French Resistance
RACE WATCH
FRENCH RESISTANCE
On the ground, in the air and behind the scenes, Yamaha's David Vuillemin battles for Supercross supremacy
TWO WINS OUT OF FOUR MATCHES AIN'T SO BAD, AGREED KEITH McCARTY, brigadeer general of Team Yamaha's Supercross corps, but now, he says, "We have to keep winning and not shoot ourselves in the foot." Whose foot? Trooping into Edison Field in Southern California's Orange County for round five of the EA Supercross Series this February came a battalion of Team Yamaha feet, including those of mechanics, assistant mechanics, trainers, PR spellbinders, ad guy wizards, plus Yamaha's demon super-duper star Jeremy McGrath (the only 'crosser so flush he has his own 18-wheeler transport) and series point leader, champion of the previous Anaheim and San Diego rounds, David Vuillemin.
JOE SCALZO
Not to mention McCarty’s own depth of experience. When you multiply his 30 years in motocross by all the races he’s seen, the man’s a racing encyclopedia. Decades ago in the 1970s, he was the mechanical and special bro of one Bob Hannah, and they were the pair of impudent kids who held U.S. motocross by the throat. Both their lives have changed since then. Hannah now brokers airplanes (try the Hurricane Man if you want to purchase anything from a Cessna to a DC-10); McCarty, manager of all Yamaha Motor’s racing, makes sure the corporation’s rumored annual budget of $10 to $15 million produces wins instead of collecting foot wounds.
Tonight at Edison Field for round five of the 16-meet series, McCarty has woes-he’s got some busted-up players. McGrath , whose nine Supercross titles and 74 individual scores in the 1990s surpassed all of Hannah’s old records,
is hurtin' with a mystery mo tocross ailment known as "arm pump." Tim Ferry, another team rider, jumped up from a recent wipeout spitting blood and is temporarily grounded. Vuillemin is also doing the walking wound ed bit: After flying all the way home to France the previous week to have his personal physi cian drain a dislocated knee, upon returning Vuillemin bailed during a test session and tore up his ribs.
Tonight’s track is the usual sadistic, claustrophobic, gravity-defying witch’s brew of whoop-dee-doos, hairpins, stutter bumps, rhythm sections and doubleand triple-jumps so dear to TV’s heart. And because Supercross culture mandates it, you race hurt, never mind that every g-out he encounters tonight will slash at Vuillemin’s heavily-taped ribs like a razor-David’s a pain stoic. Suzuki, Kawasaki and Honda heroes all have their share of nicks too, including defending SX titlist Ricky Carmichael, who a couple of weeks ago crashed on a tabletop, got knocked dingy, and
tonight is himself damaged goods with a cracked hand.
Vuillemin’s a stoic about his ribs, yet still requires help. His precarious physical condition making it impossible for him to ride the way he normally would, it’s time for McCarty and Yamaha to step up and help him improvise. Accordingly, during the opening 15-minute practice session, Keith & Troops-including Vuillemin’s Australian mechanic and his French trainer-park themselves in the bleachers scoping out his moves; they even have a video camera.
Afterward, in the conference room of Team Yamaha’s 18-wheel transporter, the video cassette gets loaded into the player, then viewed and analyzed.
Wounded ribs and all, Vuillemin’s pretty much on good terms with the track except for one piece of complicated real estate that is really testing his pain threshold. Its components include a series of whoops leading to a wall-like bermed corner, which leads to another jump, a tabletop, still another jump and tabletop, followed by a triple. How to conquer this monster? Consensus is that Vuillemin will spare his 6-foot-2-inch,
170-pound carcass considerable agony if he massages the whoops from the > right side instead of the left; also, he’ll carry more speed if he scoots rather than flies over the tabletops.
This is meant purely as a suggestion. Vuillemin can exercise full veto power. He decides to try the team’s suggestion. Everybody says I-told-you-so when he subsequently records the fastest time of the second practice session.
Back to work. Having pretty much devoted themselves to watching Vuillemin in the first session, Keith & Troops spend much of the second eyeballing the track, attempting to divine what mainevent conditions might be like. Any time a water truck drops product on the surface, the team notices and remembers. Every time a bulldozer or bobcat appears to blade the surface, the news gets delivered back to Vuillemin. Even a maintenance man throwing a shovel full of topsoil gets critiqued.
If Vuillemin isn’t already aware of it, K&T will make it a point to remind him that one of the track's crucial 100-yard whoop sections is definitely faster on the left side than the right; and that he must stay leery of all shiny and slick patches of racetrack-Carmichael has already unloaded in one of them. Meantime, why is the Kawasaki rider Stephane Roncada double-jumping a section that everybody else is tripling? K&T decide that he’s blowing it, that it’s faster the other way. And K&T can’t get enough of watching Travis Pastrana, Suzuki's dangerous bail-off merchant, attacking a triple-jump section followed by another tall, wall-like berm. Pastrana appears to be on to something. While everybody else is pounding the top of the wall, Terrible Travis’s trick is to romp barely halfway up the wall, quicklike-hell gas it, then gain a couple of lengths every lap. If something works,
plagiarize it, is the rule. So K&T later tell Vuillemin: “If your ribs can stand it, and you can pivot in the middle of that wall, it’s doggone quick.”
As the sun sets, the countdown continues to the race. Back in the shade of the big awning erected in front of the Team Yamaha 18-wheeler, there’s a long line of autograph-seekers and Vuillemin patiently signs away for an hour, throbbing ribs notwithstanding. Behind him, almost unnoticed, two Yamaha mechanics attend to his scooter, finessing the gearing and massaging the suspension.
And K&T mull over the coining race, imagining possible scenarios.
Carmichael is hardest to figure. He’s been aggressive on some parts of the track, conservative on others. Kevin Windham may well get the holeshot, as he often does, but may fatigue over 20 laps, as he also often does. If Pastrana doesn’t bail again, he’ll be up there with the leaders, it’s that simple. As for Vuillemin, if he can keep his wayward ribs under control; if he can get well out in front and conserve energy not having to battle with somebody who takes his line away and makes him go where his ribs don’t want him to go; if he can
do all that, McCarty thinks it can be Vuillemin's-and Yamaha's-race.
Edison Field is sold out-45,050 customers. Two previous Anaheim shows, along with one in San Diego and another in Phoenix, were SRO, too. At last somebody is putting football and baseball stadiums to good use. Success and growth such as the Supercross series has experienced, particularly in the> last several years, has led to a knockdown, drag-out battle over control of the highly profitable series. SX promoters Clear Channel Entertainment, a mega-billion-dollar conglomerate, and the AMA sanctioning body parted ways after negotiations over their future contracts stalled. AMA picked up JamSports, a smaller independent event-promotions outfit and tried to move ahead with its own series planned for ’03. But so did CCE. Corporations exist to make money, and CCE is raking it in from SX, so it set up a counter series, locking up many existing venues and heading to the FIM for sanctioning, making the series a world championship, with a few rounds overseas, but most right here in the USA. There were rumors of some kind of uneasy truce between AMA and CCE, but, as of presstime, the future direction of Supercross was still very much up in the air.
Politics forgotten for now, the main event lines up. A 20-man gate. Go!
Vuillemin’s chance for a win disappears in the first 50 feet. Lined up in the number-five starting hole, he misjudges things, drops the clutch wrong, and for
an instant gets sideways. He’s history. It’s all the help that McGrath, Carmichael, Pastrana and Roncada need to leave him flat. It’s already sixabreast around the first corner when Vuillemin belatedly arrives; following the required rooting and gouging, the best he can do is come around on the first lap a distant and thoroughly rotten 10th.
Far ahead, McGrath leads the first nine laps. But with 11 still to go, his arm-pump malady is flaring again, and he’s already leaning over the handlebars as if fatigued. So here comes Carmichael to take control of the race. Running out of steam, feeling bummed-out, McGrath will fade to sixth.
While Carmichael pulls clear, Pas trana in a hot second place does his usual bail-off, and Vuillemin, from the depths of the pack, suddenly finds his rhythm-or perhaps his ribs go numband begins turning his fastest lap times. Catching Honda's ever-consistent Mike LaRocco in the right-side-is-fastest set
of whoops, Vuillemin works him so hard that LaRocco at last stands it up on the front wheel and almost-but-doesn't go down and take them both out. Carmichael and Roncada are too far ahead to be caught, but Vuillemin snatches a hard-earned third. A good race for Yamaha, McCarty
and Vuillemin, all things considered. The Frenchman scored his fifth podium finish in five races, retained his points lead over Carmichael, and now has a week to rest his ribs before doing it all over again at the following Saturday night's race in Indianapolis inside the RCA Dome. Turns out the rest does him well: Vuillemin proves he's the real deal in the main when he reels in leader Carmichael, sizes him up over the last couple of laps and passes him in the fi nal corners for the win. You just don't do that to Carmichael, do you?
These kinds of races, this incredible season of Supercross, has led to more sellouts, more record crowds and given us more surprises than we’ve seen in years. One of the biggest has been the strength of Yamaha’s flying Frenchman. Vuillemin and McCarty wouldn’t have it any other way. □
