Ho Hum. Another JGR Josh Grant runaway season. At least we have the outdoors to look forward to.

(Thanks for the joke, Kevin Kelly).

My former webcast sound engineer, Alan Selk, is a huge Motorsports guy. Yes, he’s got a degree and all of this professional experience in the audio field, but racing is his passion—especially the high-end stuff like sports car racing, Formula 1 and MotoGP. Sometimes we’ll have good shows, sometimes we’ll have bad ones, but Alan always sticks with a simple mantra: Good racing solves all problems.
    Indeed. A day ago I was lamenting losing the webcast, considering career options that were all over the map, and trying to keep my hopes up in the face of a series that was supposed to shape up as a runaway on the track, with the dark skies of a faltering economy overhead. Talk about gloom!
    But then we had a crazy night, and (most) all is well again. Suddenly supercross is wild and unpredictable, and I’m more pumped for Phoenix than I was for Anaheim!
    This weekend’s “Actually Said It Before The Race” Award goes to DMXS Radio’s David Izer. He accurately predicted every thing that would happen in the main event the day before the race! Amazing!!!
    Well, not quite. But at dinner with David (and his lovely wife Donna) on Friday night, David couldn’t stop talking about how fast an aggressive Josh Grant looked during press day. Izer said Stewart looked the fastest, but he saw Grant as second best. At one point, Stewart ran Reed up high in a corner and JG swooped in and followed James through!
    Grant kept making me a believer in practice, posting the fourth-fastest time overall. But still, speed has never been an issue for Josh Grant. I remember how fast he was going at the Atlanta Lites East opener last year, and I told everyone I could find that he was going to win that night, and he ended up in a first turn crash, and later had an infamous run-in with Villopoto coming through. In fact, I told Izer, when it was time to make my Moto X Dream Fantasy Team picks, that Josh Grant was bordering on a spot on my “do not pick” list, because he is too often fast in practice and then nowhere to be found in the final results.
    Yes, Chad and James crashed into each other in the main, but give JG credit for having built a massive lead over the “rest,” so big that even that tuff block cover couldn’t cost him the win.
    Honestly, in the annals of supercross history, has their ever been a bigger upset win? Maybe Ricky Ryan’s lone privateer supercross win at Daytona in ’87, but that was in the mud. This was the real deal.
    And now James Stewart has been dealt a major points defecit to make up, and Chad Reed is possibly the worst rider to have to mount a comeback on, because he is as consistent as anyone to ever come down the supercross assembly line. In 2002, Ricky Carmichael crashed out of Anaheim 1, but the riders who were going fast at the beginning of that season, Travis Pastrana, Mike LaRocco and David Vuillemin, all crashed and injured themselves out of the chase, and Ricky was in the points lead before long.
 Chad’s not going to give back points in bunches.
So we still don’t have peace in the middle east, we haven’t solved economic turmoil and we haven’t figured out a way to save the planet just yet. And we still don't have a webcast. But after the action we saw on Saturday, I’m in a better mood, at least.

The first rule is Anaheim 1 is…..

….you don’t talk about Anaheim 1. This has been a low-hyped year for racing, and even I have had a tough time gearing up like normal for this 2009 season. Why is that? We’ve got a great story built around James Stewart switching to Chad Reed’s old team, and Chad Reed moving to Suzuki and testing and riding with Ricky Carmichael. And finally, Ryan Villopoto is on a 450. Then there’s the usual pack of other guys looking to build something. Can anyone accurately predict where the likes of Windham, Short, Ferry, Millsaps, Hill, Tedesco, Hepler, Grant, Wey and Alessi are going to fit in? And in the Lites class we the new season of the Dungey and Lawrence soap opera, with a healthy Trey Canard thrown into the mix. You don’t think sparks are going to fly there?
    So why don’t we have the hype we usually do at Anaheim? I recall last year wasn’t that big of a deal either, but Reed and Stewart were still racing for the same teams as they were in 2007, and Ricky Carmichael was out for the first time. So I understand a little less pomp and circumstance for 2008. But 2009?
    I think I know what the problem is. To get hyped up about this season, to talk about tonight’s race, you must dig into the facts, and the problem is, what you learn isn’t always exciting. The reality, the facts, seem to indicate that James Stewart can mop it up this year, and the more you talk and poke and look around and ask, the more clear that fact becomes. And just like last year, even if you like Bubba, it’s hard to get excited about a one-man show.
      Yesterday the riders got a chance to ride the track for press day. I didn’t get to see it because I was busy in meetings and talking to people and such. At one point, I started talking to Jeff Emig, and Fro was telling me how pumped he was for the season. He thinks Reedy is ready, and the Kawasaki bikes are good so Villopoto should be a contender. Talking to Fro, I started getting pumped.
But then I asked some people who watched practice what they saw, and all I heard was that Bubba looked unreal fast. And that’s the problem: Don’t dig too deep, because this is what you’re likely to hear.
The other problem when talking of 2009: the economy sucks. Normally when you ask how a team is coming together during the off-season, you hear optimism. Someone is hauling. Someone is working really hard. Someone is flying on the test track. The bikes are sick and awesome and way, way better than last year. With the world the way it is right now, though, you’re hearing more about teams just trying to survive. And you don’t want to dig too deep for info, because you’re afraid the news is going to be bad.
Still, it’s the season-opener, and once you roll up to Angel Stadium and see all the teams and the rigs and the riders, it’s hard not to get pumped. A week ago, I had all of these visions running through my head about this blog, and how I was going to come storming out of the gates on January 1 with all kinds of fresh new stuff. I wanted to bring this blog to where I always wanted it to be, but never could quite get to—I wanted this to be the place to be.
But then all of a sudden, I didn’t want to talk about Anaheim 1, again. A week ago our Supercross Live! Webcast got shut down. I’m heartbroken. As I like to say, doing that show wasn’t even a dream come true, because even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t think I’d get to do something like this. Anyway, since the entire world has been making cutbacks, I was afraid something like this would happen. And then, it did.
You know what it feels like? It feels like being in a great relationship with a girl, and you come home one day and you catch her with another guy. Bam, just like that, it’s over.
I’m here in Anaheim to do some other things under the new Supercross Race Day Live! Format. And some of the stuff is cool. Jim and I did some interviews and videos you can watch on the site. We did a show in the pits that the fans really seemed to enjoy. And tonight starting at 7 p.m. PST, I’ll host a live blog on supercrossonline.com. And it’s good to be here and see so many of my friends. And Reed just upended Stewart to put in the fastest lap of the second practice. When Reedy has come into Anaheim 1 ready and healthy, he has won it a bunch of times. RV looks awesome. The Lites class features not just Lawrence versus Dungey with Canard in the mix, but two very game KTM riders in Sipes and Brayton, and PC’s Jake Weimer, who looks so determined that he might have just stared a hole through the center field wall.
But tonight, hen the gate drops tonight, I’ll be on, but our webcast won’t be. It’s like I have to go to the prom and see the old girl with the new guy.
I know a lot of people want someone to blame. But there really isn’t anyone. Everyone at every company around the world has had to make cutbacks, and this just happens to be one of them. That’s reality. And that’s what makes it hard to get as revved up for this Anaheim 1 as others.

Anyway, check out www.supercrossonline.com tonight at 7 pm PST. I’ll be hosting a live chat to keep you on top of what’s happening. Turn on the live Speed Coverage and take a gander at what I have to add—and feel free to drop in your own questions and comments. Just go easy on the complaints that the webcast is gone. I don’t need the reminder.

The top motocross riders all know it’s a good idea to surround themselves with positive people. The concept really took off as Jeremy McGrath built a posse, and then Ricky Carmichael built a camp so strong that it’s still building numbers now, a full year after RC hung up the leathers. (Camp Carmichael has imported so many jobs into Florida now that RC really should be getting tax breaks. They’ve got their own factory down there now).

Surrounding yourself with positive people is an easy concept to understand. Motocross is hard, but the more people you have around you making it fun and easy, the better it is. Racing is mental, and when you hear nothing but good news, your mental state is going to be good. Laugh at man friends all you want. Laugh with them, though, and you will know success (I guess).

Point here is that good news breeds more good news, and bad news breeds more bad. This recession that we’re dealing with now is proof positive, or in this case, proof negative. The more bad stuff you hear, the more worried you get, the less you buy and the more you save, and when you save and don’t spend, companies don’t make money, and hence the recession gets deeper and the news gets bleaker and everyone spends less, until eventually companies are losing money and have to let workers go, which means people really do have less money to spend, which means companies lose more money, which means….

I think you get it. Sounds great!

Unfortunately, the deal works in the opposite direction, too. Spend too much and you set standards too high. Eventually, unrealistic expectations are needed to support the business model, and that scenario is almost guaranteed to fail. You can keep making money on homes and loans if you keep pushing people to borrow more, but eventually that money isn’t going to get paid back, and everyone is in big trouble. At the moment, it sounds like the entire U.S. financial system needs to go on a purging process. First comes recovery, and then comes learning to live on diminished expectations. Folks won’t be so keen to spend beyond their means any longer.

Our sport mimics the scenario. First, the doom and gloom stories build on each other, for sure. Secondly the market was perhaps propped up by unrealistic expectations. Take a look at how money was being made and spent in this game for the last few years and you’ll see a model that had to change.

I’d love to impress people at cocktail parties and explain how motocross draws high-minded folks like college professors, business CEOs and acclaimed scientists and doctors. But in reality, the big money in our sport comes from the construction industry. It always seems like the biggest rigs in the amateur pits belong to the guy “whose dad is a super rich contractor.”

Well, new homes aren’t making money like they used to. And now, new motocross bikes aren’t, either.

But that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to the races. At the GNCC banquet two weekends ago, I heard a lot of people talking about freshening up last year’s bike and last year’s gear and running it again for 2009. A bunch of my friends who ride and race around here say the same. Maybe they’ll race a few more local events to cut back on the big travel bills. Maybe they’ll make do without the latest cool stuff. But they’ll still do what they love. Could this be the natural purging process for our sport? Does anyone really wring a new 450 dirt bike out so hard that it’s toast after one season? The new fuel-injected machines are sweet, but when times are tough, it may be easier to keep on carrying a jet kit and run the ’08 again. And maybe, in this credit market, it still isn’t reasonable for every “my son is going to be the next Ryan Villopoto” family to take out a second mortgage on a giant motorhome.

You don’t really need a motorhome to race, and you don’t really need a 2009 bike, either.

By spending less to race, though, less money is going to pump through the veins of the industry. And that means you’ll hear more bad news, and maybe that will breed more trouble. Maybe each year’s hot free-agent factory rider just can’t expect his salary to double its massive self again every three years anymore. Perhaps all of the rider salaries need to run through a purging process. And this is it.

Maybe this whole process just brings us back to center. That news wouldn’t be all bad, really.

Months of waiting and anticipation have finally come to an end. We have an answer and an idea of what the future will now hold, and like it or not, change has come.

David Knight has officially signed with BMW to race their new G450X.

That means Knight’s tour of duty here in the U.S. GNCC Tour is over. This is the end of an off-road era with a lot of parallels to the current motocross and supercross scene.

When I first moved to Morgantown hoping to work for Racer X, the magazine crew said the Racer Productions side of the building needed help. I jumped in on the GNCC Series just to make sure I had a job, and soon I was taking photos, running the website, writing stories for Cycle News and things like that.

The first weekend after I moved here, I packed my old Isuzu Trooper up and caught the GNCC in Millfield, Ohio. DC told me to call Chris Jonnum at Cycle News (CJ is now the head man over at Road Racer X) and tell him I would be sending a story. Of course, I didn’t really know if I was capable of covering the event, but hey, I needed work. Better yet, about a half hour into the race, I was hooked. The racing was unreal! Dudes passed back and forth, they used strategy and pit stops, and in the end Rodney Smith beat Fred Andrews and Jason Raines by like three seconds. It was one of the best races I had ever seen.

That’s the way those races went for years. I was convinced that the GNCC format was perfect for good racing. Races were too long for someone to just lead all day, so riders would wait, hang out, use strategy, and pass each other back and forth. It was cool.

But then Juha Salminen showed up. That ruined the good racing. Juha was so darned good that he actually could lead all day. He was so smooth, he hardly used any energy, so he could pin it off of the start and still hold the pack off in the third hour. By the time he was done here in 2006, people were calling Juha the GOAT off-road. He was surely the Ricky Carmichael of the woods.

Juha left on top, winning two GNCC Titles for KTM and then moving back to Europe. Knight came in to replace him for the 2007 season. Like James Stewart to Carmichael, Knight was the obvious heir apparent to Juha’s kingdom. Like Stewart, Knight found it really, really hard to match that standard. For years, people wondered if James was better than Ricky. When they finally raced, Ricky kept winning championships. Stewart tried hard, but in the end, Ricky emerged clearly as the GOAT .


Knight and Juha never really faced off. They raced at a GNCC in Ohio in October ’06, but both struggled testing new bikes for 2007, so it didn’t really prove anything. They also met at a few odd events, like the Erzburg Rodeo that you see on the Nitro Circus videos. There, Knight’s long legs gave him an advantage. This summer Knight raced a World Enduro Event in Wales. Juha won that one, but Knight hadn’t raced an Enduro in two years while Juha had been campaigning them full-time. Head to head for a full season, both in their prime? Never happened.

The only way Knight could compete with the legend of Juha was to race against the ghost of Juha. He did a pretty good job. Knight has enough speed to check out on the GNCC pack and turn the races into three-hour snoozers, just like Juha did, or just like Ricky and James did to a 30-minute plus two moto.

The Nationals have never been dominated the way they have been dominated by RC and Bubba. The GNCCs have never been dominated the way they were by Salminen and Knight.

But since Juha and Knighter never really got a chance to race, the question I get asked most is “So, who is better, Juha or Knight?”

For the answer, you can really look to RC and Bubba for guidance. James Stewart can do incredible things on a motorcycle. His talent and skills are off the charts, next level and untouchable. On his best day, no one can stop him, and we’ve seen that proven countless times.

Knight is the same way. His size leads many to think he’s a brute, but in reality he’s more technically precise and skilled than his competition. If size alone made you fast, factories would be looking for the next Shaq. Knight is amazing because he couples incredible skills with his size, so you’ve got a freak of nature in the motorcycle sense—kind of like Randy Moss coming into the NFL with speed, balance and height all in the same package. There’s a reason Travis Pastrana calls Knight “the behemoth ballerina.”

Every once in awhile Stewart goes out and does something that makes you shake your head, because you know he’s the only one on earth that can make a 450cc motorcycle do it. Knight does the same in the woods.

But they don’t hand out championships for dropped jaws. Carmichael may not have invented the scrub, but you can’t argue his win record. Or his loss record. Ricky didn’t just win races, he didn’t lose them. He didn’t get hurt. Didn’t crash out. Didn’t break his bike. Didn’t get tired. Didn’t fall in the first turn. Didn’t even get bad starts. Ricky was a machine that could avoid the pitfalls that plague every racer in every racing sport, from beginner to pro.

Juha is the machine of off-road. His level of preparedness extended beyond just training hard. He lived right next to the KTM shop in Ohio, so he was always involved in every last detail of prep. He never came to a race and put himself in a bad situation. Even when he was brand new to the series, he rode with an air of experience. A lot of bad situations can arise in three hours, but Juha never got in them. Here’s a crazy fact: Two weeks ago,  Salminen got married. He was engaged when he lived here, but he never had his fiancé come and visit. Juha said racing was his job, and he needed to take care of his job first.

In contrast, Knight commuted back and forth between the Isle of Man and here. He tried different bikes in different races. He raced EnduroCrosses and the Erzburg race and local races back home between GNCCs. Once, he raced an EnduroCross in Denver on a Saturday and a GNCC in North Carolina on Sunday. Knight has fun with what he does, and with his talent and skills, he should. You’re only good once, so you might as well take advantage.

But occasionally he made mistakes. Bad starts, mis-reading pit boards, whatever, the big man made a few errors, and he threw away a couple of wins.  Some of it was just bad luck. But Juha never had bad luck. Neither did RC. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Was Knight ever not the fastest guy in the race? Not really. But Stewart had always been fast, too. Mistakes can bite you.

So, like Stewart and Carmichael, I’ll take the evidence I saw from the last four years and sum up Juha versus Knighter like this: On their best day, Knight wins. But over the championship long haul, I’ll put my money on Juha.

Now they’ll both be racing in Europe next year. Sounds like the good racing is about to return to the GNCCs!