Motocross Performance Magazine Canadian Motocross news leader
While going through Frank Hoppen’s incredible photos from last weekend’s Indianapolis SX, I decided to do something a little different and try to narrow my search down to my three favourite. At first I picked ten photos out of his 600 plus that he sent us, after that I got it down to five, and then after staring at them for 30 minutes I managed to pick three. So after my exhaustive search, here are my three favourites from Indy.
Lucas Oil Stadium
While I’ve been very fortunate over the years to visit numerous stadiums in the Monster Energy AMA SX Series, I have to say the Lucas Oil Stadium is one of the nicest buildings on tour. Although the floor area isn’t that large (it’s only slightly bigger than a football field), the building itself and its design is brilliant. With large windows at each end, it really allows the daylight to come in during the day, which helps to make the inside feel more spacious than it really is.
The outside of the stadium is also very cool with its brick exterior. From a distance it looks like an old school stadium, yet up close it looks very modern. With downtown Indy being a very vibrant and restored area with a lot of hip restaurants and bars, it really is a fun town in which to spend the weekend. Finally, the drive from the Toronto area to Indianapolis is less than nine hours so overall it’s a pretty great supercross to go to watch.
Driving It In
The start at Indy was very unique, in my opinion. While it was a little on the short side, the track designers did an awesome job of running the first turn through the middle of the massive finish line double jump. The fact that the riders had the second jump of the finish line combo as a backstop, it allowed them to carry a lot more speed into the turn than they normally would’ve if it was a flat turn. This changed the entire dynamic of the start as riders who were lined up on the outside could brake late, head for the outside berm and still get a good start.
This is a photo of the main event start, and as you can see Andrew Short once again is grabbing the holeshot. Short has been on fire lately with his starts and has grabbed the last two. Unfortunately for him they don’t last long, but a holeshot is a holeshot after all. It’s interesting to note that all the riders in this photo all lined up on the outside half of the starting gate, some by choice and some because of their poor qualifying effort. Also, as you can see, there isn’t much room in the first turn of a SX as the riders are packed in pretty tight. It takes a brave rider to holeshot any race and I applaud anyone who is able to do it on a consistent basis.
Perfect Balance
On the 2015 Indy SX track there were a few sections that tested everyone’s riding abilities. The layout was technical and the dirt was soft; this allowed ruts to form throughout the day and night show. In this particular section, the riders came the opposite way back up the start straight and into a tight, right hand corner. The exit of the corner was a steep table top that almost every rider struggled with at some point during the race. They didn’t struggle because of the length of the table top (it was only ten feet long), they struggled because a deep rut always seemed to form from the beginning of the corner all the way up the face.
It was cool to watch the best SX riders in the world try to hit this rut and keep perfect balance consistently. To do it right you had to use smooth throttle control and patience. If you hit the throttle to hard, you would pop up and out of the rut. While there are a few good photos from this section, I thought I’d use this one of Kyle Chisholm. Not only because he was navigating this rut as good as anyone, but because he won a Canadian National last year and he’s just an all-around good guy. If you want to get good at ruts then you have to practice them, so go out and build a section like this and practice, practice, practice.
