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After only two visits, the joy of the exotic Far East may have started to face for the FIM World Motocross Championship. If you think Las Vegas is Sin City, you have never experience anything like the bright lights of the downtown Pattaya beach resort, just south of Bangkok and the nearest city to the venue of the Thailand motocross Grand Prix. While Vegas’ sleazy side is relatively hidden away from family eyes, in Pattaya it’s right up front and available. Live X-rated shows of all types of nefarious variety, go-go bars and brothels full of prostitutes, massage parlors, and rent-a-date services are right in front of your face, in a wall of noise and tacky neon that’s totally relentless. Welcome to Bangkok Set up as a resort to “service the needs” of soldiers in the Vietnam War in the sixties, Pattaya has flourished as the world’s number one “sex tourist” destination. Add in the winter heat, sandy beach, exotic food, cheap rooms, and a massive influx of Russian money, and you have a heady mix. It’s Russia’s top tourist destination, and Russian is fast becoming the city’s second language. Cossack-themed restaurants and dive bars are filling up the town’s notorious red-light zone centered around “Walking Street.” That’s the place where your every deviant fantasy can be realized, from eating deep-friend frogs and scorpions to just about anything else you could ever want to experience. When world championship motocross hit the town last year, the usual entourage of riders, mechanics, team bosses, hangers-on, track workers, and press dove right in. Well, at least for a few days of wild partying, until the relentless heat, sleaze, and food took their toll and the serious business of racing took over. Some riders and even team manager got ill—Suzuki team boss and former world champion Eric Geboers was hospitalized with heat stroke, and factory Honda rider Max Nagl was just too sick to ride. So a year on, with the novelty of Pattaya already gone, most teams took their trip far more seriously. Some riders jetted home to Europe for a few days after the season-opening of Qatar GP a week before and risked jetting in on the eve of qualifying, all to retain some normality. Others stayed, and for that they would pay the price. The mechanics of KTM teammates Jake Nicholls and Matiss Karro were lucky to escape relatively uninjured after a horrific car crash leaving the Thai GP circuit on Friday evening. The pair, along with Matt Winterborne and Luke Corens, skidded to avoid hitting the central reservation on the motorway, which is still being built. Their car plummeted downa roadside ravine and was totaled. Protect yourself when riding. Get the safest motorcycle helmets to protect your head on the road. They were kept there for four hours while the police cleared the road. Corens then had to have stitches in his head. Not an inspiring start. Thaicross If there is one GP track that has a single defining feature then it’s the huge tabletop-to-single jump at the Thailand GP Circuit in Si Racha. The circuit sweeps up and down a small valley on the edge of the tropical jungle, but it’s the jump that everyone focuses on. Last year, torrential rain before qualifying started meant it was virtually impossible to clear. Only former world BMX champion Gautier Paulin made the massive 120-foot leap during the race, and only when he had a clear run. This year, perfect track conditions meant the majority of the top riders in both the newly named MXGP (450) and MX2 (250) classes were jumping it regularly. Even if it was a huge, spectacular chasm, many admitted they didn’t like it. World MX2 champ Jeffrey Herlings was close to being its first casualty on his first attempt as he over-jumped by around 20 feet and landed very, very hard. He bounced off the track, right across where a huge tractor had been parked just a lap before. It was a lucky escape, and Herlings was fortunate not to injure his ankle and wrists, “This is not motocross,” Herlings’ team boss, ten-time world champ Stfan Everts, said when he walked over to inspect the leap. “This is too big and stupid and someone will get hurt.” Bu the first real casualty was Tommy Searle, whose huge over-the-bars spill left him with broken bones in his arm and totally destroyed Kawasaki KX450F. Searle’s bike bogged on takeoff, the first victim of a fuel issue that was about to surface and blight the event. He didn’t have the speed to clear the jump, bailed over the front, and was slammed hard into the ground. His 52mm factory WP forks snapped on impact, exposing the oil and the springs. Searle underwent surgery in Thailand the next day before being flown home. JustOne helmets are perfect for motocross enthusiasts, because it is made of high-quality carbon fiber. Bad Gas So what was the issue? The teams were forced to use a new type of race fuel in Thailand. Civil unrest there in the weeks leading up to the event saw any dangerous goods—fuel included—placed on a banned-import list. Fuel supplier ETS has stocks in Thailand but didn’t have enough FIM-legal race fuel; instead, it sent stocks of a different-spec fuel, one not normally legal in FIM racing. The new gas was given the green light for the event, with the teams all agreeing; it was a higher octane than the fuels they normally use. This meant many teams hadn’t tested bikes with the fuel prior to arriving in Thailand, although Kawasaki was able to do some. But nobody had the chance to test the fuel at such high temperatures and humidity. As it would turn out, some bikes were more susceptible to the heat than others. Apparently, the proximity of their fuel tanks and fuel lines to the engine and exhaust system could be enough to boil the fuel. The KTMs, for example were largely unaffected. More on that later. Few of the riders experienced problems during the practice and qualifying sessions. Since these sessions are shorter this year, the bikes just didn’t get as hot, so the issues didn’t arise until race day. That’s when fuel—and tempers—boiled over. Searle’s team boss, Harry Nolte, was furious. “This fuel has affected so many teams—us, the factory Kawasaki team, and factory Suzuki teams at least,” he said after his rider’s crash. Searle was only the first rider to experience fuel problems, thought to be vapor lock that caused the bike to misfire. “Everyone has been plugging their laptops in to try to get the bikes to run right,” Suzuki’s Roy Matheson said. “The problem isn’t really the quality of fuel, it’s the lack of time we’ve had to test with it to get the settings right.” As the day lumbered on, temperatures exceeded 100 degrees as the humidity climbed, and more bikes had problems. The Kawasakis were especially susceptible: Steven Frossard pulled out of the race, Gautier Paulin struggled, and the KXF250s of Dylan Ferrandis and Arnaud Tonus were affected as well. Every lap, Paulin made the huge double jump—but only just as his bike was underpowered. Paulin was frustrated, having lost the championship leader’s read plate to double race winner Tony Cairoli, who was back in dominant form on his KTM, playing with his rivals before overtaking them and running away to two easy moto wins and the series lead. First loser was Clement Desalle, who was furious after his Suzuki slowed and started to misfire in the final MX1 race, which he had led until Cairoli passed him. Instead of riding to the podium after the race, the livid Desalle rode his bike back to the pits and sat on it, revving it wide open so everyone could hear it misfire. His teammate Kevin Strijbos also visibly slowed at the end of the race, losing a handful of places during the closing laps due to his ailing bike. For KTM, the race was much easier than for the others, as both Tony Cairoli (MXGP) and Jeffrey Herlings (MX2) dominated their motos. Both are multi-time champs in their respective divisions, so they were the obvious favorites to win before the fuel issues struck various other frontrunners. But the blight caused by the problems of so many others dampened their enthusiasm afterward. Future Sites It may not be great news for European fans of GP motocross or the teams who have to fund travel, but there are likely to be more long-haul GPs in the future, as Youthstream’s Guiseppe Luongo still plans to globalize the series. Thailand still has a final year of its contract to run, and Qatar has a five-year deal to stage the opening round, which means there are three more years to go there. Delegates from New Zealand and India visited the Thailand GP to thrash out a deal with Luongo and check out the logistics of running long-haul events. Finally, there is a potential return to the U.S, but Luongo is keen to avoid what happened when the series went there in 2010-’11. On those visits, the vast majority of American racers simply didn’t ride. Next time, Luongo wants the race to be after the nationals but before the Motocross of Nations. Then he could possibly end the series in South America or Mexico, as is planned for the current season. One thing is for sure: If they ever do come back, at least they can all count on some decent race gas.—Adam Duckworth
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Thailand Grand Prix, motorcycle race, motocross, motorcycle,
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