A2: View From The Couch

A look at the racing from the angle of the home viewer.

By: Michael Biddle

Photos By: Ray Archer

The second stop at Anaheim, and third round of Monster Energy Supercross was a battle of technique against the track, and making clean passes. The Anaheim 2 track was extremely slick and with many of the turns being completely flat, it was extremely difficult to maintain momentum for a quick exit from the turn and enter into the rhythm section clean. The left turn back onto the start was extremely technical. It was terribly slick on the exit, seemed a bit narrow, and almost no bowl in the turn. Many of the jumps themselves appeared to be slightly more technical this week, than we had seen in previous rounds. Several of the landings in the rhythm lanes looked to be a bit steep, the triple coming out of the over-under looked 5-10 feet longer than the typical supercross triple, and the landing on the over-under required precision timing.

250

In the 250 class, Cooper Webb is becoming a dangerous threat to run away with this championship. He crossed the holeshot line in 16^th, completed the first lap around 13^th, and came back to pass Bowers on the last lap and take the win. Webb, as well as the rest of the field now know he has the speed and aggression to come through the pack and dominate. Cooper Webb is my pick now for this 250 west title.

Tyler Bowers looked outstanding in his heat race. After the heat races, Emig commented that the races had not gotten very aggressive and everyone seemed to “play nice”. I saw aggression in Tyler Bowers and I knew he would be a threat to win tonight if he could get a start. He didn’t actually get the best start but he made passes and kept moving forward until he inherited the lead from Jessy Nelson who found out just how precise you needed to be on the over-under jump when he landed a little short and appeared to be thrown off balance and went off into the tuff blocks.

Cooper snatched Bowers’ thrill of victory at the last moment.

The corner where Webb made the move on Bowers was tough. It was a flat 180° right hand turn, with a triple following. Racers had to hit their line perfectly in order to accelerate out and hit the triple, but not too hard because it was also slick coming out of the turn. In the post-race interview, Bowers assessed the situation perfectly. He could protect the inside from Webb but would likely have had to double the triple, or he could take the main racing line, try to execute it perfectly, and hope Webb was not close enough to make a move. Webb dove to the inside on Bowers, there was contact, and Bowers went off the track while Webb went on to take the win after starting as far back as 16^th.

Now Cooper Webb takes the points lead and Bowers is close in second. I see this being a Webb, Bowers, and sometimes Nelson battle through the rest of this supercross season.

450

First, Credit to Mike Alessi for getting a good start in his heat race, and actually passing into the lead and taking his first heat race win of year. In his post-race TV interview, he was surprisingly realistic about his chances in the main event, saying that he was just not quite at the level to compete for wins.

In the 450 Main event, the holeshot line credited Jimmy Albertson with the holeshot, which you would not have known if you were not paying attention since he promptly jumped off the track in the first rhythm section and Ralph and Jeff made no mention of it.

Albertson pulled the holie and that’s worth noting.

Everyone was anticipating that would be Barcia’s breakthrough race since he put up the fastest lap in timed qualifying earlier in the day. Unfortunately for Barcia, he has yet to figure out the starts on his new JGR Yamaha. He crossed the holeshot line in 16^th, but amazingly was inside the top ten by the end of the first lap. Barcia kept working forward and eventually finished a distant 4^th. A Whole lot of credit should go to Barcia for his ride.

Reed and Canard incident as it looked on TV:

On lap four, Dungey passed Reed in the same corner by hugging the inside and exiting the corner the quickest. Reed could feel the heat from Trey Canard and in an effort to learn from the pass that Dungey put on him, he moved to the inside to protect the line. It looked like he did not exit the previous corner very cleanly, was short on the double, then immediately turned left to the inside of the turn. Canard was coming around the outside with a lot more momentum and committed to the double which he would have cleared cleanly if Reed had not been there.

Based on what we could see on TV, Reed did not keep his line and Canard, who was committed to the jump, had no way of avoiding Reed.

I’m not sure it was appropriate to throw a black flag on Reed but the move he put on Canard was definitely over-the-top and worthy of some sort of penalty.

I’m not sure if the black flag has a place in supercross. The racing can be so close, that I could easily see confusion occurring if the wrong rider sees it and pulls off.