Cycle News

VOL. 56 ISSUE 13 APRIL 2, 2019 P119 ing exactly zero racers who were using true performance-enhancing drugs (like EPO, steroids or HGH). This "pointing out" rule is just as potentially destructive as the current drug-testing rules are (and, from what I understand, at least with the drug-testing idiocy, Feld and the AMA are working on a solution). Remember a couple of seasons ago when Martin Davalos raced a 450 full-time outdoors and scored a bunch of podium finishes? He had fantastic speed late in the series. He tried to get a 450cc ride. There weren't any. He's still racing 250s. Why do this to these racers at all? Why force them out of the class just by scoring an arbitrary number of points over an arbitrary number of years? How does this help anything whatsoever? The logic back when Todd Jen- dro was in charge at the promoter (Feld/Live Nation/Clear Channel) was that he wanted to make the 450cc field deeper and more competitive by forcing top talent out of the 250cc class. How's that working out? The field is no deeper, and no more competitive because there is essentially the same number of rides available today as there were then. The best way to make sure the 450cc field is deep is to do everything we can to make sure as many 450cc racers as possible finish the series. With Chad Reed and Justin Brayton just exiting the championship after their massive crash in Seattle, we are now left with seven racers—Cooper Webb, Marvin Musquin, Eli Tomac, Ken Roczen, Blake Baggett, Dean Wilson and Justin Bogle—after 12 rounds, who may complete all 17 rounds. That's it. And we still have five races left. We need to keep top racers on the track as long as they want to be, and can be. That's how you build a fan base. It's true that the 250cc class is meant to be an introduction to supercross racing, and ulti- mately a building block into the 450cc class, but if you can win without beating talent like Martin Davalos, Zach Osborne (over the last few years), Christian Craig, Jimmy Decotis, Jeremy and Alex Martin, etc., then who are you really beating anyway? If every racer who could point out of the 250cc class actually did, there'd be nobody left in the class for the young guys to learn from. If one guy starts winning 250cc titles all the time and never moves up to the 450cc class (unlikely, since 450cc guys get paid way more and 450cc teams would want that guy), that could be a problem. So I would support a rule to force people out of the class after they win a maximum of two 250cc SX titles (not consecutively, and perhaps even with a caveat af- ter a certain number of years with- out success in the 450cc class, they can opt to move back down again), but that's all we need. "But Steve, why don't we just make the 250s a National Cham- pionship like the 450cc class?" you might ask. Because, if we do that, we es- sentially cut the number of avail- able 250cc rides in half. All these 250cc teams have four-to-five guys (so they can have two guys on each coast, plus one insurance policy against having too many in- jured racers). Those teams would end up paying more to their racers (closer to 450cc salaries), and there'd be two or three riders on each team just like in the 450cc class today. And the young talent wouldn't even get a shot most of the time because the team slots would be filled by proven talent. Safe bets. And with the amount of money it takes to make a 250cc engine competitive, racing as a privateer (and actually competing) with the Pro Circuit, Star Racing, Geico, JGR, Husqvarna and KTM teams would be impossible. I can see it now: After a few years of very few new, young rac- ers making their way into super- cross, someone would have a bright idea. "Hey, we should add regional championships ('regional' to save on travel expenses), where younger racers can learn the ropes of supercross racing without going broke trying to com- pete with the factories." Round and round we go. We need to do away with the "point- ing out" rule, but leave the rest just as it is. CN

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