You know, I’m nothing if not a giver. Sure, we’re now charging for the webcast, but if I see any of my loyal readers or listeners at the races, I’ll let you pet my new fur coat. I enjoy giving back to my fans, and so, I introduce a new weekly feature here on the blog. Cue the music, Paul.
(Musical Opener)
Okay folks, get ready for the Blogandt Noun of the Week! Each week, I’ll award the person, place or thing that’s gathering the most attention and scrutiny at the races (for those who spent elementary school English class drawing dirt bikes in their notebooks, a Noun is a Person, Place or Thing). So now, here we go, history in the making, the first-ever Blogandt Noun of the Week is….
The Yamaha YZ450F!
This bike may not vibrate much, but it is generating all of the buzz this week. Think of this odd situation: everyone who watched Phoenix live or on TV is theorizing about the bike holding
James Stewart back, especially since
Chad Reed, who rode that machine a year ago, seems to have gotten faster since leaving it behind.
But oh by the way, that bike has won BOTH races this year, and it has done it with two different riders.
When has one bike taken the first two rounds of racing with two different pilots at the controls? It last happened way back in 1991, when the Team Honda juggernaut of Jeff Stanton and Jean-Michel Bayle took rounds one and two on CR250Rs. Nineteen-ninety-freakin-one people. That's 17 seasons ago! And surely, this is the first time that two different riders on the same bike on two different teams pulled this off.
So is the YZ450F bad? The results say no (and recall the ’08 model YZ450F won the ’07 AMA Motocross Championship and the ’08 AMA Supercross Championship with two different riders, something that also hasn’t been done since, you guessed it, Bayle and Stanton in ’91 and ’92).
But with Chad Reed closing and holding with Stewart so far, it’s hard not to point at what has changed for the guys, which, is really almost everything. And which one seems to have made the change for the better?
Congrats to Yamaha, you’ve just made history. But, because, again, I love to give, I’m also going to put up a retroactive Blogandt Noun of the Week award from last week, just so we’ll sit all square with 52 nouns by the end of the year (and then, I’ll name the coveted Blogandt Noun of the Year!). Last week’s retroactively named Blogandt Noun of the Week is Josh Grant. Duh.
See you next week for our next winner! Cue the music!