saw #105 get eleventh and stay in the top ten in points and his goal was reached. Good for Sean, he showed a lot of character and heart. Maybe he should talk to his buddy Lawrence and tell him all about life on crappy teams and in Europe.

We had a Canadian racing in Red Bud! The current CMRC National points leader, Tyler Medaglia showed up and had some good speed. He qualified 14th in the 450s but crashed in Sunday morning practice and hurt his shoulder/arm. Tyler should be ok for Nanaimo so that’s good. I spoke to him on Sunday morning and he said that he was behind Ferry and wanted to see some lines but it can’t be confirmed that Timmy’s jet stream caused Tyler to crash by the finish line. I think that’s awesome that Tyler showed up and wasn’t scared to get hurt or whatever. He’s got a lot at stake up in the motherland, but he just wants to become a better racer and measure himself against the best. Younger brother Jeremy also rode but missed qualifying by the smallest of margins.

The games are going on off the track also. In the last few years, a lot of the mechanics have taken to wearing little half street bike boots to pack their riders gates. It just helps to pack the dirt and scrape the line for your guy I suppose. I never wore them despite my team manager at Yamaha asking me to. I always felt that you’re dealing with a 50+HP motorcycle and that nothing I can do to pack the dirt is really going to affect the motorcycle and my riders’ starts. So anyways, the guys now are wearing these dumb, uncomfortable, ridiculous (guess my feelings on it) little boots and the Honda guys have even added a steel toe to their boots! Hmmm… Here’s the actual rule from the AMA book:

“Grooming may be done behind the gate, provided no shovels, tools, or other implements (foreign or natural) are used.” 

Implements may include adding steel to your boots that do not come with a steel toe, after all if you didn’t have that in the book, some mechanics would tie a jack-hammer to their legs and just tell the AMA that their “MC Hammer” pants came with a jackhammer.

The Kawasaki guys wanted to add steel toes but were told no by their team manager. Well as you can imagine the poop hit the fan when the Honda guys showed up with steel toes, so after Kawasaki pointed it out and asked the AMA for a ruling, they have yet to make a ruling and the games continue!

If you’ve been reading “Observations” since Glen Helen you know that I’ve been pumping Michael Byrne up as riding pretty well. His knee injury that kept him out of Supercross was very serious and combined with the fact that he’s a better indoor rider than an outdoor rider; I thought he was riding well this year. He was establishing that he was the fastest guy of the third group (First group: James Stewart and Jesus, second group: Alessi, Davi Millsaps, Tim Ferry, and Andrew Short.) It all paid off this weekend for the Byrner as he took advantage of bad days from Alessi, Ferry and Millsaps to grab the final spot on the podium. Good ride for a good guy and now you’ll hear all sorts of interviews and hype about the two-six but you all knew he was riding strong already, right?

Millsaps crashed out going down a hill in the first moto and pulled out with a shoulder injury. He broke his handlebars on his Honda so that gives you an idea of how gnarly he crashed. I don’t think it’s that serious as Davi was cheering riders on in the second motos with his good shoulder.

Tim Ferry had a frustrating day. After working his way into fifth in the first moto, he fell over and was back in tenth before he knew it. So the Dog got on his horse and was on fire, passing dudes all over and he got back into fifth in a few laps. But the moto gods didn’t want him to get fifth or better on this day as he crashed again and couldn’t start his bike until he was in 29^th! He eventually got 23^rd and continued his recent streak of “Not being Tim Ferry for some reason.”

Ahhh, but in the second moto, he battled with Shorty and finally got him in the “wall turn” and finished second in the moto for 8^th OA. He rode better than he had in recent weeks and we spoke quite a bit on this day… I’m just saying.

Finally the MDK/KTM guys had some luck go their way. Ryan Sipes got the first moto holeshot and finished third in a great ride and Martin Davalos grabbed the second moto holeshot and secured third OA. I’m not sure what happened to Sipes in the second moto but he trailed the pack by 20 seconds on the first lap but fought hard to get to 20^th and one point. Sipes has been riding good this year and probably deserves to be there again in 2009. Davalos admitted that he might have come back too early at Mt Morris due to some sort of lung infection but has been better in the last two weeks.

I don’t think that Ryan Dungey is going to be sending the Ritchie’s (who own the track) postcards anytime soon. After a big practice crash last year that knocked him out for six weeks, Ryan had to come through the pack in the first moto and could only get an 8^th. Second moto out he worked his ass off to catch up to Canard on the last lap, only to see his bike blow up with only ½ lap to go! Man, that’s some bad luck for sure.

Probably 99.3% of riders would have left their bike at the bottom of the track (and I wouldn’t have blamed them) after giving it their all for 37 minutes but RD pushed the damn thing up a hill and towards the pits but not before stopping at the leap and giving away his helmet and gloves. Impressive, that young man.

Privateer Jimmy Albertson 7^th OA! Good for him and I was watching him, thinking that I didn’t remember him being on a Honda but Steve Cox told me that he recently switched from Suzuki and has been hurt for a bit. He’s got Factory Connection helping him quite a bit (as well as his friend and practice partner Trey Canard) and hopefully he can keep doing well.

After not scoring any points in the last three motos, Josh Summey finally showed why I’ve pumped him up over the last year or so and more importantly gave JGR a reason to get him signed up for 2009. Josh scored a career high 5^th OA with 9-7 scores (9-7 for 5^th? The moto gods were smiling on Josh on this day.) Josh is one of those guys where you can tell how he did by his mood after the race (where a guy like Cody Cooper is pretty much always smiling and laughing even if his connecting rod is sticking out of his cases) and after this weekend he was very happy.

Jake Weimer told The Weege on the webcast show that the “Colorado Jake Weimer sucked” and that we’ll see the “High Point Jake Weimer” at Red Bud. Well, something must’ve happened to the “High Point Jake Weimer” because he didn’t show. Jake went 28-6 on the day for 15^th OA.  Now he needs to leave “Colorado-Red Bud Jake Weimer” home and bring his High Point game.

“Dandy” Dan Reardon, coming off a great 5 min with… interview with myself this past week, also had a tough time at Red Bud. Not sure what happened to him in the second moto as he was sixth until late in the race and then disappeared.

After splitting the RC Hard Charger Award with privateer Bobby Fitch last week, Moto XXX’s Antonio Balbi had another good race at the Bud. In the first moto he was solidly in the top ten for many laps when he crashed in a corner. When he got up he got a rock in the eye from another rider that busted his goggle lens and cut him under the eye. Being Brazilian and having a cut under your eye is really nothing when you’re used to outrunning drug cartels, so the Brazilian Bomber kept going for a 14^th  with goggles that were filled with blood. Second moto he was a solid 8^th and his impressive 11^th OA was still not indicative of how super he rode.

Nick Wey had another good day finishing 5-5 for 4^th OA. The Michigan Mafia member was at his home track and one that he has won many a race on (although he did lose an East Coast Four Stroke National race to Kelly Smith on his Matthes-tuned KTM 520SX in ’01.) You hate to say that a guy got screwed on a race that had to be red-flagged for a fellow competitor being seriously hurt but Nick got screwed on the moto that was red flagged. He was in second at the end of the first lap and even though he came out okay on the re-start, it was no second place.

“Sharky” McFarlane had a good race, finishing in 7^th OA. He’s sure hot and cold, that Sharky. I remember when he was leading the 125 World Championship, and then I remember when he was up front on a Yamaha of Troy bike. It’s obvious that he has the talent to do well, wonder why he can’t sustain it? He’s an older guy that shouldn’t suffer from the characteristic inconsistency you see from a lot of younger guys.

At one point in the second moto he was racing with fellow Aussie’s Jake Moss and Dandy Dan Reardon, making it a lot of shrimps on the barbie all together. With Reed being the SX champ, Byrner getting third OA and Brett Metcalfe getting podiums, it got me thinking about how if Dusty Klatt had been able to do something down south, all these teams would go and hire Canadians and then they would be everywhere like the Aussies. A man can dream can’t he?

Other Timbits...

-- Man, the worst thing in the world is to race two grueling motos, giving everything you got, pushing your body and bike to the limit and you go 21-21, one position out of the points. Well Sean Borkenhagen “Daz” almost did that-going 22-22 on the day. Man that sucks!

-- Two time Canadian national winner and snowmobile god Tucker Hibbert showed up and didn’t do as well as he did in Freestone or Canada. Tuck-star could only go 19-17 on the day. He brought out his race sled and when I got there on Saturday, Andrew Short was checking it out and had to ask Tucker how to start it. Growing up in Canada for 24 years, my experience with snowmobiles is always having them break on me when I was in the middle of nowhere freezing my ass off. I always thought about killing a deer and climbing inside of it to keep warm, like Han did to Luke in Empire Strikes Back….

-- After all of the J-Law distractions, the Yamaha of Troy guys had a bad day. Ryan Morais is out for a while with a head injury, Tyler Bowers just came back from a knee injury and went 31-27. Grand Prix refugee Mike Brown had his own share of problems and went an uncharacteristic 37-16. Man, tough day and I’ve been there with the early days of the KTM team. The nationals are so much work and to have your team do poorly across the board is a downer.

-- If you didn't know, I have a blog on motocross.com now. Check it out and please don't write angry comments.

-- On my flight back I had one of those international planes with seven seats across and they had the TV monitors in the headrests. Anyways, they had a trivia game on there and I finished second once (even though I didn’t join in until 3 questions in) and then I dominated the next game! Nothing like being trivia king of your airplane.

Ok, that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading this and I hope you had as much fun checking this out as I did writing it. As usual, please send all complaints to jasonw@racerxill.com and all praises to matthes@racerxcanada.com  See ya next week!