Superprestigio
Race Watch
MARC MARQUEZ MAGNESIUM CASES SHOPPING CART WHEELS JARED MEES
SUPERPRESTIGIO
RACE WATCH
SUPERPRESTIGIO
MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez tops Americans in star-studded flat-track battle in Barcelona
Gary Inman
Remind us again, what's the Superprestigio? Marc Marquez's take on indoor short track, that's what. It's held in a former Olympic stadium in Barcelona, Spain, and the MotoGP champ invites the best racers from the gamut of bike sports to have a go. The track is bigger than most US indoor very tight corners. a big show that attracted 9,000 paying spectators and was broadcast around the world on TV/web via a live feed.
So why have the Euros gone mad for dirt track? There’s been a grassroots groundswell of interest in dirt track in the UK, Italy, and Spain, but the main reason is Marquez and Valentino Rossi extolling the virtues of dirt track as a legitimate and fun way of improving riding skill.
Before then all the talk was of a neat 25OCC style, espoused by Jorge Lorenzo, being the way to go. Marquez disproved that, and everyone else followed suit. Now whole herds of MotoGP riders queue to get into Rossi’s Ranch (named in honor of Kenny Roberts’ dirt-training homestead), and all three current GP champs, Marc and Alex Marquez and their buddy Tito Rabat, ride dirt ovals together. So it’s clearly in fashion.
What’s with those little shopping-cart wheels? US dirt track
BUMPY ENTRY: Sixty truckloads of dirt transformed Palau Sant Jordi into a 200-meter short track. Al
runs on 19-inch wheels, but Europe doesn’t have the same infrastructure to support dirt track as there is in the US. So it made sense for Michelin, the event’s tire sponsor, to come loaded with 17-inch roadracing wets. Also, for the mainly European competitors, most of whom aren’t hard-core dirt trackers, it’s much easier for them to get hold of a pair of 17-inch wheels, relics from the supermoto boom, than it is a pair of 19s. Perhaps if Dunlop or Maxxis threw serious money
at the event, they’d race on 19s.
Current AMA Pro Flat Track Grand National Champion Jared Mees said, “It took a little while to adapt to the tires. I wouldn’t say I had to change my style, just adapt.”
Brad Baker, winner of the first Superprestigio in January 2014, set the fastest qualifying time then high-sided, knocked himself out, and had his shoulder dislocated by his flying bike.
Seven-time GNC titlist Chris Carr, who was there to commentate for the live feed, said, “That’s the most violent short track crash I’ve seen in a long time.” Carr says the unfamiliar 17-inch tires didn’t help. “We race on 19-inch tires, and they deal with a bumpy dirt track better. Seventeens are minibike tires back home. The rears used here are really good right up until they go really bad.”
Baker admitted, “It was a scary deal.”
There were three GNC regulars in attendance: Baker, Mees, and Shayna Texter. They would only
get one possible chance to beat Marquez in a race because the GP racers compete in the Superprestigio class, while the dirt guys (flat trackers from around the world, plus supermoto stars, enduro, and long-track world champions) are all in the Open class. The top four from each class race in the Superfinal.
Mees won every race he competed in with ease. Marquez was beaten in one of his four “finals,” but he won his class’ “final” final, putting him into the main.
The Superfinal was an eightrider affair over 12 laps. Of the AMA contingent, only Mees made it through. Baker was back from the hospital, arm in a sling, in time to watch, but Texter couldn’t get to grips with either the tires or the bike or both. Her last-minute invite meant she’d had no time to practice on 17s in the US and only a day on them in Spain. She put in a decent, but not stellar, qualifying time then struggled in the heats and didn’t make her class final. The
clued-up Spanish fans gave her a big ovation during the rider presentation though.
So that left Mees versus Marquez. The two class winners and respective 2014 champions were joined by expat American Kenny Noyes, MotoGP’s Bradley Smith, three-time World Supermoto champ Thomas Chareyre, World Endurance racer Dani Ribalta, Spanish supermoto specialist Gerard Bailo, and 16-year-old Brit dirt-tracker Oliver Brindley.
The races started at the end of the straight, behind a motocross gate. Everyone got a clean start, but Marquez nerfed Chareyre into turn one. The Frenchman went down and out, but, somehow, Marquez stayed on. There wasn’t a red flag all night, but the almost suicidal marshals seemed intent on being T-boned.
The Chareyre collision sent everyone except Bailo and Noyes wide, the American out in front.
Marquez and Mees chased down the leaders, passing them on lap six. That left half the race for Mees to catch the MotoGP prodigy, but he couldn’t get close enough to make a move.
“I gave it 110 percent,” a smiling Mees admitted after the race. He was riding a borrowed bike with his own front end, shock, and pipe. Marquez had his full team with him, but the Spaniard admitted he’d learned a lot being defeated by Baker.
Talking about his potent Honda CRF450, the two-time MotoGP champion said, “This year we made like a MotoGP test with the Spanish guys from my team, and we did many tests, changed the springs and the setup of the bike.”
The level of machinery shocked fellow MotoGP rider Scott Redding. “Magnesium crankcases and new electronics? I wasn’t expecting the bikes to be
so factory. I’d come again, but I’d be more prepared.”
Marquez also admitted that his current employers were clearly not regarding this event as a bit of off-season fun. “This morning when I woke up, I saw a message from Honda saying, ‘We are waiting for your race. We are watching you.’ I said, ‘Okay, this time I must concentrate and be at too percent.’ ”
Marquez looked like he wasn’t going to let anything stand in
his way, but if broad-shouldered Mees had gotten out in front, he wouldn’t have been quite as easy to push off-line as were some of the Europeans.
Kenny Noyes, fresh from winning the Spanish CEV Superbike championship, had a race that mirrored the first edition—poor qualifying littered with errors and crashes, peaking with a podium in Superfinal.
Tim Neave, one of a pair of racing twin brothers from the UK, out-qualified Mees but cracked under pressure. One young Brit who didn’t was Oliver Brindley. The young flat tracker smashed his shoulder just four weeks before racing to qualify for this event and turned 16 the week before the race, yet he made the final eight from nearly 50 riders. It’s no coincidence he’s traveled to the US to race with the top amateurs and also been under Carr’s wing.
There seems to be a small but growing appetite for dirt track. At the very bottom, it’s affordable
in a way roadracing no longer is. It’s gaining popularity across Europe, and multiple World Superbike champ Troy Bayliss runs races in Australia.
“I’m happy to support this event,” Bayliss said, “because I’m trying to get dirt track up and going, and this is really going to help us. I think dirt track is great, and a lot of these guys understand that it’s great training for their roadracing. I think it’s really going to take off. To go fast you’ve got to learn to slide the front and the back, but it’s much safer than motocross or supercross or enduro.”
During the day, there was vague talk of a dirt-track world championship, perhaps just three races to start, and key AMA Pro Racing personnel were in attendance.
The Superprestigio proves the stars love racing dirt track and that fans will come and watch the sport if they recognize the names. Anyone got phone numbers for Nicky Hayden and the Houston Astrodome?
