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Sunday, January 27, 2013 | 6:50 AM
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PrintWell, once again like last week, Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Ryan Villopoto was the man here in Oakland at round four of the Monster Energy Supercross series. RV led wire to wire for his second win in a row and just, as the kids say, crushed it. He had about a seven second lead on the fourth lap over series points leader Rockstar Racing’s Davi Millsaps and seems to have found his groove.
Villopoto doesn't need much help, but his lead was made bigger thanks to a massive crash in the second turn that took down about ten riders. After the first turn there was a set of whoops and then a right hander for the second turn, and Team TwoTwo Honda’s Chad Reed and JGR Toyota Yamaha's Josh Grant proceeded to clean out the rest of the field including top qualifier Yoshimura Suzuki’s James Stewart and Muscle Milk Honda’s Justin Barcia. [Note: we earlier reported that Grant and Reed had gotten together first, with some blame going Grant's way, but further review shows that's clearly not the case. JG was an innocent victim]. And although they didn’t fall his teammate Trey Canard and Red Bull KTM’s Ryan Dungey were held up quite a bit. It was pure carnage. Stewart and Barcia were unable to finish (Barcia from injury, Stewart from a bike problem). It made for a crazy start and one that left riders like Reed and Grant way, way back when they got going.
Canard and Dungey going at it.
Photo: Simon Cudby
Opening round winner and points leader Davi Millsaps rode a great race to get second, he got another good start and pulled away from the rest of the racers (except for Villopoto). He’s still in the points lead by seven over Canard and eight over Villopoto. Millsaps is for real.
Third place was Dungey who, like Canard, had a lot of ground to make up and rode a great race to work through the pack. It was a nice rebound after two tough races in a row for the 2010 SX Champion.
In the 250SX class, it was fastest qualifier and heat race winner Red Bull KTM’s Ken Roczen who stalked TLD Honda’s Cole Seely for half the main event before making a nice move to get by and take the win. Roczen was very, very good all day long and is now the points leader….
And that’s because GEICO Honda’s Eli Tomac suffered a bad start and a couple of crashes, the the last one was a pretty good one in the whoops. Tomac walked off but he was shaken up and just like that, after three straight wins, Tomac is now third in the series. This is all very similar to what happened to him last year in San Diego—although he did rally back from that to salvage the title.
Kenny logged the win in Oakland.
Photo: Simon Cudby
Rockstar Energy Racing’s Jason Anderson gathered up a podium with a great ride to get third place. Anderson was very fast all day long and in the heat race he came from a long ways back to get right up there.
Only days after the team announced that it will close after supercross, JDR KTM’s Malcolm Stewart and Joey Savatgy had great nights with a fifth and a sixth with Savatgy even pulling the holeshot. Also, nice ride for HRT Honda’s Austin Politelli who finished eighth.
MotoConcepts/Smart-Top Racing’s Mike Alessi had his best race of the year as he ran as high as fourth (Mike’s starts in the main haven’t been very good, but on this night he got a good one and he avoided the big pile-up) and eventually ended up fifth on the night.
JDR KTM's squad, Stewart, Savatgy, Cachia.
Photo: Simon Cudby
With his team folding up shop this week, Andrew Short showed up with the Kranyak Racing rig (The Kranyak team was helping out Josh Hansen, but Hansen is sick and was forced to miss this race and probably some more). Shorty rode on a production Honda CRF450 with Enzo KYB forks, a high compression piston and an FMF pipe. With all this chaos around him, Short tied his best finish of the year with sixth.
A couple of riders having great nights were BTOSports.com KTM’s Matt Georke, who got zapped by Short on the last lap but still finished seventh, and Slaton Racing’s Vince Friese, who finished a career-high ninth.
Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Jake Weimer was forced to pull out of the race from a bout with pneumonia and that’s a bad deal for a rider that was right up there in the points battle.
Although retired now, GEICO Honda’s Kevin Windham came out to thunderous applause here and did not one, but two transfers. And with no goggles!
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Kevin go home and retire please !
to mxflorida ,, have some respect !! you go home !! we dont need people like you in our sport !! iam tired of it !!! mouth peice !!!!
mxflorida = tool.
The surprise cup showed up in Oakland, Tomac crashes out no one saw that coming..The carnage in the 450 class made it an easy run away for Villopoto..Moral of the story is ...Supercross is all about the start.... Due to the surprises in Oakland, A 3 will have to be really wild to match all the suspense...lets hope for less crashing, closer racing and another new winner...
Kevin stay JT$ go home, at least k dub was the man.
Tomac couldn't make ground in his Heat Race last night, starts have been his achilles heal since he turned pro.
MXFlorida--How about you do us a favor and retire from these boards
@MXflorida
Go back to your icarly forums and stay off of here! K-Dub is an icon who desrves to be at every race entertaining the crowd if he chooses!
oh and it was ALLL REED that got sideways bounced off Grant then Reed bowling bowled into everyone else.
Reed learned from Booba! Lol
Lets not bash Reedy! Booba did the same thing in 2011 to him. I bet Booba feels the taste of retaliation pills! Lol
They taste like crap!!! Ha ha ha
That being said, I hope no one is seriously injured!
Is it Saturday yet???
Good win for RV2 and another good race for Milli. But as a fan they should have restarted that race. Too many guys going down in the first lap makes for a boring race. It looked boring today on CBS. I am heading the race in Minne in April and I will be def disappointed if it's checkout after 3 laps for the win. Expensive for fans to go to a race that guys end up just riding around for 20 laps in the main.
The funniest part of whoops crash was Stewarts bike laying on top of reeds.
I never really saw what happened to Barcia, but he was on the ground the longest.
gq007ia---why should the guy who starts well and ahead of trouble be penalized because he is riding well by restarting the race, when there was no hazard on the track, by the time everyone got back around??
Fist of all @ Mathes There is no such thing as a good crash! I repeat there is no such thing as a good crash!.........ECT. Hey I like your articles most of the time but there is no such thng as a good crash!!!!!!!!!!!!
On to next comment..........
if Havoc would have pulled that 'mistake' like REED did..(only if he did it ,it would be called a horrible blatant take out disregard for safety lawndart..blah bla blah...)....this comment section would have burst into flames..........glad everyone at least limped away..maybe he needs a STOCK Honda (sure it is ) like Shortys.....the tracks have just gotten progressively more tight and dangerous since A1 ... is that actually the plan??? one of Canards mid air corrections (looked like a sure get off) was amazing..great ride considering.... Dungey has figured out conservative won't get and looked SO much better..gotta love 18 still pluggin away gettin it done on the 'ancient' Zook......RV1....G O N E....look out. @mxflorida go crawl back to your bug and snake infested backyard/redneck gator pit /mosquito the size of a Mercury, unbearibly humid newly wed and nearly dead filled hellhole ....Kdub can show up and showoff anytime...!!!!!!
OK now I have sttled down a bit ....Count to 10 No I was not home schooled, lol. But my tyoing does not show it cause I am a poet.
It is gonna be interestring to see if Tomac can pull out of this hole he put himself in? Yes I hope Roczen can pull this off and win the whole Kabootle, Davalos now has my attention that is good!
I also agree that the race should have been started over, Please read my post on the race report! We have a long way to go yet so it is not yet time to count our chickens from the egg bucket! Yes I grew up in the country I still know what Catywoampus means when Grandma told me where to find Grandpa out in the field!
I really hope Barcia is OK as I think he is really good. Also good for the sport. Reminds me of Me, no Hannah!
Dungey drifted left to miss the developing carnage and hit Barcia. How it all started who knows. I bet Barcia hates California.
Okay time for Mx to start, season's over. Might be an exaggeration but, looks probable.
@Welker No way should a restart be in order here. Unfortunate racing incident. The track was cleared up and no one was seriously injured to the point the asterisk crew had to be on the track. So bummer? yes. Restart, no. Racing is racing.. and sometimes you just gotta get that start to avoid the pile up. Someone earlier mentioned the track is to blame, and I agree to an extent.. why put a whoop section (although they looked mellow for sx whoops) into a 180 bowl in the first section.. everyone is pinned through the whoops + the crowd of riders at the starts + 180 bowls = what happened. But I don't think Grant was the one to blame here ( not sticking up for his previous antics) but this one is all on Reed. he was all over in the whoop section. Bounced off JS7 then back to his right, dropped the front end, which caused him to collect Grant and the end of the whoops which caused both him and Reed to blast into the corner way too hot. and bummer for JS7, he just happened to be in prime "punting" position and got booted. Don't know why Reed looked like a C rider coming through the whoops, someone needs to tell Reed, "you can't win the race in the first few corners, but you can sure lose it!" Shout out to Shorty for pulling a sixth on a basically production 450! Hope someone can step up and challenge RV2's speed before this thing is signed, sealed, and delivered.
Anyone who bought one of Reed's '12 bikes want to send them back to him? He doesn't seem to be getting along with the '13 Honda. His bowling ball crash last night looked like something straight out of the 125 nervous class.
Did anyone else notice that Canard's hand is off the bars in that picture of him and Dungey "going at it"? I'm surprised he didn't go down.
It is a bit comical that some people think a restart was in order....simply because the crash made for a boring race for the fans. With that in mind, maybe they need to restart every race RV holeshots and just keep restarting them until he gets a bad start and then that one will count. Not many SX mains have been restarted in the history of the sport, and when they are it is because they are worried someone may have just died and is laying in the track, not because too many of the top dawgs went down or got held up. You know if they did do such things, Reed probably would have holeshot the restart and won, RV would have went down and torn his ACL again and of course, Stewart and Barcia still would have had to sit out. Makes sense.
B-KR they already did that at Washougal.
Hopefully Ken rides the rest of the season clean and smart. Messing Tomac will shorten his season. At the rate the season is moving, when will we see RV and Bam Bam go at bar to bar? Ryan looks to be back in his groove, but Justin is falling victim of his bad luck.
Ahh yes, the old Washougal Supercross.........I said SX Mains.
I have seen restarts where about 90% of the riders went down and there really was no race with the carnage involved. Haven't seen one in SX or MX (Nationals) that was simply because it made the racing boring.
Just finished watching the 250's KTM needs to bite the Bullet and Bring JDR In House for the rest of the year They are getting FAR TOO Much attention in order to stop now......Lets turn MX/SX into the Pumpkin Patch that Off Road is !!!
@MXflorida Did you really say that???????? WOW!!!!!!! Another Florida b**ch.
Restart=Rediculous Don't even think like that. Let's just fix the races so they are more exciting.
If you want more excitement to that race? easy. Get Travers and Koster the Canadian TV announcers to call the fricken race!! They can make a turtle race exciting.
*fix the races as in WWF, not as in they are broken.
Everyone crying "too bad for Stewart" about the crash.. Stewart has whiped out more people than half the racers on the track.. he took out how many at the start of Daytona a few years ago.. Took out Windham at Vegas, too many to count.. I dont remember anyone saying "too bad for Reed" when Stewart punted him over a berm a few years back.. Now Stewart is struggling, its poor pity for Stewart.. It was a racing incident, if Reed did anything wrong I would call him out for it, but it is what it is.. Alot of guys were caught up in a big crash off a start, it happens, nobody did anything intentional or dumb, just a mistake that caused a big crash..It will happen in this sport from time to time..
Good for RV and the other top 6 for not being in the pack that crashed, what I am saying is that for a fan it is a boring main event when 2/3rds of the field is wiped out in the 2nd turn. Restarts DO happen in SX racing, so it's a not a wild idea or "fixing" the races. At the end of the day RV was the fastest guy and deserved to win, but to tell me you like to watch races like the one this weekend in Oakland is fun, I'm not buying it.
What threw most of us for a loop watching the race on the Tube, and probably moreso in the stands, was the red-flagged Lites/250 main. On the fifth lap they were forced to toss out the red flag when Kyle Cunningham went down and needed assistance on the track. A red flag tossed that deep into a main was a first to my recollection. The AMA rulebook states something to the effect that if the race goes over 3 laps, this is what happens. This was a very fair approach to a race that had run that many laps, even if we don’t remember seeing this sort of start in SX before. Read more below about the AMA rule on such a restart.
From the official AMA rulebook:
b. The race is stopped (with more than three laps and less than 90% of the total distance completed by the race leader, rounded down to the nearest whole number of laps / whether it be a Heat, Last Chance Qualifier or Main Event)
1. A red flag will be displayed to the riders. 2. The riders will return to the starting area and a re-start will take place as soon as possible. a. A minimum of 10 Minutes from the time that the red flag is displayed will be given to make repairs or adjustments. b. Repairs or adjustments may only be made in the starting area. 3. The starting order will be determined by each rider’s race position at the end of the lap preceding the stopping of the race. 4. Riders will be restarted from a staggered standing start in the starting area. a. Riders will be lined up in a staggered formation beginning on the starting straight at a start line located by the first turn, starting with the rider that was in the first position and continuing back towards the starting area. b. Riders not ready to take their position in line will be placed last. c. Once all riders are in position, the starter will display a green flag to signal the start. d. Any movement of the motorcycle before the display of the green flag will be considered a jumped start. Any rider deemed to have jumped the start will be penalized a minimum of two positions in the final results. e. Eligible riders who are unable to participate in the re-start due to a stalled motorcycle or continued repairs may join the race from the starting area at anytime during the race.