Ep 240: LA SMX

Industry Seating

Host Jason Thomas reviews the recent LA SMX event, contrasting its track quality with the previous Columbus round. The episode delves into t

Key takeaways

The LA track was graded as a B or B+ due to a lack of creativity despite decent racing.
Ryder DeFrancisco has a mathematical path to the 250 title despite never having won an individual race.

Main topics

LA SMX Review
250 Class Championship Chase

Notable quotes

All these podcasts are just a huge giant bench racing session.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep look into the financial complexities and i

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) A Pulp MX Network Production. A Speaker 1 (0:09) cerebral and experienced look into the racing action from the week that was. This is Industry Seating with Jason Thomas. Presented by Guts Racing, Works Connection, RaceRadios.com, Unmatched Supplements, Firepower Parts, Grandstone Boots, and Fly Racing. Speaker 2 (0:45) Hi, everybody. You know what? I realized that every single podcast I've ever done, and I don't know how many episodes I've done. A couple hundred, I think. That's great. I should know that. But every single time I've ever done a podcast, I've always intro'd it with, welcome to the Interested City Podcast. And I decided on the plane. I'm in Arkansas, driving over to the Branson, Missouri area. So if there's road noise in the background, I apologize, but these things have to be done sometimes. I realized that on the plane flying over that, you know what? I'm not going to do that. Maybe I do it sometime moving forward, but I need to change it up. And so, yeah, here we are. I want this podcast to feel like you and I are having a conversation, but you're not getting to talk. kind of kidding, but I just don't want it to feel so formal, you know, like, um, we're just talking about dirt bikes, you know, and I want it to feel casual, like bench racing and, um, that, cause that's what it is for me. All these podcasts are just a huge giant bench racing session. And some people don't like that. Um, there are little, there are people that I work with on the broadcast team that are just not huge fans of bench racing. And I, That's fine. Like I understand their perspective. It's just doesn't happen to be my perspective. I very much love this stuff. And also you should know if you hear directions blaring in the background, I apologize. I don't think it comes through, but just keep in mind because I am driving and I'm in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. So anyway, we are going to talk about LA a little bit. You can call it Carson if you want, but I actually was told by someone official to just call it LA. So I'm just going to call it Los Angeles or LA. It just makes more sense. No one even knows what Carson is or where it is. It's kind of irrelevant. So Los Angeles round and goings on there, kind of the things that went on a little bit this week, and then we'll talk a little bit about this coming weekend. I don't want to preview this weekend too much. Speaker 2 (2:58) But I will talk about it a little bit and then we'll obviously review it next week before I go over to France for motocross nations. And I don't know if I'll do it before. Maybe I'll get it done before I go to France. I go to France on Tuesday, the 28th. I just don't know how that's going to go. But either way, I will definitely review this final round and also talk about motocross nations preview, which I definitely want to do. That one's a lot of fun for me. Speaker 2 (3:26) So without further ado, let's thank the sponsors of this podcast. Guts Racing, best seats in the game, period. Go to gutsracing.com. Who else do we got? Works Connection, of course. Eric Phipps actually getting him some new gear built, Fly Racing gear. Send him out, get him looking good. But you can go to worksconnection.com. Check out all the cool things they have there. Pro Launch Start Devices. It's basically the best accessory company in the game. Full stop. Speaker 2 (3:54) What else? Race-rentals.com. And you can tell I'm not reading this. This is all from memory. So even better. Go to race-rentals.com. Based in Wickenburg, Arizona. My friend Jason Cobb and his team, they have trophy truck rentals, side-by-side rentals, all sorts of different races you can partake in. They have a lot of like hiring clientele that kind of do this. And I know this world a little bit just from my various business. identities. C-suite people, they simply don't have the time to own side-by-sides and go do all the work that it takes to load up all the stuff. They don't have that kind of time. They're in the office all the time. They're traveling around. That's how they got to be where they are in the business world is because they dedicate their life basically to business. There's compromises with that and there's obviously benefits that come with it. The benefits are they can afford to do things like this where race-rentals can take all of the burden away from that. And you just get to fly in, show up, and have a fantastic experience. You can learn to drive trophy trucks. You can learn to, if you've never driven a side-by-side, you can do that too. So anyway, check it out, race-rentals.com. Speaker 2 (5:11) Prime Food Distributors, I got stocked up for football season. I've only had one of the steaks so far, but I promise you I'm going to change that. My season's going to slow down a little bit here soon. I am doing... Speaker 2 (5:24) I'm going to motocross nations and then I signed deals to do a race in New Zealand and Australia for Australia supercross series at the end of October and early November. So that's exciting. Also hurts my off season a little bit, but that's okay. This is what I choose to do. And then it looks like I'm going to do Paris again. So as soon as I say I'm going to have all this time off and a break, I'm starting to fill up a little bit. I am not complaining. That's, you know, for me getting to work on television at these, these level of races is like my life's dream, even more than racing pro. Truly it is like I, this is more of a dream come true than even getting to race professionally as crazy as that sounds. And maybe that's ridiculous for some of you to wrap your head around. But for me, it happens to be the truth. Anybody that knows me really well, my mom's going to listen to this and nod her head if she didn't fast forward to the commercials. she's going to tell you that I didn't really like the racing aspect that much. I was not a very happy person when I was racing. I didn't even like when I was younger, I didn't even like riding as much like that came around. I liked the sport and the competition of it. But this side of it, the TV side is all, is all enjoyment for me. I mean, yes, it's stressful and yes, there's pressure. And yes, I'm always worried about looking like an idiot and I'm worried about not doing good enough job. And I'm worried about losing my job and not getting a new contract next year, which I currently am terrified of that. But when I am in the moment doing it, it is my best self. It is the most fun and the most enjoyment professionally that I've ever had. So there's that. So anyway, back to what I was trying to say. I'm going to get to eat some of my prime food distributor steaks. They are the best in the world. And I'm not just, you know, no tomfoolery there. They supply the best restaurants. Places that I guess I could afford it. I don't know that I would spend the money to do it. I'm, I'm, I don't know, probably not the best business decision or personal life decision for me to be eating at places like that. Um, but it's, it's literally the best quality steak there is bar none period. Like, and I am so fortunate that Speaker 1 (7:38) I am supplied with this stuff. Speaker 2 (7:40) Uh, anyway, moving on firepowerparts, uh, flyracing.com. Um, everybody. pitching in to be a part of this thing. I thank them all so much. And I almost forgot Grandstone shoes, Grandstone boots, because I'm not looking at anything. I'm going off memory. So thank you to all of them for being a part of this thing. Let's, let's do the damn thing. Let's talk about what happened in LA and we all know, and I'm going to have coffee during this. So bear with me. Um, listen, we all know that Columbus wasn't great. And, and okay. I take a lot of heat message boards, social media, YouTube comments for being a Homer for the series. Okay, cool, man. Yeah. I'm not trying to deny that. Like if anybody ever thought that I wasn't going to have the back of people that were giving me crazy opportunities and paying me. I don't know what to tell you. Like that was just never going to happen. So if you were expecting that, you're going to be really disappointed. Now, I'm not going to straight up lie to people and tell you something was awesome when it wasn't. And Columbus wasn't awesome. I have no issue saying that. What I'm not going to do is go in on stuff like Steve does and just bury stuff and bury people and bury effort. I'm not going to do that because I know that a lot of people tried really hard to make Columbus good. And the thing was, it was kind of doomed from the start. I don't think there was a lot of. Speaker 2 (9:12) I don't think there was much chance of Columbus ever being a home run. I just don't. I went there. Listen, I went there in June. I went there, Jason Weigant and myself and a few of the television people went there before anybody else other than some of the logistics people from Feld. So I had a better idea. And I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you, I knew long, long ago that this wasn't going to be awesome. And I tried to preface people. I told Steve, like, if you had access to my phone. you would see that Weege and I told Steve for months that it was just don't get your hopes up for Columbus. It's going to be rough. We didn't know it was going to be muddy, but we knew it wasn't going to be great just because the venue was not an A-plus venue. It wasn't, and it was never going to be. So I was not let down by Columbus because I knew exactly what we were walking into. The average person who had no idea, you know, you hadn't been there, you hadn't talked to me. Um, and I, it wasn't like I was publicly spraying this everywhere. I would never do that. But if you just went in there thinking it was going to be a home run event, then I feel for you. I do. And I understand your disappointment. Surely I do because you had no idea what you're walking into and you had the best of, um, expectations. So It wasn't awesome. We moved past Columbus. We're out of there. So moving on to LA, I had also been there. I went there end of July, right after Washougal. And I knew it was a lot better. Is it the LA Coliseum? No, it's not. Is it Cowboy Stadium? No. Is it even a drop down from that? No, but it's still pretty good. Like legitimately, it's pretty good. I didn't have any real complaints about it. So I don't even, like Steve still didn't even go. He didn't even go to round two. So if he's complaining about LA, I kind of don't care. He didn't even go to it. So I, I kind of just brush it off. Um, he complains about everything, literally everything, unless it's Sammy Hagar. So I am like, I do nothing but hear all of the things that he says does. Um, it just gets really old for me. So I, I just kind of. Speaker 2 (11:30) I don't try to think of the right word. It just rolls off my shoulders. I give him a hard time, but I don't really listen to a lot of things says because he's so jaded. And if you listen to us argue, he's always everything's so negative. And I have been that way in my life and I try not to be. I really try to be optimistic because even when things are going badly. It could be a lot worse. And I forget that at times, how blessed I am, how fortunate I am and things, even in your worst moment, I promise you things could be a lot worse than they are. It doesn't feel like that sometimes, but it always can be worse. So I try to be more optimistic. And so like LA, I thought it was okay. Was, you know, like if you're gonna like come down on something. Speaker 2 (12:17) for LA. Um, I mean, if, if you're really trying to go in, right, like you just have a, an ax to grind, the track wasn't good. It wasn't, I'm not going to sit here and tell you the track was awesome. It was, I wasn't stoked on the track at all. I thought the venue was good. I thought the racing was pretty decent. Not every race was great, but some of them were awesome. The final 450 moto was incredible. Speaker 2 (12:42) I thought overall, you know, if you're A to F, standard grading, Columbus sucked. I'll give it a D. LA, I'm like, I don't know, B? Fine. B plus, maybe if you want to, like, you know, if you want to be optimistic, B plus. It wasn't an A. It wasn't an A. You know, like, A is reserved for great events. You know, LA Coliseum in 23, that was an A. Some supercrosses we get. Those are an A. Anaheim won. Unless it's muddy, always an A. This was a B. It's fine. No big deal. Nothing to really complain about too much other than the track lacked creativity. There was no passing and it really didn't accomplish what we were setting out to do, which was have a hybrid Supercross motocross track with significant distinguishable aspects of both. And we didn't get that. So I'm trying to be as transparent as I possibly can. Because I don't like to come across as someone who only sees things one-sided because I'm working for them. That's not cool. I don't want to do that. So I'm trying to call balls and strikes here. But I'm not going to bury anybody either. So... Speaker 2 (13:51) Track not good. Venue pretty decent. It was, you know, like, could it have better amenities? Could it have better suites and better rest? Yeah, yeah, totally. It absolutely could. But like convenience, it's right in LA. So you fly in, fly out. Airport's like four or five miles away. You know, like a lot of that kind of stuff helped. It's in Southern California. The weather was just, I mean, A plus. If you're looking for a weather report, which I tend to do, A plus. across the board on weather. I actually stayed in Southern California on Sunday and Monday and just went to the beach, did absolutely nothing. It was incredible, beautiful part of the world, wildly expensive part of the world, but beautiful. And, um, yeah, so weather was awesome and the racing, you know, like the two 50 class, like not, not a whole lot there, you know, like kind of boring, no real battles at the front. Um, You know, like I think really it was more about the storylines of things than it was the actual like battling on the racetrack, which is a little unfortunate. No question. I'd love to see more like passing for the lead would be cool. It's Speaker 1 (15:05) fair ask. Speaker 2 (15:06) We Speaker 1 (15:06) didn't get any, but it was a fair ask. Speaker 2 (15:09) You know, I thought Beaumair did a great job winning. You know, he picks up a 50K payday from the track, whatever his bonus is from KTM. I have no idea how the bonuses work for SMX. I'm guessing since they're required for them to race, it's reasonable, say anywhere from 30 to 50K more. You factor in gear deals, goggles, all that. It's probably anywhere from 80 to 100K a day. I think that's a fair minimum to say. If he made less than 75 to 80K, he's getting ripped off. I'll tell you that right now. So strong day for him. Keeps himself in the fight for the championship, which is reasonable. You know, Kitchen also, I think he got second overall, I think. Anyway, 7-1 for second. Speaker 2 (15:56) He's the points leader. And yeah, the first moto sucked. He did not ride well. I didn't know if he was hurt. I didn't know if the bike was messed up. I didn't know what was going on. You know, he said on the podium that he just didn't ride good and he doesn't know who was riding his bike because it certainly wasn't him. I echo those sentiments. That's a that's a lot of transparency. That's a really fair comment to make. He said Mitch got onto him, which Mitch probably should have gotten onto him because that wasn't worth a damn. Not when you're Levi Kitchen, not when you have a decent start. You cannot move backwards. You are paid far too much money, and you are the points leader. Can't go backwards. So he fixed it. The second one wins the second moto, and he keeps the red plate going in, and there's really zero, zero cushion there. There's no, what's the right word? Speaker 2 (16:44) margin for error, padding, protection. He's got to win. Basically, if he wants to win the title, outside of craziness, he needs to go win the race. And Ryder D in the same breath. Ryder D's only three down. And when you have triple points, it could get really wonky for sure. That's for sure. If you get like they all have crashes and they're back in the pack or whatever, yeah, it could get nutty real fast. But on a typical race. evening and as good as those guys have been riding you got to think that Bomer has the outside chance and then one of the other two is going to get this thing Speaker 2 (17:20) So it's not a bad setup for, you know, intrigue or suspense for the title. You know, I think it's better than the 450 as far as that goes. I don't think the racing would be as good. Excuse me. But I think the setup for the championship is better because it's tighter and it's kind of anything goes. And I think we're going to have a lot of back and forth and chaos on kind of the points as they run dynamic. And I just think there's going to be a lot of uncertainty about who's winning when during the race. So I kind of like how that all sets up. You know, some interesting points for Ryder DeFrancisco. There's a scenario where he gets second in the race.