Troy Dog
Welcome to the Vurbmoto Roundtable! It’s a feature we had in the early days and now it’s such a legend that it makes a return. Our panel of experts, Bird and T-Dog, give their best opinion on hot topics in the sport. We also let Slaw give his opinion, but no one cares what he has to say. Let’s get to it!
Jett had some serious pressure from Hunter and Chase at certain parts of the races at Fox Raceway. Which rider gets a moto win first?
Bird Dog: I was honestly surprised at Hunter’s performance. But, I think he’s topped out in terms of the level of speed he can reach. Chase, on the other hand, is capable of reaching that next level. Just look at each motos lap sheet. Hunter’s fastest lap was still a second off of Jett’s in the first moto while Chase was a second faster. I wish I could say it’s going to be an interesting 450 season, but despite Chase having a small chance in hell of earning a few moto wins, Jett is on another planet.
T-Dog: I say that Chase Sexton will knock out a moto win first, but they both will get one this summer. I only vote thtat Sexton will do it first because he has the most experience in this class and he went tooth and nail with Eli Tomac a couple of years ago for this title. Sexton looks feisty and ready to battle for this championship right now.
Slaw Dog: Neither. Jett goes undefeated again and the Vital forums burn to the ground. Ok, ok, that probably won’t happen so I’ll go with Chase. He has the experience and looked way better on that KTM than I expected at the opening round.
Ty Masterpool, are we going to just chalk that ride up as a rider just trying to get comfortable on a new team?
Bird Dog: There simply isn’t enough data to make this call. I imagine he was nervous. Hell, I get nervous hitting a golf ball at the range when no one is looking. Imagine finally getting a factory ride of THE Pro Circuit Team. With Mitch F’ing Peyton holding the stop watch? If he didn’t have a little pee pee in his pants before the gate dropped I’d be surprised. Let’s give him a few races to let things settle and I think we will be looking at a different Ty Masterpool. The bigger question in my mind is, how high can he go?
T-Dog: Yes, just wait until RedBud, *rubs hands like Bird Man*. Masterpool is going to rip the holeshot at RedBud and may honestly win the moto. He’s been riding a 450 for over a year now and it’s going to take some time to get comfortable on his new ride. This deal happened basically overnight, or maybe like ten minutes before the first moto on Saturday. He’ll get there when it’s time.
Slaw Dog: Bro, he was literally riding a 450 Thursday and then changed to a NEW team and bike on Friday. Yes, Troy, people with any common sense are chalking it up to getting comfortable on a new team.
If you were in charge of penalizing, how would you have handled the situation on Saturday when it came to Tom Vialle and then Haiden Deegan’s off track excursions?
Bird Dog: This is a tough one, but Vialle got screwed. Actually, maybe he didn’t. If not, Deegan got a favored call. The problem is you can’t take the human element out of the situation. Vialle was docked for breaking rule 1.6.20, which relates track cuts and creating an unfair advantage. The question now becomes, what is an unfair advantage? I think it was bad how the entire situation between he and Deegan came down. There should have been more consistency, which I’m sure the AMA is going to correct.
It’s not like this doesn’t happen in other sports, though. NFL football has 6,000 slow motion angles on every play and they still don’t get it right 100% of the time. As much as I hate to say it, it’s just how things go sometimes. Deegan got lucky, Vialle didn’t.
T-Dog: I’m penalizing both riders in this situation. Sure, in Deegan’s case he can say he looked over and saw that he was safe to re-enter, but dude was ripping as he came back on the track. Honestly, if they had never had docked Vialle then this wouldn’t have been that big of an issue, but they did. I will say that this was a lesson for everyone and I think Deegan will be a little more careful about going off of the track here in the future. He could have easily been docked there and he dodged a bullet in my opinion. I think this situation will play into the next “track cutting” penalty no matter who it is.
Slaw Dog: I wouldn’t have penalized either. BUT, I think if you had to penalize Vialle then Deegan should have as well. No, I’m not buying into all the conspiracies. Go to TikTok for those.
Main Image: Octopi Media
