Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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SUPERCROSS ROUND 17 / MAY 7, 2016 LAS VEGAS, NEVADA / SAM BOYD STADIUM P82 MONSTER ENERGY AMA SUPERCROSS SERIES When the skies rather unexpectedly opened up just at the end of the first officially timed 450cc A (factory guys) practice, it created quite a dilemma for race officials. The deluge made it absolutely necessary for practice to be halted altogether, but that meant that the 450cc B guys never got a timed session in, and allowing them to set a time after the track was completely ruined wouldn't really be fair. The deci- sion was made that they would have to decide the qualifiers based on their times in the first, untimed practice ses- sion. (It's called "untimed" but times are still recorded, they just aren't nor- mally meant to be used for qualifying.) The end result was a few pretty upset 450cc racers. Most racers will tell you that they prefer a track to either be in normal condi- tion or completely soupy and sloppy if it's going to rain, but not anywhere in the middle. There's a reason for this: If it rains really hard and soaks a track—any motocross or supercross track excluding sand tracks—and then stops raining so the track starts to dry out a little bit, it becomes much more treacherous and dangerous. Why? When the dirt is sloppy and soupy, rac- ers can more or less go wherever they need to go and the soupy dirt will sim- ply part for them as they go through. Once it starts to dry out, though, it gets tacky, and all of the crazy edges and ruts begin to form that go every which direction. This is why in the heat races many racers were still able to blitz through the whoops, but in the main events they all had to roll through them often with their feet off the pegs. There was a scary moment at the fin- ish of the Dave Coombs Sr. East/West Shootout in Las Vegas, as the treach- erous conditions caused Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki's Chris Alldredge to jump completely off the track over the finish-line jump as he got the white flag, narrowly miss- ing the scoring tower and hitting the ground like a ton of bricks. He had to be carted off the track and was com- plaining of major pain from his pelvis, so it's suspected that he either broke his pelvis, his hip (upper femur), or dislocated his femur. If any of these things turn out to be correct, he will be out likely for nearly all, or most, of the 2016 AMA MX Nationals. But it got even scarier a lap later, when Alldredge's teammate Tyler Bowers similarly got out of control on the face of the finish line jump as he got the checkered flag. He detached from his motorcycle and his KX250F hit Team Honda team manager Dan Bentley directly in the back of the head as Bentley was walking toward the manager's tower for the start of the 450cc main event. Bentley was down for a while, but ultimately (and miraculously) got up seemingly okay—although covered in mud. "It was so scary," Bowers said. "I let the bike go because I had no choice, but as I was falling, I saw the bike heading straight toward him. I thought I killed him or something. I'm so glad he's okay." Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha's Cooper Webb raced in Las Vegas with and injured left wrist, a fact that Webb attempted to deny the injury during Friday's press conference, but he was wearing a wrist brace out on the track. Simply put, it was a bit of ill-conceived gamesmanship, where Webb was hoping to not give his com- petition any sort of a mental edge by believing he was injured. It didn't fool anyone. But a source indicated the in- jury is bad enough that it's very likely to sit Webb out for at least the beginning of, if not the entire, Pro Motocross Championship. He reportedly broke his navicular bone in his wrist, which is notoriously for being a slow healer. Fox Racing brought out some special gear in Las Vegas for Red Bull KTM's Ryan Dungey and RCH Suzuki's Ken Roczen in honor of the release of the new Marvel superhero movie Captain America: Civil War, which was re- leased to theaters the Friday before the race. Dungey's gear had him looking like Captain America, while Roczen's was designed to look like Iron Man— Captain America's foe in the block- buster movie. Spoiler alert: Captain America won (at least in Las Vegas). Briefly... You might say that it rained a little bit.