Steve Cox | May 1, 2018
Takeout Isn’t Just For Dinner
COLUMN
At the Foxborough Supercross a little bit over a week ago, Red Bull KTM’s Marvin Musquin led the entire main event, only for Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac to sneak by as the racers got the white flag. A few turns later, Musquin took probably the only shot he was going to have on the final lap and just absolutely dirtied Tomac.
And then the internet exploded.
Most of what I saw was anti-Musquin sentiment, and I’m just left wondering what’s going on with our sport.
The first time I got taken out was at Perris Raceway when I was probably 12 years old, back in 1989. Another kid just came into this corner and cleaned me out. I came into the pits crying, “Dad, he took me out! Did you see that?! That’s not fair!”
My dad responded with seven words:
“You shouldn’t have left the door open.”
That was it. He had absolutely no sympathy for me. And I learned. I learned all kinds of ways to defend against those sorts of moves, and I came up with quite a few of my own.
I became a bit of a master of taking guys out from in front of them. If there was a guy all over me and I couldn’t shake him, one of my go-to moves was to fake like I was going to take an outside line and bait the guy into the inside rut, then I’d brake hard and dive into that rut before him. When I did it right, I’d clip his front wheel with my swingarm and he’d highside (usually pretty gently, since it worked best in tight turns, so speeds were relatively low). I’d come in with tire tracks on my swingarm probably once a month or so.
But here’s the thing, looking back at the history of our sport, there’s a line between what has always been acceptable, and what isn’t, and that line isn’t always definite. For example, cross-jumping (hitting a jump and crossing into someone else’s line in the air) other racers is not acceptable. Neither is fading into someone else’s line while skimming the whoops. And the final no-no is the classic T-bone, where the racer on the inside of a turn hits the side of the other racer’s motorcycle with his front wheel. Those things can seriously hurt other racers.
However, just about anything else in a corner is fair game. Always has been, and I hope it always will be.
But nowadays, I’m not so sure. There was a lot of hubbub around Zach Osborne’s now-legendary last-lap move against Joey Savatgy for the 2017 250cc Eastern Regional Supercross Championship almost exactly a year ago. Osborne was fined $5000, which I thought was an awful example to set. There isn’t a single champion in the history of the sport who wouldn’t have done exactly what Osborne did, and most of them would’ve done much worse for a title.
At Daytona this year, Tomac went in really hard on Monster Energy Yamaha’s Cooper Webb during their heat race, ending with them both going down. The announcers, and many of the fans, were surprised by the move, but if you pay close attention, Webb was cross-jumping Tomac on the prior straightaway. Webb was endangering Tomac’s well-being, and obviously Tomac didn’t have a lot of patience for that sort of thing. And he shouldn’t. I think Webb brought that takeout move on himself.
So, there are probably going to be people reading this from Tomac’s race team, and I predict they won’t like my analysis, but that’s because they’re biased in Tomac’s favor. And that’s totally expected. The thing is, though: If you reversed this move late in the Foxborough main event, making it so that Tomac was the one who took Musquin out, I’d be saying the exact same thing. I promise. I like Eli Tomac. He’s a genuinely good dude. But in terms of this incident specifically, I think there were a few different issues at play:
First, Musquin incorrectly stated that there was “no line” there after the Foxborough main event, but there definitely was, and Tomac had used it. The problem is, Tomac was behind Musquin for that entire main event, so he couldn’t have known all of the lines Tomac was taking. It’s likely that Tomac’s line there surprised Musquin, but Musquin was committed. That’s why the two racers hit so incredibly hard. And it was a really, really rough move in the end.
Next, Musquin isn’t known for being that aggressive, so maybe Tomac thought he was safe. If it were Justin Barcia behind him, for example, maybe Tomac would’ve done something differently. I don’t know exactly what, but something.
And finally, there’s no time to be patient on the last lap of a race. Musquin was justified in “rushing it” and just going for the win.
This is the kind of thing that the racers have always been able to sort out on their own. Chances are good that the next time Tomac has a shot at Musquin, he’s going to put the KTM racer into Row F. And here’s the thing: Tomac will be justified in doing that. Racers have always been good at policing themselves, and when one particular guy starts becoming too much of a bowling ball, like Vince Friese, other guys just start taking them out pre-emptively. Eventually, that racer either learns, or their career is ruined because they’re always on the ground.
But ultimately, I have to say that a primary reason for the internet backlash against this move probably isn’t about the move in particular, but rather the fact that Musquin’s French and Tomac’s American. Or the fact that some fans don’t like Musquin for “moving over” for his teammate Ryan Dungey last year.
In the end, I don’t care who does this kind of thing to whom. Supercross tracks are tight, and if we want passing, sometimes people are going to make contact with one-another. Sometimes, that contact is going to be really heavy. And sometimes, the guy on the losing end of that contact will pay the other guy back for it at a later date.
And as far as I’m concerned, and as far as our sport’s history is concerned, that’s racing.CN