It’s that time of year again, race fans: time to head away from the comfortable confines of the huge football and baseball stadiums and venture outside the city limits to the rural areas of America for the fortieth running of the AMA Motocross Outdoor National Championship. As we head outdoors to the first round of the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship at Hangtown, we bring with us all a head full of “what if” scenarios that will soon begin to unfold at the drop of the gate for Moto one this Saturday. Let’s talk about a few of the championship favorites heading to Hangtown.
One of the major questions on everyone’s mind was answered late Monday evening when Team San Manuel sent out a press release. The two San Manuel/Yamaha riders James Stewart and Kyle Regal will not be on the line for the opening round at Hangtown. Citing not being prepared as the reason, the two riders will forgo the opener and return to racing at a later, undisclosed time. We are not sure why JS7 does the “yes, no, maybe” routine before the start of every outdoor season, but what we do know is the series will go on without him. Here’s to hoping we get to see JS7 and Kyle Regal on the line as soon as possible.
One of the riders that will be on the line has not lined up for an Outdoor National since Hangtown 2009. The 2011 AMA 450 SX Champion, Monster Energy/Kawasaki’s Ryan Villopoto, will line up for his first Outdoor National in two years. In 2009, Ryan was sidelined due to a knee injury, and then in 2010, he was forced to sit out again after shattering his leg at the St. Louis SX. Ryan is an outdoor specialist with three outdoor titles on his resume, and you can be sure the two years absent from outdoor motocross will do nothing to change that. Watching from the couch in 2009 and 2010 as Chad Reed and Ryan Dungey wrapped their first 450 Outdoor National championships had to be painful for RV2, so you can bet he comes into round one ready to show the world that motocross time is “Villopoto time.”
Check out this video taken at Pala earlier this week of RV2 and JW32 doing work on the Factory Kawasaki’s.
The two riders that won titles while RV2 was away will also both be lined up at round one. The 2009 450 Outdoor National champ, Two-Two Motorsports/Honda’s Chad Reed, will be on the line with the full factory support of American Honda. With the two Factory Honda riders sitting out for the first few rounds of the series—Trey Canard (femur) and Josh Grant (knee)—all of Honda’s man power and resources will be 100% focused on Reedy. Combine Factory Honda with his own Two-Two Motorsports team—that, by the way, just won the Team of the Year award in SX—and Chad has two powerful weapons behind him all year long. Chad surprised everyone last year when he won the opener at Hangtown, so nobody should be surprised if he does so again in 2011.
The man wearing the red plate with the number one on it at the opener will be the 2010 450 Lucas Oil AMA Motocross Champion, Rockstar/Makita/Suzuki’s Ryan Dungey. Last year’s Hangtown National was a race Dungey just as soon forget, and if you look at his results after Hangtown, I would say he did a good job with doing just that. After starting the year off with a lackluster eighth overall, Ryan went on a terror, winning the next nine overalls and ten out of the last eleven. The man was simply unstoppable and went on to win his first 450 Outdoor Championship by 145 points. There were times when another rider had the speed to beat Ryan, but his conditioning and confidence seemed to always reign supreme in the end. This year, though, he has his former 250 nemeses on the line—RV2. In the two years they raced each other, there were only three races in which RD1 came out on top. Three of those wins, though, came in their last four meetings of the 2008 season.
Other than the three “on paper” favorites, there is a gate full of possibility. At the top of the list may be a man we haven’t seen on the track since the Pala National in 2010—Motoconcepts/Yamaha’s Christophe Pourcel. The incredibly smooth and calculating Frenchman finished 2010 with one of the most heartbreaking crashes in motocross history. Going into the final round, he was leading the 250 Outdoor Championship by seven points over Trey Canard. In the opening moto—while leading Trey—CP377 would go down, dislocate his shoulder and essentially end his bid for the championship. With that injury—and lingering questions about past injuries—no team was willing to pay the two-time Lites SX Champion and former MX2 World Champion his asking price, forcing him to sit it out the 2011 SX series. Now signed sealed and delivered with Motoconcepts/Yamaha, he is looking to debut on the 450 at Hangtown, and show all of those teams that passed him up that they made a big mistake.
Quite possibly the greatest unknown quantity in the mix this season is the Red Bull/KTM rider Mike Alessi. Mike comes into 2011 with the maximum allowed CC’s underneath him and that may just be just what he needs get back that missing ingredient from 2010: holeshots. Last year, Mikey struggled with starts while riding the newly developed KTM 350, but this year he has traded it in for the 450. We all know confidence is a key asset to any racer, and Mikey is hoping the 450 CC’s will instill the confidence needed to bring him back to his 2009 form. One thing we know for sure is that if the number 800 comes out in 2011 riding like he rode the 450 in 2009, we are in for a fun series.
If you take the 2011 favorites, line them in with riders like Andrew Short, Brett Metcalfe, Kevin Windham, Jake Weimer, Austin Stroupe, Tommy Hahn, Kyle Chisholm and Davi Millsaps, and throw Trey Canard, Josh Grant, James Stewart and Kyle Regal into the mix as the season goes on, you have quite possibly the most talented field of all time lining up for the Nationals. 2011 is an incredible time to be a motocross fan.
See you at Hangtown!
Follow me @dandunes818 for live updates and pics from Hangtown all weekend.
