What We Noticed: Birmingham
March 12, 2024
First new venue of the year! Here’s what we noticed from Birmingham.
- Super Soft Tracks
Same thing as Daytona… and for that matter: Dallas, Detroit, A2, and San Diego too. The tracks this year have been extra gnarly when it comes to ruts. This past weekend in Birmingham it was a massive rain storm Friday that was to blame; it was raining incredibly hard for approximately 8 hours straight… you couldn’t walk outside in this without getting drenched in seconds. Massive kudos to the track crew for getting the track covered in time, then uncovered Saturday morning and prepped for the night show. It wasn’t muddy, but all that rain permeated the soil and kept the track super soft all night long leading to massive ruts.
- Tame Track
In response to the rain mentioned above, the track crew built the track extra tame this weekend: no whoops, no supercross triples, and mellower less steep rhythms. I could care less about the SX triples, but in my opinion, it’s disappointing not to have whoops. However, I do like that they’re experimenting with different track preps for wet conditions! It just turned out not to be wet/muddy on Saturday.
- Defeated 450 Field
Last weekend it was a fiery Tomac, this weekend it’s a pissed off Cooper Webb. These guys can’t figure out how to beat Jett Lawrence, and it’s taking a toll on them! A lot of them simply seem defeated at this point… Andrea pointed out after the press conference that Webb was visibly showing this in his mannerisms; definitely not happy with his 2nd place, but also admitting that he rode his best. Sexton dealt with this all summer, and now the rest of the 450 field is starting to come to terms with this as well. Jett is just too good for them!
- Roczen Rebound
After a disappointing couple of races, Roczen rebounded with an awesome come-from-behind ride in Birmingham! Oddly enough, I think the only guy that can maybe straight up pressure Jett is him… in fact, he’s the only rider in 450s to have pressured him all race and pass him (back in Chicago at the SMX race last year). Kenny has that healthy ego where when he’s feeling it, he truly believes he can beat anyone. I’d like to see him get a holeshot and put down some heaters with Jett behind him on one of those days where he’s feeling it. Unfortunately, those days don’t come consistently…
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Vialle is HERE
I talked about this last weekend, but it’s only more obvious now right? He mentioned at Daytona that he needed a win on a “real” supercross track and I think he got it in Birmingham… sure there weren’t any whoops, but his sheer speed elsewhere on the track makes me think he can win even on a track with hard whoops (which by the way, we haven’t seen hard whoops yet this year). Is he the title favorite? I don’t think so, but he’s definitely very capable of winning this title, and I don’t think I would have said that a few rounds ago.
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Irritated Deegan
Wow… a lot of adversity for Deegan this weekend. It’s all bubbling up in him… the lack of speed, dealing with the pressure of winning this championship, etc. It would appear he’s not handling it all too well: struggling with his riding and having temper tantrums on and off the track. He’s young and he will figure it out, but his “ideal” 250 career that he talked about after his Dallas win (winning this title and then 250 west next year before moving up to 450s) is not playing out as planned. He’s definitely not out of this title yet, but he needs to find more speed and start getting some better results; his competitors are starting to get the edge on him now.
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Cool City and Venue
Birmingham! New city for supercross, and a new city for us personally to visit. Overall, it was great! The stadium is brand new, right downtown and very quant: good seats for everyone. The pits were setup in a conference center across the street which I thought was cool. The city itself has good food and good beer… I would expect supercross to venture back here at least once more! The crowd turnout wasn’t great due to the weather, but if we can get nice sunshine in the future, it’ll be a really fun event to attend.
