Exhaust #322: Was It Eli Or The Tire Choice?

Yeah, we'd show Wednesday coming your way on a Wednesday.

I'm Jason.

Well, I got thanks to our sponsors, Yoshimera, Throttle, Jockey, Yamaha, and Fly Racing.

Also, be sure to subscribe to RaceRex.

We always get cool new stuff.

I think we still have the sunshades for the front windshield of your truck, because it's

getting warm out.

So I had to close the blinds here in my office.

Today we're going to do a deep dive into the scoop tire, specifically the scoop tire,

any light tommak.

No, at this point on a Wednesday, it probably feels like beating a dead horse or tire to

continue to talk about this scoop tire decision.

But look, man, five races to go tied for the points lead, Eli tommak.

This one decision, we could look back at being the one that truly tilted it, because we now

saw in Nashville in qualifying and the heat race that tommak had the speed and the aggression

back, at least on a hard pack track, to potentially win the race and be the points leader with four

races to go.

Instead, he has his largest deficit of the year, and now he's third in the series, because

Ken Roxon jumped them to move into second and Hunter Lawrence is probably saying, look,

I just crashed in Detroit, had one bad race recovering with the risk from that.

And otherwise, I'm good.

So mentally, confidence, pressure wise, it changed a lot as well.

We're going to dive into that.

I have actual data, courtesy of the folks that we went fast and Clinton Fowler, our statistician,

and my man at racerex, Mitch Kendra, we're going to show you specifically on the track

where tommak was losing time in the main, and why the track was probably so much different

in the main compared to the heat race.

But first, an addendum, a correction to last week's show.

Did the deep dive into the Yamaha star racing model, which is dominating the sport?

If you want a synopsis of last week's show, real simple, it's the other teams better

start copying what star is doing, or they're not going to beat them consistently.

In fact, I could have just said that and probably signed off last week.

I could have just had like a 90 second episode of the show plugged the sponsors and go home.

Maybe I should have.

But a correction there, I spoke to Wilhawn.

I mentioned Wilhawn as a racer back in the day, had a multi-year contract with star, and

they only honored it for one year, and then he was sent packing.

What I have now found out is, part of the reason that star racing back in the day had so

many one and done amateurs is because they were going through a series of mergers with

other Yamaha teams as they were trying to figure out budgets.

So there was a time when star racing was going to merge with what was left of the old Yamaha

of Troy team that had a couple of starts and stops and returns.

That led to some conflicting contracts where one team had a rider under a deal and the

other team had a rider under the deal, but they collectively could only have a certain amount

of riders on the team.

I think another time star was going to be merged with Valley Racing, another old Yamaha

team, and the same thing happened.

Let's just put it this way.

Let's say each team had four riders under contract, but when they merged, there

was supposed to be a four rider team.

That means four of the eight had to be eliminated.

So the star racing team wanted to make it clear they'd ever hated Wilhawn.

They didn't leave them on the curb, they didn't have a choice contractually, and I believe

that also contributed to some of the ones and dunes in the past.

And I like to correct if I get facts wrong.

However, I will say look, I think back then they weren't the team that was attracting

the top amateurs in the first place.

They didn't have the program to elevate riders from already good to where they are now.

You see what they've done with cold Davies, for example.

So multiple things can be true at the same time, which is words to live by in life.

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

World.

Collective.

World.

Society.

Things are not always one way or another.

You hear what I'm saying?

Okay.

So thanks to Wilhawn and Yamaha for correcting me on that one star racing, Bobby Regan.

They're pulled away from the field right now.

Although to give you an idea of how competitive that team is, I was talking to Brad Hoffman

who was the Bobby Regan understudy over there, team principal, I believe they call him.

Just to give you an idea how that team operates, they're still not satisfied.

He was looking at these two 450s, a Cooper Webb bike and a Justin Cooper bike.

And he's like, we are getting some pressure over the 450 results.

Yes, they have a number one on Cooper Webb's bike, but they're not happy that this super

cross title is getting away from them.

And I believe there's a glint in the eye of everyone at star thinking, can you imagine

when we have the Deegan Davies 450 super cross team down the road?

That's how this team operates.

That's a very long correction.

Let's get into the toe back tire, but let's also mention our sponsors.

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And then Yamaha, this is cool.

So the last couple of weeks in the show, I've just been saying go to the Yamaha site.

Look at their line of motorcycles, ATVs and side by sides.

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Awesome job.

If you want some cool Yamaha casual apparel.

Also the show brought to you by Throttle Jockey.

We mentioned their retro line.

You can get really cool old school graphics.

So well done Throttle Jockey.

And of course, if you have a modern bike and you want modern graphics, not the retro stuff,

they've got that too.

They got seat covers too, by the way.

So a lot of cool stuff.

Grip tape, we mentioned that.

Also the show brought to you by Fly Racing.

How about the gear they busted out this weekend for Cooper Web and Brantley Gilbert?

Now I will fully admit this.

I know nothing about country music.

I am from New Jersey.

We didn't even have country music radio stations when I was a kid growing up.

I don't know anything about country music.

They told me that Brantley Gilbert has seven number one country hits.

That's like super legit, right?

And there he was riding a Yamaha with custom fly gear.

So Fly Racing put together Hunter Orange, not Hunter Lawrence Orange.

That would be Honda Orange, which is red these days.

Used to be Orange in the 80s.

Where was I?

Where's that bright orange?

They put the bright orange and the Camo together, cool custom kit.

I was there when JT said, hey, Brantley, I worked for Fly.

We helped put that gear together.

He was super stoked, well done on the custom stuff.

Of course you know about the Fly Racing Formula helmet took Cooper Web to the podium this weekend.

Fly Racing.

Thanks for joining this show.

And now, as promised, the deep analysis of Eli Tomac and the scoop tire.

Now that was a terrible race for him.

His worst result of the year or tied for the worst.

He has two twelfths, but it was the worst timing for sure because he goes from tied to the

points lead to, like I said, his biggest deficit of the year.

And now he has to jump rocks in as well.

But there is a little silver lining to everything that happened in Nashville before we go into

the dark cloud that I believe was the scoop tire for the main.

And that is, I think we have confirmation a that he's not hurt.

So myself and everyone that's speculated on that was definitely wrong.

I'll take the L there.

No doubt.

Second of all, shout out to the TV crew.

They give us some one-on-one time without cameras and recording devices on Friday with some

of the top riders just to see what headspace they're in.

And Eli came over, talked to us about three o'clock on Friday and he was fired up, like

fired, fired, fired up.

It was the most animated, I think I've ever seen Eli Tomac.

So that assured me, A, he's not hurt.

And B, he's not feeling some sort of incredible pressure even though the last three races weren't

great.

So that's good news on the Eli side.

And he's like, you might be seeing a different back tire on the bike.

And then I said, oh, is that mean the scoop?

And he said, oh, yeah.

And then we talked quite a bit about the scoop, we'll give you the history of the scoop tire.

Eli loves the scoop tire.

A, you know that.

Two, he ran it if the Australia WSX round and that was a very hard pack track and it didn't

work specifically in the loops.

Now I think this is where the confusion comes in.

A lot of people have gone back to look at Tomac using it on hard pack races before.

And making the scoop tire work there.

And he does.

Adam Seen's Rulow's theory on the ACJB pod is if you put enough load on a tire, sometimes

a tire that has less rubber on it, the more open pattern, a soft tire like the scoop,

can be made to work because it actually will bend so much that it will form to the racetrack.

That was the theory when Ryan Villopoto started using this obscure tire that I think Dunlop

had developed for sand tracks and MXGP back in the day, he started running it everywhere.

Including Supercross.

But the theory was it's not about how much rubber you're laying down on the track like

everyone thought would be better for hard pack, but how much that tire flexes and the smaller

the knobs, the more open the pattern, the more the tire flexes.

And I would believe no one can make a rear tire bend like Eli Tomac with the forces he

puts on the motorcycle.

So that all works.

And that's what leads people to say he ran it out the rock hard Texas motor speedway,

SMX playoff race a couple of years ago, yes, he did.

What do SMX playoff tracks not have?

They don't have whoops.

So when Tomac had that struggle fest in the whoops in Australia, that started to make

everyone think maybe for Supercross that tire is off the chart.

Don't pick it.

And then I believe RJ Hampshire had a big one in the off season in the whoops trying

to see if he could make that tire work.

I think the theory at that time was Tomac could still make it work.

It wasn't just a hampshire crash that led it to not work, but eventually Eli was convinced.

It's not going to work in Supercross whoops.

A couple of times guys tried it in practice at some of the softer races this year thinking,

okay, it's not going to spin because the track is tacky, but then they found out that

tire had actually too much traction and was pulling the back of the bike down and grabbing.

So the scoop tire was done for Supercross.

It was done unless you had a Supercross track without whoops.

So Eli going back to it, that was a risky play.

Now far be it from me to question the three time, two time right now, but wants to be could

be three time Supercross champion Eli Tomac because my gosh did it work in qualifying

and my gosh did it work in the heat race.

Why would it not work in the main?

Well, obviously the track is just going to continue to get more baked out and more dry

as the day goes on.

It was a daytime race and it was really hot and humid and sunny there.

So that's factor number one, but here's a different one that's going to exacerbate

that situation.

There was a delay before the 250 main event because timing and scoring went out.

They eventually got timing and scoring fixed and ran the 250 main, but at that point everything

was stacked up.

The traditional brakes you'd have between those two mains, which would allow a little

bit more track maintenance, they couldn't happen.

We literally interviewed the guys on the track.

We didn't even wait for them to walk up to the podium from the 250 class because of the

rush to try to get that gate to drop for the 450 main as quickly as possible.

Now, I don't know how much they could have done in that amount of time, but even one turn

or a little bit here and there could have made a massive difference between what Tomac

felt in the heat and in qualifying and what he felt in the main.

Now we're going to dive deeper into the data.

Thanks to we went fast and my man Mitch Kendra, we're going to show you the track map and

the segment times.

This is the track map here.

The segment segments of the track and these are Tomac's time in those segments.

This is his fastest time through each segment and where it ranks compared to other rotters.

Notice three areas that stick out 15th fastest in segment three, 12th fastest in segment six

and 15th fastest in segment eight.

What are those three sections of the track?

Flat turn sections, the section three where they go across by the mechanics, the start

straight section and the whoops.

You would think those would be the three areas where the scoop tire would maybe fall off

a cliff like obviously he could manage it in the heat, but maybe it was just a bridge

too far for the main event, especially considering the extra lack of track maintenance.

Tomac in the whoops on lap one, so his start wasn't good.

The Ken Roxon was able to make magic in the first couple of turns as he usually does

and turn a bad start into a decent track position.

Tomac lost spots from the first turn and then through the first half lap.

He was more than a second slower in the whoops right the first time they went through

them than some of his competitors on the track.

We don't have footage of where Tomac was in the whoops.

He could have been blocked by other rotters, but he got passed by several people in that

sector.

We know that and he was again more than a second off of some of the rotters on that very

first pass to the whoops.

I theorize that maybe Eli got to the whoops the very first time in that main event and

realized, oh, we got problems now.

And then that probably affected the rest of his race.

So I think this was the combination of a lot of things, championship pressure, bad start,

bad start.

We know throws rotters off rhythm for sure.

Then realizing, oh, this tire might not work.

I got to manage it.

The whole race.

I saw Tomac try multiple, multiple different techniques in the corner as they approached

the mechanics, the first right after the rhythm.

I saw him even stand up through it once trying to put as much pressure through the foot pegs

as he could to try to get the back of the bike to hook up.

It wasn't working.

Look at those sector times.

Look at how much there's a variance in three specific areas of the track.

I have to think much of that is tire-induced.

How do you got a better start with things?

Be different.

Sure.

But I think it was the tire.

And when I was doing a report for the TV show on the tire, so I was just chatting with

Brock Lover from Dunlop and he kept saying he's like, that is putting a lot of load on

that tire and whoops, supercross whoops, it's a big difference.

Nothing wrong with the tire.

In fact, if anything, it's a huge compliment that the scoop tire has now gotten so versatile

that it would even be considered.

No way the old scoop tire or the previous couple versions of that would have ever been considered

for this.

The fact that it's becoming a potentially viable option is actually credit to Dunlop

for getting it to where it's even a choice.

But I don't think it was the right choice.

But here's the silver lining that I'm going to mention.

Take the tire out.

Let's say he didn't do the tire thing.

Do we also think, look, I think the main event problem was the tire.

But do we really think that the only reason Tomac was back in the heat race and the qualifying

was because of the tire?

I don't.

I think it was just back.

I think it was just genuinely back.

He kept telling me that the soft tracks have been a problem for him the last couple of

years.

Detroit.

He's had some really bad ones, including this year and the year that he got on pump and

we thought his shock was broken or something and it just turned out he rode bad and got

lapped.

Yes, he won in Seattle, but he said Seattle, they build the track expecting that there's

going to be rain in mode and it's not very steep.

So it kind of hides some of the flaws that he or his motorcycle might have in that terrain.

He was so pumped to get back on harder tracks.

Now it could rain this weekend.

We could have a muddy triple crown.

That's a whole nother story in Cleveland, but let's say it doesn't.

Let's say it's not super soft.

If the weather holds at all these races, we're not going to have St. Louis Detroit Seattle

type conditions again.

And if you're Tomac, I think mostly it was we're off of those super rotted tracks and that's

why I was back.

I gambled, lost with the tire, let's not do that again.

If you're a Tomac fan, you just wanted a sign that he still had it and you got that sign.

The math is terrible now.

That one finish really messed up the points, but you at least have a sign that Eli Tomac

can still ride like the Eli Tomac from the beginning of the season.

And that's the silver lining you want.

15 points, four races, two riders.

That's going to be a huge jump.

Can you do it?

Oddly maybe you need to pray for rain and ruts and soft terrain and some luck.

But at least there was a sign that Eli Tomac's back.

Or get the scoop, Mr. Hard Pack as Eli said is back at the races.

We'll see how it turns out triple crown day race in Cleveland this weekend.

Thanks for watching.

Oh wait, wait, I'm not done.

Yes, I saved it.

We have a guest this week.

Jolique Swoll, friend of the show, love talking to Jolique, one of the funniest guys

of the races.

And now crush her heartbreak tearing the Achilles in his other leg.

I caught up to him after the race.

He was hanging out at Nashville.

He had put out a social media post right after the injury, kind of saying maybe this is

it for my career.

It's been a good ride.

He doesn't feel that way now.

We talk about that.

Jolique's our guest.

That's our show.

See you in Cleveland.

Appreciate it.

Oh Jolique Swoll, you're alive.

Okay, this is not exactly what you want.

No.

It's kind of a sweet look.

No I got.

I got a different kind of boot on this weekend.

Yeah.

Is what it is.

Yes.

Okay.

I heard everybody with a post, you should never post right after an injury.

We got scared.

Yeah.

Are you feeling not feeling better physically but better mentally?

Yeah, I'd say so.

I mean, I just, yeah, I was, I quit for like four days.

I was don't.

Oh, you did.

You were don't into her bike before that.

But on like the end of the fourth day I was like, I just, I, I ain't no fucking quitter,

you know.

Yeah.

I'm just like, I'm back.

But, oh, yeah.

I've learned that now.

Don't post after.

Yes.

But honestly, that's just, that's how I felt in the moment.

I was done.

I'm nervous.

But the story would just be too good to come back, you know.

Yes.

From double killies.

Double killies.

Time after time.

Feel like, you know, nobody's done that yet in the sport.

So like at this point, if I got to be the dude that gives somebody a little bit of hope

when they get to this point.

So.

Oh.

Nobody knows why killies tear for the most part.

No.

So you still don't know anything for the third time of why, do you?

No.

But this time is a little bit more of a, like, understanding, like, first time was, you

know, just happens.

Yeah.

It's what it is.

And then I did a revision on it.

So it wasn't like I really did my killies.

It was just a little patch up work, kind of.

Okay.

But this time was like, hey, you just pretty much did 10 months out of the year on one leg.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

Everything.

Hopping around, crushing.

Yeah.

All the PT.

That's not even accounting for, like, when you come back to riding, like, doing most

your weight on one, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's like, it just maybe this time, you know, you had a lot of time on a lot of wear and

tear, like, nowhere else for it to go, you know what I mean?

Yes.

The imbalance of one side.

Yeah.

First of all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So unfortunate, because this is now, you know, the third surgery where I didn't even

crash.

So.

It sucks.

And especially when I feel like this time in Supercalc, I was like, I mentally was like,

okay, you know, I got nine days on the bike.

I'm going to build myself into it and I started out like slow and just kind of not working

myself up, getting into it, Birmingham, I finally felt like more like myself, or closer

to myself, you know, ended up, I think P3 in quality, which I'm not a practice guy.

So for me, I was like, it's going to be a good night.

You know, I'm ready.

Like, I feel good.

I'm coming and then literally on, on, off, just blew it up.

I knew instantly it came over, like I did the just lap of just, like, sorrow, I guess,

I'm sure.

Like I let it, I came back to the mechanics area and like, I couldn't even look, my guys

in the eyes, like, yeah, I was just, I just knew it, you know, yeah.

So it sucks.

Mentally, it is, it is a challenge, you know, but I feel like, dude, I mentally and just

from proving it to myself, like I, I know I can be a race winner, I know I can maintain

for wins and maintain for a championship, I just need a little luck on my side at this

point.

I feel like all throughout my career, I've been grinding to get to a certain point where

I can believe that.

Yeah.

And I feel like I've gotten there and I feel like I've proved it to myself in like practice

and like all the little things that I need to do.

And right now, I just don't have the luck, you know.

It will happen.

It will happen though.

There we go.

That's much better than the first four days.

Yeah, so we got, you know, we got two strong Achilles good thing is I don't need, I don't

have to use a third of Achilles, I only have two feet.

Oh, okay.

So we can't have a third.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alright.

So we're doubled out.

Got two.

Unless you're counting for the third leg that I have.

Oh.

Don't tear that.

Don't tear that.

No, I'm just joking.

We're good.

Yeah.

Yeah.