SuperMotocross World Championship Final to Invade LA Coliseum
zMAX Dragway in North Carolina and Chicagoland Speedway will host playoffs
Posted On: September 18, 2023 By :The Los Angeles Coliseum has hosted many massive sporting events during its 100 years of existence. The famed venue was the site of the Olympic Summer Games in 1932 and 1988, the first Super Bowl in 1967 and in addition to being the home of USC Trojans football, the stadium has hosted the NASCAR Busch Clash at the Coliseum the past two years.
Now, there will be 40 million pounds of dirt dumped onto the fabled turf. The SuperMotocross World Championship Final will take place September 23 at the Coliseum, culminating a 33-event season, including playoff rounds in Charlotte and Chicago in the two weeks leading to Los Angeles.
“Southern California is kind of the mecca of professional supercross and motocross racing,” said Mike Muye, director of operations for Supercross at Feld Motor Sports. “The ability to go back to where it started 50 years ago in the LA Coliseum was an important key feature to the overall playoff.”
The sport was last held at the Coliseum in 1974 and the 2023 version is hoping to duplicate that success. Muye and his team are responsible for making sure Supercross’s return after 50 years goes smoothly.
“The opportunity to go up into the peristyles is really cool,” Muye said. “If you look at the photo from 1974, they did that back then, and it was an iconic feature. It’s also going to be an iconic feature of our track here in 2023.”
It will take around 700 truckloads of dirt to create a world-class racing track in the Coliseum. The 40 million pounds is a much larger amount than any other event Muye and his crew put together during the season. It’ll take 24 trailers, 53 feet in length, to import all of the equipment necessary for the event, including signage, LED cylinders and the overhead structure.
An advance crew will arrive and begin load-in on September 17 with track construction finished in five days. After the final event, crews begin hauling out the dirt at 2 a.m the next day.
As for the racing action, the SuperMotocross World Championship playoff races and final will operate under a two-moto format for both the 450cc class and 250cc class. Each moto will be 20 minutes, plus one lap, in which Olympic Scoring will determine an overall finishing position for which SuperMotocross Championship points will be awarded.
The SuperMotocross World Championship series includes the sport’s largest payout of $10 million over the course of the full 31-event regular season. Prize money is being added to both the Supercross and Pro Motocross Championships, leaving $5.5 million up for grabs for the playoffs and final. A guaranteed $1 million will go to the 450cc champion and $500,000 to the 250cc champion.
“The feedback we’ve had since this was announced back in October 2022 has been amazing,” Muye said. “We’re excited for the sport as a whole, with these three rounds and bringing Supercross and motocross together, with a true playoff format, to see who’s the best of both of those disciplines. The overwhelming response from the fans has been positive.”
Charlotte and Chicago Host the Playoffs
In the two weeks before the Coliseum spectacular, fans in other regions of the country will get their chance to witness high-stakes postseason action.
The zMAX Dragway in Concord, North Carolina, and Chicagoland Speedway will host the inaugural SuperMotocross World Championship Playoff Rounds on September 9 and 16, respectively.
“The design from the get-go was to make sure that each part of the country was represented so fans would have an opportunity to experience SuperMotocross first-hand,” said Dave Prater, vice president of Supercross at Feld Motor Sports. “It was important to have one playoff in the East, a second in the Midwest, and then the final on the West Coast making each round easily accessible to each region.”
zMAX Dragway is situated adjacent to Charlotte Motor Speedway and is the world’s first four-lane dragway. Built in 2008, zMAX features large capacity grandstands and 40 luxury suites. The venue provides a layout where track builders can create lanes suited for grandstand and suite viewing while also allowing fans to “line the fence” as they would at an outdoor Pro Motocross event.
“Charlotte being a four-wide drag strip is unique and we’ve never done a four-wide drag strip, so it gives us some cool, unique challenges to work through while building a pretty epic racetrack,” Muye said. “As for Chicagoland … NASCAR stopped racing there in 2019. So it gives us the ability to utilize the facility in different ways than we ever have in the past. We have the opportunity to open up the NASCAR catch fence and create some elevation changes, which is synonymous with pro motocross.”
Once Charlotte and Chicago have had the spotlight, all eyes will turn to Los Angeles, where the World Championships will be settled in a historic setting.
“The competitors are super excited,” Muye said. “We had a few of them out at our launch in October last year and the feedback was pure excitement. There’s history of Supercross racing in the Coliseum, and it has also hosted the Olympics and more recently NASCAR. There’s so much that’s gone on in that facility. Every competitor wants to be the first to win there in 50 years.”
Posted in: Motorsports, Sports Venues