Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 17, 2013 Tomac was a contender in the West 250 Championship. The Holeshot Championship wasn't much more than a consolation prize, though, and Tomac was a dominant force all summer on his way to his first-ever AMA National Championship. "I think, in the long run, it was a way better decision to stay in the 250 class," Tomac says. "And now I have the 250 championship in the bag. You just learn more and more every year and there's no reason to rush into the premier class when you're 20 years old. I feel like you can race another eight or 10 years, or however long you want to go, so I'm going to have plenty of time in that next class. I'm glad I didn't rush it." >>TESTING PROWESS "I got one in Tennessee!" Tomac says. "So, I didn't totally get skunked out." However, it's not that Tomac isn't good at starts. He definitely is. He couldn't elaborate too much, but he says the reason he only got one holeshot is because he set something on his bike up to be better during the races, but not quite as good on the starts. "I mean, I'd obviously like to be up there, but there's a lot more to it," Tomac says. "All I can say is I run my bike quite a bit different than most of my teammates, so I think it actually hurts me on starts." Very few racers are naturals at testing. When racers graduate from the amateurs to the pros for a top team like GEICO Honda, they show up for testing with way more options than they ever had as an amateur. "Even as of a couple of years ago, the team would make a huge change and ask, 'Which one is better?' and I'm like, 'I don't know. They feel the same,'" Tomac says. Understanding that the team technicians have decades of combined experience, when they make wholesale changes and their racer can't tell the difference, it can create skepticism P147 on the team that the racer hasn't any idea what's going on with the bike underneath him. And when the racer starts to figure it out and becomes more sensitive to setup, it can take some time for the team to learn to trust his judgment. During the 2013 Supercross Series, there was a period of time when Tomac looked like a Novice in the whoops. His setup was terrible, and sources close to the situation indicated that the team was skeptical of Tomac's input. His setup issues may have been a primary cause of his huge crash in the whoops at the Oakland Supercross, which ultimately cost him his championship defense. "Well, I think there are certain tracks that weren't exactly setup for our bike," Tomac says. "I'll admit it, too, that I struggled in bigger whoops. I think that was one weak spot in my Supercross Lites racing. As the whoops got really big and really spaced out, that's where my setup struggled. But when it got really hard packed and kind of edgy and funky, that's where I would do work on guys. Like, in Las Vegas, I was always really fast on a 250. I don't know, maybe my bike is a little bit softer than other guys." You could literally see him struggle in the whoops with the naked eye. You didn't need a stopwatch or even to be an expert at Supercross. You could just see it. "It's not like I'm not that bad of a rider," Tomac says. "It's not like

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