Yamaha Motor Canada Presents Style Check With Palms: My Moto Park Cup Story

 

This past weekend a large group of mostly Ontario riders gathered at Moto Park for the opening round of the 2019 New Era MP Cup. Since 2012, these MP Cup events have taken place on the Victoria Day long weekend in May, as well as the Canada Day long weekend at the beginning of July. Whether it’s the track, the great racing or the fun times in the paddock, riders and their families have really enjoyed these races. Thanks to Moto Park’s CEO Iain Hayden and his valuable crew, each year the MP Cup events have found new ways to entertain everyone from when they arrive on Friday until they leave on Monday. My family has been attending the MP Cup events since 2013 and each year they have brought new adventures and new memories. This weekend was no different as both Saturday and Sunday were a ton of fun on the track as well as off of the track. If it wasn’t for a massive rain storm on Sunday afternoon it would’ve been a perfect weekend of racing. To give you my perspective from the weekend, here is a summary of my two days at Moto Park.

Even though I live only 55 minutes from the MP gates, Saturday morning brought with it a very early departure from the Palms family ponderosa as I figured that finding a good parking spot would be difficult. So at exactly 6:15am we left our driveway and headed NW up highway #10. After a quick stop at Tim Horton’s in Dundalk for our usual race day breakfast, we arrived at one of most famous race tracks in Canada, Moto Park!

From the moment we arrived it was evident that this was once again going to be a very busy MP Cup as there were a ton of trucks and trailers, and of course, parking spots were at a premium. Because we only have a pick-up truck and no big trailer, we found a sweet little parking place along the main road, and thankfully not far from the action of the track and the snack bar. I don’t think I had even turned the ignition off on our truck before my son eagerly stated that “Colton is here, so is Cole and Tanner.” Yes, the word was already out that some of Canada’s best riders would be racing on Saturday in front of some very excited MP fans. I spoke about this a little yesterday in my Monday Gate Drop, but these days seeing our top pros at Regional races is a very rare occurrence. Unlike 15 or 20 years ago, our top riders don’t get paid much to race locally so in some cases they see it as an unwarranted risk. However, with the opening round of the 2019 MXTour coming up fast, even a few of our best riders wanted to get some intense racing laps under their belt. With a good track, a little bit of purse money, and some good old competition, Saturday at Moto Park provided even our fastest riders an opportunity for a warm-up race.

So with the rundown of the day’s Pro-Am class from my son out of the way, we all exited the truck and preceded to unload. Truthfully, I unloaded all by myself as one of my son’s race morning rituals is to immediately go and look at the track with his moto mom. Seeing the track as soon as possible relaxes him and eases those dreaded race day nerves. Anyway, with the truck unloaded and the track properly surveyed, it was time for riders meeting and some early morning bench racing. The first person I ran into was the man who runs the entire show at Moto Park, Iain Hayden. Other than some talk about the track and how cool it was going to be to watch Facciotti and Thompson battle, Iain told my about this new fitness App that he and Drew Robertson have been working on. It’s going to be released in a few weeks and by the sounds of it everyone is going to love it. It actually sounded so intriguing that I envision a future MXP Magazine feature story in an upcoming issue. So after talking to Iain, having the legendary old CMA Referee Andy Bokma buy me a Cappuccino at the MP Cafe, it was onto riders meeting. It was at riders meeting that people got their first taste of just how cool the MP Cup events have become. Once the meeting concluded, long time MP Instructor Zeb Dennis began throwing free product out to anyone who could catch the swag. For 30 seconds Zebo looked like Tom Brady as he tossed goggles, shirts, and just about everything else you could think of. As far as I know this doesn’t happen very often, and while I’m not saying that it should happened all of the time, it’s very cool when it does.

Once riders meeting was done it was time for practice and then the opening moto of the weekend. Thankfully my son’s races were first and fourth on the schedule so it felt like we won before he had to face one gate drop. It was almost felt like 1997 again when some of the tracks would let me make the race schedule up. I was the Ontario pro rider rep back then so I had some say into how the pro riders were handled at Regional events in Ontario. If anyone ever wonder why the pro motos were almost always early in the schedule back then, now you know! But, as Saturday proved once again, everyone loves watching the pro class and no one wants to see their races at the end of the day.

So with our opening motos done before breakfast, we had a lot of time to hang out and take in the sights and sounds of this cool event. Most of the talk in the paddock was about the Pro-Am class and who I thought was going to win the next round of the Facciotti/ Thompson battle? With Social Media and multiple media outlets like this one, what went down last year in Quebec City between these two is no secret. And while everyone has their own opinion as to who was to blame, the one thing that everyone agrees upon is that there probably isn’t too much love lost between them. So to see them lined up together for the first time since that race was a real treat for everyone at Moto Park.

As I mentioned above, since these riders don’t race each other too much away from the National Series, when they do, especially in a warm-up race like this one, they have to walk a very fine line between racing hard enough to get something out of it but not racing each other too hard that they show all their cards prior to the opening round. Basically, for top riders like Facciotti and Thompson, who most certainly have three months of battles ahead, their plan for Saturday was try and get the holeshot, ride as hard as they could, and if a close battle did ensue, make sure they didn’t give each other any added motivation heading into Calgary next weekend. Or God forbid make any type of contact with one another and risk anymore off-track drama. In my opinion, I thought they both handled themselves perfectly given all that has happened.

In Moto 1, Facciotti grabbed the holeshot and led every lap with Thompson a few seconds back. In Moto 2, Facciotti obviously had the first pick on the starting gate, so after he picked his gate I knew that in his true Alpha-male fashion Thompson was going to pick the gate not only right beside Colton but also to the inside of the 5-time Canadian Champion. That is exactly what happened and you could feel the tension in the air prior to the start of Moto 2. In a repeat of the opening moto, Facciotti grabbed the early lead and looked smooth out front. But Thompson also looked smooth and fast and within a few laps he was on Facciotti’s back tire. For a few laps, and to the delight of everyone in attendance, these two 450MX title contenders laid down some incredible laps on the ultra-fast MP track. With three laps to go, Thompson pulled the trigger and got beside Facciotti prior to the finish line section. I’m quite sure that if this had been a national moto this summer then this battle for the lead would’ve been more intense, but considering what is at stake in the coming weeks, Thompson took the lead without much resistance and rode away with the win.

The Pro-Am class definitely produced two very entertaining motos as not only did Facciotti and Thompson battle, but so did Tanner Ward, Marco Cannella and Sam Gaynor. To see the fences lined with people was pretty cool. As I said, this doesn’t happened very often, so when it does you just have to be impressed. With the pro races over it was time to refocus and make sure my son finished off his day in style. With rain in the forecast for Sunday, we knew how important Saturday was. This is his first year racing an 85cc bike so each race, each lap, heck almost each corner is a learning experience. As I’m sure it did for most riders there, watching the pros race definitely gave everyone a glimpse at how fast the MP track can be ridden. So it appeared to me that almost everyone was riding a little better after watching some of our best riders race on the same track.

As expected the opening day at the opening round ran a little long. As soon as the racing was over all you could smell in the paddock was the sweet scent of BBQ’s. It was dinner time and it was time to reflect on the day of racing. With a few of the fast pro riders heading home on Saturday evening, the Pro-Am class on Sunday wasn’t going to be quite as exciting. It was a great opening day of the 2019 MP Cup and with the unforgettable racing on the track, there were definitely multiple story lines. Since I really dislike camping, we drove home on Saturday night to get a hot shower, a good night’s sleep, and to reenergize for another day of racing on Sunday.

This is already long enough so I’m not going to go into too many details about Sunday. The day started off warm and sunny, the track was perfect and everyone was enjoying the beautiful weather. Then around mid-day the rains came and quickly turned the track into soup. My son did one moto in the mud but we called it a day before his final moto as the conditions were just too bad. Even with the adverse weather that came on Sunday, it was a great weekend of racing and hanging out with our moto friends. We will of course be back at Moto Park next month for the final two rounds of the 2019 New Era MP Cup. I hope to see you all there and I hope some of our pro riders decide to come out again. I want to thank the entire Moto Park crew for an awesome weekend and congratulations to all of the riders who raced hard on Saturday, and braved the tough conditions on Sunday. We are lucky enough in Canada to have some great tracks and some great events right across the country. Let’s embrace these events and good luck to all of you this summer.