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/1078866
SUPERCROSS ROUND 5 / FEBRUARY 3, 2019 PETCO PARK / SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA P52 MONSTER ENERGY AMA SUPERCROSS Tomac amassed a 13-second cushion at one point and needed it when he got hung up on a Tuff Block then got held up by a fallen rider and took the win 4.1 seconds ahead of Marvin Musquin, and then Ken Roczen. And in the 250SX class, Adam Cianciarulo took his third win in the opening five races, and this win coincided with the worst races of the year for former points leader Colt Nichols (10th on the night) and title contender Dylan Ferran- dis (seventh after last-lap DNF), which gave Cianciarulo a sudden and sizeable points lead of eight points over Shane McElrath, with Nichols and Ferrandis now sitting third and fourth, respectively, as the 250SX Western Regional Su- percross Series heads into its first break of the year. This will be an exceptionally long break for both Nichols and Ferrandis. good holeshot, but sure enough threw it away in the second turn." MMM, FRIED CLUTCH During both main events in the mud on the floor of Petco Park, you could smell the aroma of fried clutches. It bit quite a few racers, and a couple of the most notable among them were Dylan Ferrandis, whose clutch gave up on the final lap of the 250SX main event, and Justin Barcia, whose clutch gave up early in the 450SX main event. One interesting point was brought up after the race by Chad Reed's mechanic Ben Schiermeyer: Reed runs a manual clutch on his RM-Z450 that has a spin adjuster on it so he can manage the play in his clutch. When properly managed, he can make sure the clutch isn't being worn too badly from the cockpit. But most of the 450SX class racers today run a hydraulic clutch, which automatically adjusts. That means the racers can manage the clutch wear only by how much they use the clutch. In the post-race press confer- ence, Adam Cianciarulo (who has ridden with Ken Roczen for years) remarked about Roczen's clutch use: "Kenny [Roczen], he doesn't remem- ber the last time he smoked a clutch. That thing's been in the bike since like 2016." Roczen responded, "No, I really don't [use it much]," Roczen said. "I usually ride like three weeks with the same clutch. I'm not really a big 'clutch' guy." WET & WILD Because of the rain, practice and qualifying were postponed until almost 5 p.m., and one session determined the qualifying order. But the track would've been better for racing if it had kept raining throughout the night. Instead, it stopped after the heat races, which allowed the dirt to start to gum up and made the racing much more treacherous than Briefly... Eli Tomac looked like a mud-riding veteran en route to his first supercross win of 2019.