Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

FIRST PERSON/OPINION

Via e-mail

Items of note (That may or may not be of interest to road racing fans or other slackers looking for any excuse to waste their employer’s time and bandwidth reading about motorbikes on the web) from last weekend’s AMA Supermoto double header @ Copper Mt.:

Two former Team Roberts KR3 riders, Mike Hale and Mark Willis were there racing. Both Hale and Willis qualified for the highly competitive 450 final on Saturday. Willis finished 11th, Hale 19th. On Sunday Willis did and finished 12th but Hale failed to qualify. Willis claims he plans to contest the entire 7 race series. (I didn’t talk to Hale)

Kevin Erion was in attendance and not as a casual spectator. He was wearing a yellow shirt and usually wearing an apron because he was working at the Dunlop truck. Erion, who owns and runs Dunlop’s tire sales operation at AMA Motocross Nationals, could be seen all weekend changing tires – manually! Yes, with a manual bead breaker and tire irons! According to a Dunlop employee (whose name I didn’t get but he did tell me he was from Finland) the ~40′ tractor trailer they used @ the Copper Mt. event is normally used @ MX/SX events. It doesn’t have a beavertail or lift gate and is usually so full of inventory that they don’t carry an automatic tire machine so all tire changes are done on simple stands (Basically a taller, fancier version of the 30-gallon drum used by old schoolers, dirt trackers and cheap bastards) using tire irons.

Cheers,

Tyler Sandell
Seattle, Washington