Milestone MX Supercross Prep

The countdown is drawing to a close as a brand new season of Monster Energy AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship is about to unfold. As factory riders finish up their Supercross prep and testing at many of the privately owned team tracks, the privateer riders flock to tracks like Milestone MX in Riverside, CA to train on the public Supercross track. The week leading up to A1 is the last chance for riders to get the kinks out before lining up to Drop The Gate for the first time.

Although they may not have all of the resources that the Factory riders have access to, Privateers have adapted to be their own breed of gnarly. So often, Privateers have to dedicate a good chunk of their focus many of the weeks to finding support to even help with race fees or travel costs;  but that doesn’t stop them from training just as hard as their Factory counterparts. In fact, their Supercross prep and training is likely, in some cases, even more of a grind than for the Factory guys.

On Wednesday, January 3, 2018, I headed out to Milestone MX to see how the final week of Supercross prep was going for the riders. As expected, I ran into many Privateers as well as H.E.P. Motorsports rider Tallon LaFountaine (@tallonlafountaine) and Smartop MotoConcepts rider Jake Weimer (@jakeweimer12). Here’s a gallery I put together of many of the riders I saw on Wednesday.

The first gate drop of the season happens Saturday night and there is plenty of speculation as far as who will be the front runner this year. We also see the introduction of a new (old) format – with the elimination of the Semi races, but maintaining the timed races for every round that were introduced in 2017. For some riders, A1 marks their first Supercross race ever and for others it marks their first Supercross in nearly a year after dealing with a devastating injury. But whether a rider is lining up for a first time, or the first time in a while, one thing is guaranteed: once we #DropTheGate, the next seventeen weekends will showcase who has been putting in the work in the off-season.

For updates throughout the season, make sure you’re following @freestylephotocross for a unique look into the world of Monster Energy Supercross.