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Racing Lines #53 – November 1, 2002
By Gerald Langston:
This week I am trying something different. Having purchased a digital camera to catalogue products for our business it occurred me that I could take (no action) shots of our behind the scenes motocross activities, which is what this column is all about.
So anyway, yesterday the team decided to go to the newly re-opened Lake Elsinore Supercross track for practice and a little testing. On hand were Grant, Jeremy McGrath, Joaquim Rodrigues on KTM 250s and Billy Lananovich on a 125. It was Jeremy’s first time back on a supercross Track since his hip injury so he wasn’t up to speed but he got faster as the day went on. Joaquim, from Portugal, was impressive and has natural supercross abilities. Grant was going pretty well and certainly looked a lot better than he did at the US Open. This is mainly due to spending more time in the saddle and getting the bike set up to suite him. Remember the KTM 250 is all-new and both Jeremy and Grant have been injured recently. Little things like different foot peg and handle bar positioning actually make a big difference in the balance of the bike. The thing is that every change has a permutation i.e. you get the suspension balanced thorough the whoops, but you change the rider’s position on the bike and the suspension behaves differently.
Moving on to Bercy in Paris. One of the benefits of KTM being in Europe is we can email them all the engine and suspension specs (WP suspension is owned by KTM) and they will have the bikes set up and ready for all 4 American based riders when they are in Paris. (The four riders are Grant, Billy Lananovich, Steve Boniface and Joaquim Rodrigues). In a nutshell this year features a new format which is all 125. It is also a team event broken into the hosting country – France, versus the USA versus the rest of the world. Newly crowned World 125 Champion Mikael Maschio will captain France, the USA captain will be newly crowned 125 West Champion, Travis Preston and Grant captains the rest of the world team.
Racing should be red hot with a balance of young lions and experienced supercrossers. The crowd at Bercy is like no other supercross crowd in the world, and the riders say that sometimes they can’t hear their engines above the noise of the fans. (One year I sat next to a group who brought chain saws with the silencers removed and replaced with trumpet ends – they even had a conductor and believe me that was noisy). So all in all an exciting 2 weeks coming up for us going back to Europe on what is essentially Grant’s 125 farewell tour. For up to date news and info while we are away you can log onto www.mxlarge.com or www.motocrossgranprix.com
P.S. Gerald has sent six photos in JPEG form.
If you wish to have them emailed to you, send me an EMAIL: with `Photos` in the subject line.
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