Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/689331
MOTOCROSS LUCAS OIL AMA PRO MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 3 / JUNE 4, 2016 LAKEWOOD, COLORADO / THUNDER VALLEY RACEWAY P64 with both Blake Baggett and James Stewart injured and absent from the Yoshimura Suzuki factory team, Bisceglia got a one-race deal to try out the factory bike in Colorado. "Ev- erything's been going really smooth," Bisceglia said after practice. "We got a couple days of testing. Practice went pretty decent for me and I'm just looking forward to this gate drop. It's something new and exciting for me so I'm really excited." He did really well. Having never raced the 450MX class at the professional level, the freshly turned 21-year-old went 10- 10 for eighth overall in Colorado. But with a weekend off coming up, both Baggett and Stewart hope to be back on the track at High Point in two weeks, which will likely leave Bisce- glia again without a bike. (He did not race at Glen Helen or Hangtown.) After a heroic second-moto charge in Colorado that saw Monster En- ergy Kawasaki's Eli Tomac go from outside the top 20 to second place, Tomac indicated he still has something in the tank if he can just get it addressed. "Right now I have something going on that I need to fix," Tomac said. "So we'll see what we can do to come back stronger." According to sources close to the situation, what Tomac needs to fix is almost entirely in regard to chas- sis setup on his KX450F. Over the years, we've heard similar stories from the Jake Weimer camp and Davi Millsaps camp in regard to the factory Kawasaki squad as we are now hearing from those close to the team in 2016: Monster Energy Kawa- saki is apparently unwilling to make wholesale changes to the chassis setup away from what was proven to work for Ryan Villopoto. After his first two years as a teammate to Villopoto, those close to Weimer indicated that the team had stopped giving him the time and opportunity to test and find chassis settings for himself. This was a major problem, as Villopoto steered with the rear wheel almost exclu- sively, but Weimer—and Millsaps and Tomac—tend to steer more with the front wheel. Those close to Weimer even once referred to the bike setup as a "chopper" because the rear end was so low and the front end was so stiff and so raked out. According to our sources, this is now a struggle for Tomac, who has been pushing to change the chassis settings whole- sale to a more front-end-turning type of setting, but his team is apparently not willing to go as far as he wants in that direction just yet. While it's true that Tomac had an amazing second moto in Colorado, and that he's been very fast in practice, and won a lot of heat races during supercross, ap- parently the problem is that all of his closest competitors are running bike setups that are designed better for front-wheel steering, and that means the lines that develop throughout the day tend to be developed by bikes that turn well on the front end. So, as the race day goes on and the lines get deeper, Tomac typically struggles more and more, as his motorcycle won't allow him to attack the same lines with the same sort of speed. But Tomac is obviously hopeful about making these changes as the series progresses. Only time will tell if they make the difference that he hopes. After the race, Ken Roczen said that he had "more tricks up his sleeves." He elaborated a bit on that. Evident- ly, he wasn't talking about the bike. "My bike is pretty dialed and I'm go- ing to keep it that way," Roczen said. "It's more just on myself; I have a good program going, and have other tricks up our sleeve, just meaning to get even stronger and better. We have a break…and can do different things, the same routine gets old, [so this gives us] a chance to do differ- ent things and stay sharp. I'm having fun." Briefly... Matt Bisceglia made his 450 MX debut aboard a Yoshimura Suzuki in Colorado.