Howdy y'all and welcome back to MotoSport.com Gear Head weekly observations! This is the 2-position penalized for jumping on a red cross flag Gear Head Ryan Roberts back at it with all the takes from Round 12 of Monster Energy AMA Supercross from St. Louis, Missouri!
Well, this is an interesting conundrum. Most people are saying this was an exciting race, but the races themselves were actually boring. The drama surrounding the race was super exciting and is what people are talking about today and that is what makes our sport so exciting.
The jumping on red cross flag that penalized several of the riders this week was a complete sham. I get what the AMA is trying to do and keep safety a priority, but this is also a two-way street. The race officials must do as much as possible to make sure everyone is aware that there is an incident that requires riders to roll jumps as soon as they possibly can. In this incident you had riders coming around a 180 degree turn and an official on a platform that is at least ten feet off the ground and mostly hidden behind the pillars of the finish line jump. Riders are making that they turn their bike, pick a rut, and then commit to making the jump. By the time they saw the flag, they were committed to making the jump and could not stop to roll it our they would have had a severe crash right into the landing of the jump. The scariest part of this issue is that if there really was a risk to someone's safety and riders did need to roll the jump, they weren't in a position to get the message out to riders, and someone could have been severely hurt. There is a debate about whether there needed to be a red cross flag in the first place since Vince Friese's bike was broke and he was on the side of the track and the safest thing someone could have done was jump the finish line. That is a whole other level of discussion our race officials should be having. Our sport just has to be better whether it is putting lights on every lane to show riders whether to jump or not, or if we need to put communication devices on handlebars to inform riders of a situation. There are several options, but we have to be better if we want to be taken seriously as a sport.
Jett Lawrence's lead is now cut down to 8 points, so at least that adds to some drama in the series. It has taken almost every act of bad luck possible to get us here, but at least we are here. There still isn't a part of me that thinks anyone but Jett wins this thing, but we have seen that there are situations that Jett can lose points and make this interesting.
In the 250 class, Levi Kitchen has shown that he is premier rider in the 250 West class. He had such an impressive performance that I think everyone else knows this is Levi's class and his championship to lose. Getting 3 hole shots the way he did this weekend and basically walking away from the competition was the biggest statement win I have seen in the 250 class in a long time.
That is it folks, round 12 of the AMA Monster energy Supercross series is done and dusted. This is your favorite Gear Head Ryan Roberts checking out and remember kids, if you need anything for any bike, dirt or street, ATV, UTV, just hit up any Gear Head at MotoSport.com and we will get you hooked up! We will see you in two weeks at Boston Massachusetts for round 13 of Monster Energy AMA Supercross. Another stadium with no dome so can we possibly have another mud race? We shall find out!
