With the first-ever SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) playoff event set to take place this weekend at ZMax Dragway, NBC Sports’ broadcast team weigh in and share their thoughts on what to expect and what’s to come for this exciting new style of competition in this Input feature.

Image: Octopi Media.

Ricky Carmichael (Analyst):
Make no mistake about it, the SMX is the pinnacle of dirt bike racing. Of all of the other world championships, you name it, in my opinion, and we’ve got the riders to stand for it, this is the pinnacle of dirt bike racing. So to win here and to win this SMX World Championship with all of these worthy riders, that should be enough incentive, outside of just going out and trying the dethrone Jett Lawrence [following his perfect start to his 450 career]. It’s going to be exciting – this is the last chance of the year for Chase [Sexton], for a lot of guys to come out and beat him, win another championship and win that money. The incentive is there. It’s a new way of thinking, it’s a completely different way of thinking. A lot like when there was a grand national championship back in the day… The crown jewel is the world championship, 100 percent about it, and I think it’s just the way that we are going to have to learn to think of it as. The conference championship is nice, but I would forfeit all of these race wins for a world championship, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. After winning the Supercross and motocross championship, you have to keep that momentum going, and I would do my damnedest to win that world championship because it is, especially in this day and age, the crown jewel.

James Stewart (Analyst):
I think there’s a lot of curiosty from the riders, because it’s new, not only to them, but for us. What I’ve noticed is how in tune everyone is, guys have comeback from injuries, kept racing and showing up. I just felt like everybody was racing because they had a chance and an opportunity to win something. Usually, you through the first couple of outdoors, it’s pretty much over for 90 percent of the guys that are out there racing with the way the points are. This year, I’ve just noticed it’s been intense, from just watching as a fan, but being there, it’s been intense from the gate drop at Anaheim one until Ironman. For me, I think it would’ve been a great opportunity, I would’ve loved to have been able to get back and at least have the last laugh against (Ricky Carmichael) in a playoff format. I think there’s a lot of importance for the top guys coming into this, and also guys who are changing teams, guys like Chase Sexton, even though he’s not changing teams for this, but there’s still that point of trying to beat Jett Lawrence. You got Cooper Webb coming back and trying to build some momentum. You also have a number of those guys trying to beat Jett Lawrence, trying to win this championship and ultimately the supermotocross championship overall. But you have guys that have that feeling of the US Open back in the day or Monster Cup, where you could have a Justin Barcia come in and have an opportunity to win this championship. Although we saw what happened outdoors and we feel like we have a pretty good idea of the favourites, I feel like with this format, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a guy like Barcia or Jason Anderson win. There’s reasons out there for everyone out there to be racing, but I think overall, I think we’re in for some historic racing and a historic opportunity to see our sport grow. I think everybody, including the riders and teams, are about to reap the benefits that are here.

Jason Weigandt (Play-by-play announcer):
It was really cool behind the scenes with what’s changed so much. We can all see a playoff schedule play out and what that’s going to mean, but what I’ve noticed more behind the scenes is just what this presents, which is a level of cooperation between the sanctioning bodies, the promotors with Feld Motorsports and MX Sports, the various wings of the AMA as our sanctioning bodies, and the teams and riders are working together maybe closer that they ever have. As a fan you watch all of it, you know it’s the same riders and teams across motocross and supercross, but behind the scenes, individual teams, individual riders, trainers, sponsors, sanctioning bodies, organisations are all somewhat working together. I think what this supermotocross format really represents is, now everyone truly working together, so I think the playoffs are just the beginning. When you get this level of cooperation, who knows what we’re going to be able to do, now that everyone is pulling in the same direction, and one example of that is the broadcast package, we’ve actually had both motocross and supercross on the same networks and even both on Peacock in the same year before, but there’s never been this level of cooperation and collaboration behind the scenes. The investment too, you can see small examples of it when you watch the races at home, with having two drones and we’re experimenting with onboard cameras, we’ve had consistency with the announcing team throughout all 28 races so far, and we’ll bring everyone back for these playoff rounds. But that idea of the consistency and in every meeting getting all of the brains together and pulling in the samne direction, that’s the exciting part. As James said, the fact that the athletes and teams responded to that, we saw riders come back to the races that ordinarily wouldn’t have, to get ready for this. So it’s just an example of what this level of collaboration that we finally have, the sport working as a sport and not individual groups, that’s what’s making this so cool to me, besides just the playoffs.

Image: Octopi Media.

Jason Thomas (Analyst):
I just want to congratulate everyone that’s been a part of this, whether it’s MX Sports, Feld Entertainment or the team at NBC, because I’ve been around this sport my whole life and in different avenues of it. I’ve never seen everyone on the same page, much to Jason [Weigandt]’s point there, and we’re seeing growth come from that. This broadcast team is a perfect example of that. To have the perspectives of James Stewart and Ricky Carmichael on a call, with the experience of Leigh Diffey, then add myself and Weege who’s done the Pro Motocross Championship for so long, the different view points will be phenomenal and I think that will really show up throughout these three rounds. So to everyone, thank you, as a fan, and congratulations on putting all of this together. Now as for my role as the on track analyst, I’ve been trying to look at it from different perspectives, first as a fan, as a spectator going to these events, you’re spending your hard earned dollars, what are you going to see? Because in the beginning, I had this, I don’t want to say fear, I just didn’t want it to be three more supercross rounds. I didn’t feel like that would be exactly what we needed, we’ve gone down that path with Monster Cup and the US Open. I just felt like if we could do something different, little did I know that was the plan all along, was to do something very different. I got the opportunity to speak to Mike Muye on our SMX Insider show and go through the track maps tirelessly and kind of look at what they’re trying to accomplish with these rounds and what they’re trying to present as a challenge to the riders, and I think the fans are going to be in for a real treat. You look at the weekend type event, where there’s all these great things going on, on Friday, you get to see the riders practice on Friday, we’re doing an SMX Insider show on Friday, there’s pitbike racing on Friday. So there’s all these things that have really never happened, it’s really expanded on that weekend event, fans are going to be able to camp at the event, just like the Pro Motcross events. So it’s going to be very unique in that aspect. Then the tracks themselves, they’re so much bigger than any supercross round has ever seen, and I was looking at it as a rider going through these track maps, it’s going to take a while to get these things memorised. They’re going to be really long lap times, really broad. When you think about a speedway event, it’s just kind of narrow, you think of Daytona and the challenges that Ricky has to go through in building around all of these constraints. I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of that, it’s going to be the most expansive, broadest speedway type track that we’ve ever seen. I think about the imagination side of the track creators, what they can do, they have endless dirt, so the sky is the limit as to what they can build and I think we’re going to see all of these different type of obstacles.I think we’re going to see some of the same supercross obstacles that we love and that fans want to see, but the difference is higher speeds, more open turns, so the racing is going to be a little bit better. But it’s going to be just a truly unique event and as I mentioned, what I was hoping for is something that we’d never seen before, a different type of event that fans could really, really latch onto and look forward to year after year. We’re going to get 17 Monster Energy Supercross rounds and our 11 Pro Motocross Championship rounds, that’s just great, we all love that and that’s why we’re fans of the sport, but to have these three unique season ending championship playoff rounds that are completely different, I think it’s just what we needed. That speaks to all the people behind the scenes that came up with these ideas and really put this dream together.

Will Christien (Analyst):
I’m honored to be back as a part of this broadcast team as we head into the playoffs, I just feel truly lucky to get to be a part of this. It really is a very special time and I know that we are all excited to be a part of that. I’ve had a very unique perpective over the years doing both motocross and supercross and going from one to the other. Watching the teams and the riders transition from one series to the other has changed in a way that I honestly wasn’t prepared for. I talk a lot about how the mental side of this sport is such a big chess game, and it’s taken that chess game and it’s just upped a level. The strategy that’s now involved and how the riders and teams are having to prepare themselves, you talk about injuries and coming back from that and how they’re having to restructure everything has just been a learning curve. It’s been a learning curve for us all and it’s been fascinating to watch them this year in comparison to seasons past and how they handle that. For us as broadcasters, as fans and as viewers, it’s exciting, it’s a pressure cooker for these teams and these riders and there’s already so much on the line when they sit on the gates and we have moto one for Pro Motocross gate drop, or heats even for supercross. What these guys are going through is an incredible amount and that’s a gate drop for a single race. Now we come down to playoffs and we think about what is on the line, there is $10 million up across 31 rounds and $5.5 million for these three playoffs including that final there at the LA Coliseum, $1-million for the 450s and half a million for the 250s, that’s what they’re racing for, an incredible prize purse, the biggest in off-road motorcycle racing. Then what about the bragging rights, the idea that it comes down to this for first time in the sports history, that we’ll have ‘the guy’, we will have someone who can turn around and say ‘I can blend all of this together,’ and I can understand our riders here who are on the broadcast team, they have a certain amount of envy for these guys that are being able to actually stand there at the end and say, ‘I’m the best, I’m number one and I’m the Supermotocross world champion’. It’s incredible and I’m extremely excited to and honored to be a part of that, I can’t wait to get it going.

Leigh Diffey (Play-by-play announcer):
When we ask ourselves, where does this fit in, I can certainly say when you think of premium properties and big events, NBC Sports is the home right? So you think about the Olympics, or Sunday Night Football, the Super Bowl, Big Ten has just started, The Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500, Premier League, the list goes on. Now, really proudly, we can all smile about it, the SuperMotocross World Championship fits right in there. So everybody from Feld, MX Sports and the NBC Sports family, everybody has worked incredibly hard to make this the first of a new five-year relationship get off to a phenomenal start. I think now it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work, and a lot of realisation now, that instead of a segmented portion of the year where you are just focused on Supercross, or just focused on Pro Motocross, I think it is really starting to sink in to everybody that it’s running the course, it’s doing the whole thing, it’s over the course of the year, culminating in the SuperMotocross World Championship. Lasting the distance, showing your endurance and this building to a phenomenal climax to see who is going to win both of the classes come a phenomenal finale at the LA Coliseum. A lot of excitement, and this slots perfectly into where it belongs within the package of premium properties at NBC Sports, so really looking forward to it.