Tom Pages nails a flair!

Videos like this remind us why we love FMX - innovation. Unit's Tom Pagès [Parj-eey!] just about lands a flair to dirt - check out the video below!

FSX at the 2011 Monster Energy Motocross of Nations

Saint Jean d’angeley in Southern France played host to the 2011 Motocross of Nations. It’s the one time during the Motocross season that the best riders on the planet all get together to race to represent their country, so we thought it was well worth a trip down to the South of France to capture all the action, first hand!

Friday is generally the quietest day of the weekend, with teams finishing off set up and riders signing on. After catching up with a couple of the riders in the pits we headed over to the signing on building next to the media centre. It quickly became packed with people – although when we say people we’re talking about the best Motocross riders on the planet! Dungey, Villopoto, Reed, Metcalfe, Cairolli, Roczen, Pourcel, Paulin, Herlings and Musqin to name a few – a pretty awesome list of riders! It was a little bit surreal seeing them all chatting away (Ken Roczen making everyone laugh as ever), and very different to your average race weekend when everyone is for themselves.

Early in the evening Monster Energy built a small Minibike course on the start finish, and held a tournament for a select few members from the media. It turned out to be pretty amusing, with some seriously viscous racing and a couple of gnarly crashes – Mikey Neale very nearly won but crashed on the final corner – seriously gutted!

Saturday at the Nations is Qualifying day, with open practice in the morning then three qualification races in the afternoon. Sun shone across the track all day, making for some great racing and near perfect track conditions. In MX1 Dungey and Cairoli battled it out for the entire race – Dungey ended up taking the win but only by a small margin, Americans 1, Europe 0! MX2 turned out to be a totally different race, Blake Baggett stormed to the win – looking extremely fast. Ryan Villopoto rounded off the American domination, making it 1-1-1 – an ominous sign for race day.

 Waking up on race day to rain chucking it down on the roof of the FSX RV isn’t good – and it lingered throughout the day. Before the main racing took place they had an LCQ for the teams that didn’t make it – a race won by Irishman Martin Barr – taking them through to the mains.

Race 1 started after a gnarly freestyle show from Remi Bizouard, Edgar Torronteras and Martin Koren, pulling off Super Flips, Underflips and some HUUGGEE whips.

Race 1 saw MX1 and MX2 line up – with Chad Reed taking the holeshot.Toni Cairoli had an off in turn 1 wrecking his chances for the day, he then came off again fighting back through the pack and injured his hand putting him out of the running for the weekend. Chad reed gapped second place Ryan Dungey who stayed lose behind the Aussie, until it started raining.

We’re not just talking about drizzle here; it turned into serious rain, creating insanely tricky track conditions and huge deep ruts. Watching from the top of the tracks biggest drop, they all started being a bit more cautious off the drop – simply because stopping at the bottom became nigh on impossible!

Two riders out of the hole field decided they were going to launch off it as if it was dry, one being Chad Reed and the second being Ken Roczen. Ken had been closing in on second placed Ryan Dungey for several laps, and when the rain started falling the German wonderkid decided to make his move. Coming off the drop RD scrubbed it landing about a third of the way down the hill, but Kenny decided to launch off the top and jump over the top of RD – one of the greatest moments of the MX year. It was a spine-tingling moment, reminiscent of the Pastrana-Roncada moment in 2000, on exactly the same piece of track. Chad Reed held on to take the win, a fantastic way to finish off his season and a welcome return to form after his huge crash at Millville.

Less than an hour later race two started, with MX2 and MX3 out on track. The MX2 boys hadn’t really recovered but gave it everything they had. Jeffrey Herlings from the Netherlands got the hole shot, and led for the first few laps. After a couple of laps, Gautier Paulin mounted a charge, overtaking the Dutchman mid-way through the race – to the delight of the French crowd!


 Over the years we’ve been to a lot of events but never, never have we experienced a crowd get so excited – 50,000 French fans leaning over the fence and screaming on their man, insane. Paulin went on to win the race and put France at the top of the pile, leading overall.

Going into the final race the USA trailed France by a couple of points, so they needed to win to stand a chance of taking the overall. They did that with ease, Villopoto took the win with Dungey around 10 seconds behind in second. Tyla Rattray took a well-deserved third with Britains Tommy Searle in 4th. Evgeny Bobryshev provided the highlight of the race; he led RV for several laps and without a fall could well have finished in the top 3.

Random short stories from the Des Nations

• Ryan Villopoto had a Fiat Punto hire car, which he drove himself.
• Andre Villa turned up to watch, he’s still recovering from his huge crash in Poland.
• Christophe Pourcel pulled in from Race 1 – to change his broken goggles.
• It was the first time Australia have ever been on the podium
• 68,000 people turned up over the weekend
• Cairoli crashed and hurt his hand, wrecking any chance Italy had.

Results
1st: USA
2nd: France
3rd: Australia

AMA Outdoors: Villopoto Champion - Pala Raceway

Team Rockstar Makita Suzuki finished off the season strong at the 12th and final round of the 2011 AMA Pro Motocross Championship held in Pala, California on Saturday as 2010 AMA Pro Motocross Champion Ryan Dungey and team mate Brett Metcalfe powered their Yoshimura-equipped Rockstar Makita Suzuki RM-Z450s to a first and fourth-place finish overall respectively.

In the first moto, Fox Motocross's Dungey got pushed out on the start and had to work his way up from 10th on the first lap. He quickly worked his Rockstar Makita Suzuki RM-Z450 up to third by lap six and pushed hard until the end, passing for second on the 13th lap and ended up crossing the line in second. After another tough start in moto two, Dungey again worked his way up to third by the halfway point.

The Rockstar Makita Suzuki rider put his head down and used the awesome power of his RM-Z to chase down the leader and make the pass in the closing stages to take the chequered flag for the moto win and the overall win for the day. The 2010 AMA Pro Motocross Champion finished off the season a close second to the top in championship points, amassing a total of six moto wins, 16 podiums and four overall wins.

"It was a good day here at Pala," said Dungey. "I was able to go two-one for the overall win today on the Rockstar Makita Suzuki RM-Z450 and that was good. I had a tough start in the first moto and finished second, but we were able to battle back and manage to get through the pack in the second to take the win and get the first overall. It was a tough battle - It was really cool that the championship came down to this last race. Although we didn't win, we did a great job getting through the season despite all the adversity we had to overcome. I'm really happy with the way my Rockstar Makita Suzuki team stepped up. It's nice to be able to walk away knowing we did everything we could. It was a lot of fun and there are a lot of great memories. I want to thank the man above, my whole team and crew, my family, all the fans, and everybody in Japan that makes this happen. I'm really looking forward to the Motocross of Nations next week. It's great to go there and represent your country. It's really something special."

Fiddyjam 2011

As well as travelling Europe for the biggest and best events in the world of action sports, we also like to help out and support the local ones. Last weekend is a perfect example of that - the Fiddyjam, near Oxford. Taking place once a year, it's a chilled out weekend of Minibike riding at Arncott Moto Parc near Oxford.

Most of the weekend consisited of an open track, whereby you can just rock up on the bike and ride for as long as you wanted - the best way to round off a hard season! On the Saturday night they had a couple of events to win some cash, the first being a race around Motocross track and the second being an FMX contest. £100 could be won in the race with the same amount up for grabs in the Freestyle competition - suddenly a chilled out weekend became competitive! After a couple of practice laps the race started from a make-shift start into a tight left hander - which took several riders out! After a couple of laps the field was spread out and the order stayed roughly the same 'till the end.

Once the race ended four guys decided they'd give Freestyle a go - that turned out to be epic! Three different events, best whip, best trick and best run then took place - with the highlight being the Honeymoster's no footed can.