Just five days to go before we all arrive at the magnificent Matterley Basin circuit in England for this year’s Monster Energy Motocross of Nations. Known as possibly the best circuit in the world—and without question one with huge atmosphere and brilliant viewing—it’s going to be something special.
From that classic 2006 Motocross of Nations, where Stefan Everts rode to 1-1 results, beating the American riders in the motos, but losing out to the might of USA in the overall team results, Matterley Basin has worked its way into our hearts.
It isn’t just any motocross track, and despite its rather young age, the Grand Prix facility is as important to the sport as any track on the calendar.
A young Scotsman named Johnny Douglas Hamilton is the person who designed the circuit, and has been asked back—10 years after his first masterpiece—to produce something a little special for this year’s event. An event many are saying could be the greatest motocross race in the history of the sport.
The more Johnny Douglas Hamilton’s we have in the sport, the better off we will be. A real free-spirit, romantic, the Scotsman, is something of a perfectionist and his work will be enjoyed by thousands of motocross fans next weekend.
As an uneducated Aussie, whenever I speak to Douglas Hamilton, I feel like maybe I should have worked a lot harder at school. His attention to detail, and his vision is something to be admired.
We talked to him this morning, and the education he has given us about the all new Matterley Basin circuit is one that makes me want to re-book my ticket to England and fly out today just to take a look at it.
Johnny, how you doing mate, I don’t think I have spoken to you for 10 years?
I think the last time we talked was Matterley Basin in 2007, so yes, 10 years.
So where have you been?
I have been good, studying at University.
Mate, I watched the Motoheadmag video and watching you mate, you are way too educated for motocross. It’s like you should be doing Shakespeare or something (laughing).
Oh right, ok (laughing).
Just quickly, before we start about the track, I wanted to ask you how you would describe yourself, because I always find you an interesting character, a little like Billy Mackenzie, a bit of a romantic.
You are right, that is one way of looking at it. I think you worry about stuff and you stress about stuff, and I think if you are in a creative field, then you are a bit of a neurotic and you do worry about stuff and you do stress about stuff. I do over think, but I think that is how you produce good stuff. I don’t want to pretentious enough to compare myself to an artist, but if you think of an artist, they are pretty tortured souls.
Definitely.
I think any time you are trying to create something, you will think harder about it than the average person and I think that is why you have a higher standard than normal.
How long is it since you have been back to Matterley?
Well, 2012 was the last time I left. I think it was then that I went to University. A few changes to the track and Steve had some different ideas what he wanted to do with it, so we split ways I guess. Then when the Nations came around and I was hearing things, like it was stonier, and the landings were heavier, I was sort of thinking, I can’t remember it being like that. That is what encouraged me to get back into it. It took some arm bending, and I decided to come back and do it. They designed a few things and Steve wanted bigger jumps and I was going in the other direction, I wanted more enjoyable jumps.
So, tell me, you arrive back at Matterley Basin, and over the years Steve has made changes to the circuit, changes to your original design. Was that a bit like somebody had damaged your work?
I don’t want to sound like I am negative, but yes, it does. If you spend thousands of hours doing road ways and terrace beer gardens and working on the track, and screening soil, and then somebody just gauged out your work, and maybe changed it with not the same attention to detail that you have, for sure you take it a little personally. I wouldn’t say I was sulking or anything like that, but I was a little off about it.
What was the first thing you do when you get back there?
We spoke to Youthstream, and they said, listen, we have a bit of a safety record here at Matterley. It’s one of the faster circuits and it’s got a combination of high speed and big jumps. While that is spectacular and the fans like it, sometimes the most spectacular tracks come with consequences. So, for this race, with countries like China and many smaller motocross countries being invited to the race, Youthstream wanted to get onto the safety record and tame down the jumps a little. The main areas of concern were the middle area where you had the big step up into a bowl turn into a triple down and into a quad up. That section we had had some pretty big injuries. The idea was to just redesign that whole area and leading onto the quads. A lot of that in the valley has completely changed. The 30m triple stepdown is now 20m table. The 28m step up is 22m and the 27m step down is now a 23m table-top on the top of the hill. So, we cut down the size of all the jumps. We also added some straights to add to the length of a lap, so without increasing the circuit, so the area of the track is the same, but longer lap times. A good 20 seconds longer, so hopefully, also less lappers. While the jumps are smaller, they are fun jumps, some in a corner, or some with a whip on them.
Obviously the Motoheadmag interview with Dean Wilson he mentioned about the size of the jumps, but from what I gather the jumped hadn’t been totally worked on yet?
What we had, the jumps at the end of last week. We wanted to see bikes on the track and we basically just scrapped all the grass off it, and the transitions on those take offs were really aggressive and when the guys (Wilson and Searle) rode it, they were talking about how big the jumps were. We have obviously want to mellow the track down, and the jumps they were talking about were the old jumps on the top half of the circuit that hadn’t been given the right attention. So, we tamed them down a bit. Youthstream also have their regular guys coming in, and he will take a look at it. Dean talked about massive jumps, but he did the quad when the take-off was ridiculous. All the track has been redesigned and much smaller jumps. The new stuff is pretty tame.
I also noticed you mention you have some straights with nothing on them, a little old school like?
I don’t think having straights should be described as old school, but I guess in this day and age it kind of is. I like a bit of corner to corner racing. It’s not like I am one of these people who say you can’t race over obstacles, because I think you can. The guys demonstrate every weekend they can pass over jumps and make up time over jumps. I know from data, last year from I think it was High Point, Ken Roczen spent 30 seconds less time in the air than Ryan Dungey, and he beat him by 30 seconds.
Jeffrey Herlings makes up a lot of time spending less time in the air.
Well, he is like that everywhere, fast in the corners, fast in the jumps, he is phenomenal. We have a bit of everything on this track. Some big off chambers, jumping into corners, jumping out of corners. I think if you have some straights, then you can get the bike up to speed and we will see who are the best of the late brakers are. Top gear then breaking down, that is a skill set itself.
I remember in 2006, we got all that rain before the event, before the Sunday, and I remember walking the track after the races on Sunday afternoon, and the track was like a supercross track, still really tacky and not really blue groove or anything like that. What can we expect this year?
Of course, the rain and a combination of the soil and rain. We have been screening the soil for a month now, and its expensive, but the stones here were savage. So, the whole layout is covered in the screened dirt. I think there is a good chance we will have it similar to 2006. Hopefully we don’t get the same type of weather, but we will see how it goes.
Will it get rough?
We want to get away from the slot car racing we have seen in the past. This year a lot of the tracks have been rough, and a lot of the riders like riding in ruts, but I think for us, so many of the tracks have been rutted and some of the old school riders call it slot car racing. To me, if you have three ruts in a corner, you are confined to those three ruts. When you don’t have deep ruts, you can have guys coming in tight and drifting wide, or they can enter the corner wide and cut tight to the apex. So, you get more the old school type of race craft. We will have a bit of both. We don’t want a rut fest, but that also depends on the weather. If we get rain, then sun, then it will be like 2006, and really rough.
As the guy who designed the track, and has been working on it the last months, can you feel the buzz about this event?
Yes, there is. The way it is, I am worrying about a lot of little things. How do you make the FIM happy, the riders happy, the fans happy, how do you take care and tick all these boxes. Just yesterday, all their major structures appear and I remember talking to one of the workers on the site and he said this place is like a city. Its suddenly turned into a little city. All the Youthstream structures and the Monster Energy structures, it is really nice to see. It looks so dramatic all of a sudden. It’s an incredible facility anyway, but now we know how to fill it out. In 2006 it was just a field, now with all the terraces and the whole infrastructure, its beginning to look like a really top facility.
Any other sections that will be interesting?
I don’t know if you saw the moto video, but there was a really cool timing section, where Tommy comes in and goes double, double, and Dean goes triple, triple and passed him, but I am not sure we can keep it, because we need to think about the Greeks and the Chinese. It’s a pretty technical section and maybe too difficult for some of the smaller nations.
What about the start?
I think one of the criticism of modern motocross, it’s a bit samey, samey, you know. We same the same stuff time and time again. So, we have the classic BMX start, another feature that will make riders think and motocross has always been about elevation and this is elevation. You can’t wheelie out of the start, you need to control your start and it’s not going to be easy for everyone. I remember the beginning of the classic movie On Any Sunday, and you had those kids on their BMX bikes. That is how many of us got into the sport, riding our BMX bikes. It’s a homage to BMX. Ash (Kane) a friend of mine saw it and said it looked crazy, but when he saw Dean Wilson do it, he was like, actually that looks good.
Of course, starts are super critical, and for sure this year its cost rider’s places. It will add a dimension on how will Herlings do, or Nagl, or Cairoli. Its good.
We had guys practicing the starts, and you had Marshall Weltin the American kid doing it, and he was doing a wheelie off the start and it didn’t work. While Dean Wilson, his technique was perfect, he shot forward and then waits for his back wheel to hit the down slope and then he wheelied all the way down the down slope, it was incredible, really cool.
