Story and Photos by Jeff Kardas

Well, it’s finally over. The 2008 Monster Energy Supercross Series concluded this past weekend at UNLV’s Sam Boyd Stadium in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. Chad Reed was crowned the 2008 Supercross class champion while Ryan Dungey schooled the best of the Lites riders from each coast to take a hard-earned and somewhat shocking win over Ryan Villopoto in the Dave Coombs, Sr. East/West Shootout for the second year in a row. That means Dungey is batting 1.000 in East/West Shootouts, since this is only his second year racing pro Supercross. Like other years, however, there’s so many things going on for the Supercross finale that the actual racing itself can seem like a sideshow. What with the various one-off helmet designs, cool jersey lettering, bike graphics, the crazy wide-open pit party (this year was complete with a wake-board demo) and all of the various silly-season rumors to round-up, well, let’s just say that the Vegas race is sometimes a bit overwhelming for a journalist. Regardless, we took a look around and kept our ears to the ground to see what we could come up with…

            If you missed out on the race report, click the links below to get all caught up. There is also a link to a release about National Champion Grant Langston’s latest injury.

Race Report: Read about Chad’s second SX Championship.

Race Report Gallery: Kardy’s best shots from the night’s racing.

Grant Langston Injury Update: The facts about GL’s latest broken bone.

(Above Photo): The intimate Sam Boyd Stadium appeared to be sold out.

(Above Photo): Custom Leatt graphics we all the rave in Vegas.

Perhaps for the first time ever, it seemed that custom helmet paint may have taken a backseat to another form of Vegas self-expression: custom Leatt brace graphics. We saw many riders sporting gambling and casino inspired looks on their braces, including the Geico Powersports (formerly Torco Racing Fuels—more on that later) team, and Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki. While these definitely looked cool and different than the usual plain black or standard team offerings, it was a little disappointing to have fewer works of art from master helmet painters out and about. Another fun and simple way to dress-up for the show is with one-off jersey lettering, such as the Monster/PC guys had, or riders like Josh Hill, who gave a shout out to one-off sponsors such as Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. We didn’t see one single example of unusual bike graphics though, which seemed unbelievable. One caveat to that observation, however, was a simple “Sands” logo that appeared fairly prominently on Jason Lawrence’s Boost Mobile/YOT YZ2250F. The Sands is an upscale Hotel/Casino that has been picking up a lot of steam over the past couple of years as THE place to be in Vegas for the moto-glitterati, so maybe J-Law was able to strike a deal with them for this one race. Or, maybe, they gave him a 10% discount on the penthouse he rented for the weekend in trade for real estate on his bike for the race. That discount would’ve saved him $2500/night, after all… you do the math on that one!

(Above Photo): Hill was sporting some cool one-off jersey lettering.

(Above Photo): Geico Powersports is now the title sponsor for the Factory Connection Honda team.

Some new graphics that really caught our eye, though, were that of the team formerly known as Torco Racing Fuels/Factory Connection/Honda. Let’s now get used to saying Geico Powersports/Factory Connection/Honda, since Torco has stepped back as the presenting sponsor, and Geico is now in for the duration of the year. We knew Torco had backed off on a lot of its sponsorships in other forms of racing earlier in the year, but apparently that finally spread to their moto team as well, despite hearing otherwise months ago. Regardless, what was truly impressive is how well the team did in making every single reference to Torco on their bikes, team gear and racing gear just completely disappear—there was no sign of it anywhere!. Just little Geico lizards and huge yellow Geico Powersports logos were present all over everything. Props to the team for making a complete and seemless transition with that major change.

(Above Photo): This year's championship was Reed's second SX class title. His first came in 2004 where—like this season—he battled Windham until the end.

(Above Photo): Reed was wearing new soon-to-be-released 2009 Thor gear.

Other freshness for Vegas included a new ‘do and (even bigger) diamond earrings for the new champ Reed. Much more interesting, though, was the preview of the 2009 THOR gear, which he wore in practice and the night show. The stuff looked killer (as usual) with super-clean designs and an unusual clear/gel type outer padding on the pants. TLD also debuted some new gear on Josh Summey and Gavin Gracyk.

(Above Photo): Gavin Gracyk has been hard at work preparing for the outdoors aboard his new bike.

Speaking of new, and of Gavin, we also had a quick chat with Gracyk, who was finishing up with his Troy Lee Designs/Red Bull/Honda Lites season and was looking forward to the outdoors on his new Joe Gibbs Racing YZ450F. We mentioned to Gavin that he may have a bit easier go of it now that Langston would be out for the first few rounds, and his reply was predictably Gracyk. “I would rather he was out there actually. I want to race all of them—Langston, Stewart, Reed—I want to race the best of the best. I don’t ever want anyone to say, ‘yea he did good, but so and so wasn’t there.’ I just want everyone to be healthy and be out there going for it all season long”. Apparently Gavin’s been spending a lot of time on the new bike, too, and says, “That’s all I’ve been doing is riding the new bike on outdoor tracks—I haven’t been riding the 250F or Supercross at all. I just want to get out of here in one piece and be ready for Glen Helen.” Following this conversation, Gracyk went out and appeared to have at least tweaked his knee during the Lites LCQ after finishing a disappointing 14^th in his heat. We’ve received no word on the severity of or even confirmation of an injury.

Falling under the category of ‘unusual’ would certainly have to be the track. Historically, Vegas is always fast, blue-groove, hot and dusty. This time, it was all of those things and more. In easily the most insane and exciting feature of any Supercross track in a long, long time, the start straight spilled into the stadium via a slight downhill and kink to a pinned 100 yard run at a single to flat-lander and into a 180 left hand turn. The 450’s were fourth gear pinned, and the Lites guys sounded like they could use another gear – it was truly an epic thing to witness. Miraculously, there were no massive get-offs that we’re aware of, and to make it even more interesting, the track workers even put yard markers along the side of the track to keep score on who jumped the furthest. Last we heard, Villopoto made it around 40 yards from the take-off. Another exciting feature were the four whoop sections, one of which was gnarly enough to send both Josh Grant and Kyle Partridge into na-na land, at least for a while, but both have checked-out okay. After these and the other challenging features on this track, it’s a wonder more riders weren’t put on the injured reserve for round one of the nationals coming up in three weeks.

And how about that Ryan Dungey kid? Talk about having something to prove, Dungey (who was runner-up in the west) and Villopoto (runner-up in the east) both rocketed to the front in the East/West Shootout and just simply dropped the east champ Trey Canard. With all due respect to Canard (who also put a huge gap on teammate Dan Reardon in fourth), the front two were in a league of their own, lapping all the way through Kyle Chisholm in eighth in just 15 laps. “I was just back there trying to be patient with Ryan,” Dungey said of his race. “I could see he was making little mistakes here and there and I could see I was gaining on him, so I just told myself to calm down and keep pushing until an opportunity arose.” That opportunity took the form of lapped rider Broc Hepler, who accidentally tangled with Villopoto just before the start of the final lap—Dungey pounced. “I saw him have trouble with a lapper and I just went around the outside and kept it pinned.” The result was Dungey’s second Shootout win in as many tries, and Villopoto’s second disappointment (last year he and teammate Ben Townley both DNFed). West Lites champ Lawrence made a hasty retreat after looking down at his bike and pulling off the track, and was never a factor.

(Above Photo): Villopoto and Hepler came together in the Lites main event.

(Above Photo): West Coast Lites Champion Lawrence pulled out of the main event.

(Above Photo): Millsaps led the beginning of the SX class main event, but crashed, allowing Windham to take over the lead.

Then there was the Supercross class. Chad Reed had 10 points over Kevin Windham going into the finale, which meant that if Windham won, Reed would have to finish sixth or better to claim the title. Following a heat race battle that ended with Windham finishing eight seconds ahead of the Aussie, things were looking up for K-Dub, although finding five other guys capable of finishing ahead of Reed was likely going to be a very tall order. When Reed started way back in the Main (around 10^th), K-Dub fell into formation behind leader Davi Millsaps—who clearly was not interested in any ‘Let Kevin Bye’ shenanigans. Eventually, Millsaps fell down, giving Windham a clear track, which, unfortunately for him, didn’t really matter—since Reed was dicing through the pack and into third well before even the midpoint of the race. Faced with dealing with getting around Andrew Short (who was expected to follow alleged ‘team orders’ and help Windham however he could, see photo to dispute that), Reed chose to go for it, which was all it took, and after picking a nice, clean place to pass, Reed set his sights on Windham. After a bit of cat and mouse for a few laps, Reed put another clean pass on a deflated K-Dub to win not only the race, but the title as well—by a solid 13 points. Now the questions appear to be: What will Reed do next season? The answers vary, but the bottom line is this—it seems like nobody knows the answer to that question, including Chad Reed. But right now, he’s just happy to reclaim the title he won in 2004. “We’ve all worked our butts off this season and I feel like we really earned this title. Kevin’s been riding great this season for sure, so full props to him, no doubt about that, he’s made it tough for me and he’d have been a great champion.”

(Above Photo): No let Windham by orders here...

The other race within the series was between Red Bull Honda teammates Davi Millsaps and Andrew Short for third place. Shorty got it. Despite two wins by Millsaps during the season, consistency was an issue, and those wins were more than offset by the 14^th, 19^th, and 17^th place finishes earlier in the season. Short’s worst placing was a 13^th, but he was top 10 at the least for every other round, and thereby ended up on top of Millsaps by a scant three points for the season. Josh Hill also moved up past Timmy Ferry for fifth on the season. Top Privateer honors went to Atomic’s Paul Carpenter, who beat out Josh Summey and Heath Voss for the $25,000 reward. He can probably use it, as the team is himself and his brother Jack, with much of the funding coming from their own pockets.

(Above Photo): Trey made an interesting entrance during opening ceremonies.

With that, another Supercross season goes down in the books as the industry looks forward to the outdoor national season picking up at Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, California, for round one. Three weeks is a long time to wait, so in the meantime be sure to check out the new and improved live.motocross.com site coming soon. We are going even bigger this season than last, so you won’t want to miss it.