2020 Tampa Supercross | Adam Cianciarulo GoPro Onboard
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2020 TAMPA SUPERCROSS | COMPLETE COVERAGE
Time for more GoPro videos from the 2020 Tampa Supercross. The revolutionary camera company is back on board as a sponsor to the Monster Energy Supercross Series and key riders in the field, which means we’ll get plenty of point of view footage through the seventeen-round championship. Here are clips and remarks from Adam Cianciarulo’s eventful 450 Main Event at the seventh round of the series.
ADAM CIANCIARULO | 450 MAIN EVENT
Cianciarulo has a 3.2 starting average (what place he is when the pack crosses the first transponder scoring loop) in the 450 Main Events this year and his run to the first turn in Tampa shows how he got that stat. He was at the front of the pack at the end of the straightaway, tucked in behind Vince Friese, faded to the right to block the outside line, and made a pass for the lead in the first set of jumps.
The line choice that AC used put in the first rhythm lane helped him make the pass, but it put him to the far inside of the turn. Because he cut the corner so close, Cianciarulo had to pin the throttle of the Monster Energy Kawasaki so that he could clear the triple-triple combination that riders were doing in the next section of the track and you can hear the engine rev out.
The Tampa track was rather tight for it being a full-size football stadium and riders didn’t have to hammer the gas to get through the various rhythm lanes, but it took plenty of technique and throttle control to get through cleanly.
Dirt Wurx made sure that Florida’s white beach sand was used in the track and they dumped truckloads of onto the middle of the floor for a rough straightaway and sweeping turn. Cianciarulo carried his momentum through the two tricky sections in the early laps and kept the bike light as he hopped through the oddly-spaced rollers.
Eli Tomac comes into the picture on the ninth lap of the Main Event and you can see that Cianciarulo started to cut his corners tighter to block the inside lines after that, but he could do little to hold off his Monster Energy Kawasaki teammate. While Cianciarulo played it safe and stuck to his outside line in the dirt turn/left lane in the sand/inside line through the sand turn, Tomac took the opposite route, carried much more speed in the sand turn, and powered by Cianciarulo. The two stayed close together for a few laps and you can even see the tear-off that Tomac pulled over the triple at the 2:09 mark in the video.
Cianciarulo’s biggest error in the race occurred on Lap 15 when he lost forward drive in the whoops and was veered to the right near the end of the rollers. It was a hard slam (he missed landing on a Tuff Block by a foot), but AC quickly got to his feet, stayed calm, and remounted his motorcycle. Note the way that he pulled right back onto the track and went over the finish line, even though the bike was between lanes, rather than searching for a “short cut.” That was a smart move by AC, especially because the track markers were tightly packed by the finish line and he would have been blocked in even worse. RJ Hampshire had to figure this out the hard way in the 250 Main Event.
Although Cianciarulo dropped to 10th place in the running order, he didn’t back down and that helped him gain positions in the final moments of the moto, like when Justin Brayton struggled in the sand and Cianciarulo leaped by for ninth place. Pay close attention to the last lap battle between Anderson and Stewart, because Stewart’s block pass pushed Anderson off of the track for the whoop section and he had to ride along the side of the track, then jumped back on just before the finish line. Unfortunately for Anderson, the race officials docked him two spots for skipping the section, which Cianciarulo advanced to eighth place in the Main Event results.
