Cycle News

Continued from page 'T get them ready, so we pulled the old Hondas out of practice mode for this race. Our contract won't start now until January." Circuit City is a new sponsor of this year's Supercross Series. The electronics giant donated a new scoring tower, dubbed the ''Amp'd Mobile Scoring Tower powered by Circuit City." The tower sits in the middle of the arena and shows the top five riders on the track by number; it will be at every round. The importance that the teams put on this year's Canadian rounds was indicat- ed by the presence of the factory semirigs, which supported the Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha teams. Last year, most of the teams flew in parts and bikes for the riders and pretty much worked out of suitcases. This year, everyone wanted to get in on the advantage of riding the extra rounds. It was extremely cold, with snow blowing during the event. On Friday, during practice, it was in the lower 205, and with gusts of up to 25 mph, that put the wind-chill factor at nearly zero. The parking area for the factory teams was across the street from the arena, and most of the teams pushed their bikes and tool boxes across and pitted inside. under the stadium area, with the excep· tion of Team Yamaha and Team Kawasaki, which elected to stay in the parking area and push their bikes across the street to the arena for each race and practice session. Just like last year, the Dirt Wurx-prepared track was soft and rutted up con- word go in Toronto and fired a warning shot in his heat race by squeezing Carmichael out for the holeshot and then pulling away for a seemingly easy win. He then backed that up with another holeshot in the main event, and for two laps it looked as though he would run away and hide. However, a misplaced front wheel in one of the loose turns put him on the ground and left him in third place, while Carmichael enjoyed relatively fresh air up front. Luckily, Stewart didn't stall his engine and was quickly up and around Reed for second within a lap, but by then he was more than four sec- onds behind the fleeing Carmichael. For the next seven laps, Stewart consistently reeled in the Suzuki rider, running various lines as the track changed and deteriorated under the punishment of 20 four-strokes. With the laps winding down, Stewart moved to within striking distance, and he took the lead when he squared up a turn and found a better drive than Carmichael. However, Stewart pulled up on the next double, and Carmichael regained the lead. Finally, Stewart was through with games, and he made his final move on lap 17 of 20, when he jumped past Carmichael onto a tabletop. From there, Carmichael seemed to have nothing left for the Kawasaki rider. "Obviously, James was a lot faster than me tonight," Carmichael said. "He was riding good, and I knew he was going to pass me; he was going wherever he wanted to, and I knew it was just a matter of time. I've got to work on some things, and that's what we'll do; but it's a long season and there's no reason to jump to conclusions." Reed never really seemed to find his groove en route to his third-place finish, but he didn't seem too concerned after the race. siderably, which kept the grounds crews busy smoothing the ruts out of the jumps in between races. It was also very rocky, causing several riders, including Bubba Stewart, to go down. It was obvious that the teams were using the Canadian rounds as a tune-up for the opener at Anaheim in January. ''All our guys are all on the four-stroke, and these two races [Canadian rounds] gives us a couple of weeks to test things out before the opener," Team Yamaha's Keith McCarty said. When asked during the Continued on page 2' CYCLE NEWS • DECEMBER 14,2005 19

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