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Racing Lines #54 – November 14th, 2002
By Gerald Langston:
As you know, the 20th running of the Paris Bercy Supercross has come and gone. It’s hard to imagine that Grant was 4 months old when the first Bercy was run and, according to my calculations he became the 12th King of Bercy last weekend.
In those 20 years Bercy has seen all the greats like Johnson, Bradshaw, Bailey, Stanton, McGrath, Ward, Emig etc. etc. Some of the guys keep coming back just to watch, guys like Emig, Bailey and even the big guy himself – Bevo Forte (of Scott goggles fame) were there.
This is the first time in over a year Grant has won a major event and what a lucrative one it was to win as it is the biggest 125 payday in the world and probably second only to the US Open in terms of the size of the winner’s purse. However, what I am happy about was that he pretty much dominated the whole 3 days. He was fastest in timed training all 3 days, he set the fastest race time all 3 days and he was the only rider to podium all 3 days with 2/2/1 finishes. It is interesting to note that the top ten and I believe that as far back as the top 13 overall finishers were US based riders. Supercross is a very specialized form of racing as we found out on our arrival in the US, but one thing I could not help noticing is how easily the French riders give up the fight. One French journalist asked Grant where he thought Maschio would finish outdoors in America. When Grant said between 5th and 10th the guy got really offensive, but I see it the same way.
One thing I really liked about the Bercy event was the timed session to determine starting picks for the qualifying races. It’s also something I miss from the GPs. All the bikes have transponders now and all the stadiums have electronic score boards and screens. For the spectators that come early this is really exciting watching the riders jostle for fastest time. I also believe our sport needs to have more electronic info on score boards during the race like car racing has on TV. This is in effect to a certain degree in stadium races but there is nothing outdoors. In Europe I have seen trucks that are hired for race days that have an electronic TV/Scoreboard. The screen lies flat when in transit but once the truck is at the venue it is hydraulically lifted to show either the action replays or the times and positions.
Our sport needs new spectators and more TV time and yes that public does need to understand the sport; but where I differ from the FIM is where they say “the public gets confused with the 2 moto format so lets make it a one moto format”. I say let’s give the public the information they need to understand. Anyway if you think combining the scores from 2 motos to get and overall winner is confusing, can someone please explain the Nascar scoring system with points for pole, laps led etc. which all have to be calculated in, yet they get 300,000 people almost every weekend.
Getting back to Bercy, we have to thank Xavier and Eric for a first class event and hospitality, Leighton Rice and “Frenchie Bereni” for building great bikes (not one of the KTMs missed a beat), Mike Williamson (Grant’s new mechanic), Andrew his old mechanic (for all his help over the last four years) Kaipo for suspension and everyone behind the scenes who made last weekend such a great success.
Finally on a commercial note. Most of our ’03 Doma pipes are in stock now. Traditionally we are the last with new model pipes because to out perform the opposition you need to spend more time on R & D. We have also increased or Quad range from LT 80 to Raptor including LTZ400.
