Damned if you do and damned if you don’t !
Friday 21 February: Running the Motocross Nationals in the peak of Summer and you are going to get some dust. Put on too much water and you have a bog – it’s always a fine line.
The New Zealand Motocross Nationals is run by the four
Clubs, by Committees who are all volunteers. Bryan Davidson, as the MNZ
Motocross Commissioner might call the ‘shots’ but it’s the Clubs that host the
events. Remember too that Bryan is also a volunteer.
Too much water, as the Pukekohe MCC discovered, when
the ‘somebody’ opened the waterline that flooded the straightaway from the
holeshot corner two years ago.
Michael Phillips will never forget that as he endo’d in a water hidden
rut.
No water and you get dust, as was a problem at
Timaru’s Round 1 of the Nationals.
I wasn’t at that Round 1 but followed it via the
live-timing and the odd phone call.
Not an easy task as internet from that remote location is sketchy at
best.
Posting updates on Facebook generated over 9,000
views - from Woodville there was 12,046 at last count from some 35
updates.
At Timaru there was a big stoppage after Round 1 and
it wasn’t ‘till I was able to make phone contact that I found out that they had
been watering the track for two hours – the dust was just that bad. Why, because their pump had broken down
on the Wednesday and the hadn’t been able to get enough water on. It’s a long track with an average 125
lap time of 2min 16secs.
Apart from the race reports that ‘alluded’ to the
dust problem nobody has really spoken out about it. I put that reasoning down to the fact that it’s all work by
volunteers. Criticise them and ‘you
shoot yourself in the foot!’
Andy McGechan’s piece in the NZ Herald on 09 February
alluded to the dust. When writing
about Cody Cooper he said; "He also had to again duck rocks and survive the
dusty and demanding ….”. In that
same piece he quotes Coops; "I shot off the track at one stage, where I
couldn’t see where I was going in the blinding dust and that cost me a bit
…”
Now that’s bold stuff
from Andy who also works for MNZ.
This is the MX1 Race 1 holeshot courtesy of Ryan
Burrows - that’s Michael Phillips on the deck.
Michael DNF'd finished the day 0-6-8 for 11th overall. An average of 7th in Race 1 might have seen
him in 8th place overall.
Three years ago MNZ asked Tony Cooksley to be Track
Safety Inspector. That brought
about some changes that year especially to the Supercross tracks at Tokoroa and
Hamilton. So where is/was one now?
It’s since become very clear that it was unsafe.
Rider’s recourse was Tony Rees as the Rider’s
Representative and quite a few riders spoke to him but as Tony said; "They
could see for themselves they had a big problem and were probably going to fix
it anyway.”
Having since spoken to many that were there, on a
track that has soo many jumps, it was not only unsafe, it was nothing short of
dangerous. Several that I spoke to
had collided with banks that they could not even see.
All very well to raise it now but where to from here?
The PukeMX track at Harrisville has an irrigation
system and at this time of year it usually starts off muddy/tacky having been
ripped but by the mid afternoon it’s hardpack with black tyre marks and some
dust where the sprinklers are held up by the wind - as it was at last Sunday’s
Club Day.
Track Manager for Harrisville is Tony Cooksley; "I
spent 14 hours last week getting this track prep’d and a few grizzle about a couple of
puddles. Hey, it’s motocross -
Goudenz Gisler would say "If you want an easy sport, take up golf.”
Tony, like all the others, is a volunteer. He continues; "At Harrisville it
takes 36 hours to fill the dam but only 8 to empty it. Getting all that right is not that
easy. The sun and the wind, can and
does, dry it out quickly but as long as it’s damp underneath you’re more than half-way
there. Hopefully we will also get rain in the next three weeks before our Round
3.”
Tokoroa and Taupo both use water-trucks so all of the
next three rounds should be okay.
In closing, how bad was it at Timaru? Campbell Bailey is a Top10 MX1
rider. This is his race
report - I checked again to see if
I could repeat it verbatim.
Alan H. (alan@h-hmedia.com)