The 2023 Oakland Supercross has been postponed due to bad weather for the first time in the history of the championship.
Next year, AMA Supercross will celebrate its 50th anniversary, and almost all of the 49 seasons that have so far taken place have failed to produce a race cancellation or postponement due to bad weather.
Of course, there were plenty of cancellations and postponements in 2020, when Covid prevented the series from continuing after the Daytona round before the season was completed in Salt Lake City in the summer, but weather has, before now, not prevented a US supercross race from taking place on the planned date.
The weather over the last two or so in California has been particularly wet, and for building supercross tracks this is generally bad news.
For the season opener in Anaheim, the rain did not cause a problem for the Dirt Wurx track crew because they were able to build early and cover the track to prevent an over-saturation of the dirt.
That is not the case for Oakland, however, whose stadium hosted a Monster Jam race while AMA Supercross raced in Anaheim. That meant there was no chance for an early build, and that the dirt that would be used for the supercross race - which was also used for the Monster Jam event - was left exposed to the rain.
Such exposure over-saturated the dirt, and meant it became impossible to build a track in time for the originally planned date, Saturday 14 January, in Oakland.
The race has now been moved to 18 February, between the Tampa and Arlington rounds. That still presents a challenge, though, as teams and riders in the national 450SX class (as opposed to the regional 250SX classes) will have to make an almost 3,000-mile journey from Tampa to Oakland, before a 1,700-mile journey, after Oakland, to Arlington. For the factory teams, this may be less of a concern, but, for privateer riders, getting themselves and their equipment all the way across the US, and then halfway back, will present a not insignificant logistical hurdle.
The 2023 AMA Supercross season will continue next weekend on 21 January in San Diego, California, before ending the first West Coast ‘swing’ back in Anaheim on 28 January.
Eli Tomac heads to San Diego with the championship leader’s red plate, having won last weekend’s Anaheim 1 - his first win at Anaheim 1 victory in his 10th attempt, and the first competitive outing for the new 2023 Yamaha YZ450F motorcycle.
In the 250SX West class, Honda’s Jett Lawrence opened the season with a win, ahead of Husqvarna’s RJ Hampshire and Kawasaki’s Cameron McAdoo.
Lead image courtesy of KTM/Align Media.
