MOTOCROSS
RED BULL STRAIGHT RHYTHM
OCTOBER 21, 2017
FAIRPLEX / POMONA, CALIFORNIA
P74
Shane McElrath
won the Lites class
for the second
year in a row
after battling his
teammate Sean
Cantrell.
Mac would take the win, but in
hindsight, it should've been obvi-
ous who the favorite really was:
Gared Steinke has gathered a
cult following over the last few
years. Steinke—or "Stank Dog"
as he's fondly known—would
be right at home in the Ameri-
can motocross-racing scene of
the 1970s through the 1990s.
He runs his hair long, one of
the sweetest mustaches in MX
history, and he's been racing
two-strokes against modern four-
strokes for years now at the top
level of the sport.
He was really the only guy
in the field, with the possible
exception of Ronnie Mac, who
didn't have to adjust to rac-
ing a two-stroke. Knowing that
the jumps, because it was easy
to over-jump one of the quads
down there, as crazy as that
sounds," McElrath said. "On a
supercross track, you're starting
from nothing out of a corner [in
terms of speed], so that was one
of the toughest things. I'll keep
doing this event as long as they
have it. It's a ton of fun."
TWO-STROKE
Officially titled the Ken Roczen
Two-Stroke Shootout, the Two-
Stroke class at this year's Red
Bull Straight Rhythm was a fan-
favorite. Coming into the event,
fans and pundits were fighting
over whether Chad Reed, Ryan
Villopoto, Mike Brown or even
fictional fan-favorite Ronnie
"Yeah, he's a scrub-kid!"
McElrath said. "We go out to
the practice tracks, and he
gets some good pictures, but
on these out here, they're so
tall, and I feel like I'm a decent
scrubber, but with Sean, I could
always see his front wheel there,
and that's why it was so nerve-
racking. I was just in the air
going, 'Go, Shane, go! Get your
wheels on the ground and go!'"
In the final race, McElrath
capitalized on a minor mistake
from Cantrell and took the win
with about a second to spare.
"This track's tough, because
we have the speed-checks to
break up our speed, but we also
had to do some check-ups in the
rhythms just to make some of
