Racing

Supercross Road Trip: Muscle Milk/Toyota/JGR - Dirt Rider Magazine

December 16, 2009

With Yamaha making such radical changes on the 2010 YZ450F, it figured that the top race teams would be scrambling to refine the production bike into a full-on weapon capable of running at the front against the best riders in the world. After all, the YZ release was late, and the SX opener is January 9th. That doesn't allow much time to get the bikes ready, and we wanted a look at the process. The problem is that the entire U.S. seems to be surfaced in gooey mud at the moment, and that is giving many SX teams gray hair, and the JGR crew is in that group. With the season rushing up, their SX test track would be better for monster truck mudding than SX testing. So for the first day in North Carolina I spent a few hours checking out the JGR NASCAR shops to see where the roots of the JGR SX and MX team are. So check out the photos of some cool stuff!Well, that was my day. Hopefully sun will help with the track situation tomorrow!

This is what the JGR SX test track looked like with less than a month to Anaheim one. There isn't going to be much testing going on here for a few days.

The listed the parts of the Toyota NASCAR racers not made in-house on a post-it note. These cars are made from a room full of tubes and flat sheets of steel. The body panels are hand-formed, but the final result must be within millimeters of the NASCAR template to be allowed to race.

Does your garage look like this? I've seen hospitals dirtier than this. I was amazed at the number of race cars under construction.

NASCAR has rules regarding the outside diameter and wall thickness of the tubing used in the chassis, and JGR found that they couldn't rely on the quality control of the suppliers, so they order the tubing oversize, then finish-grind every inch to make sure it is the correct and consistent size and thickness. They want the car legal, and they want each new car to feel the same as the others made here.

This is an active part of the shop where many race cars are under construction. This shop area can be viewed by anyone who comes to JGR and visits the in-house gift shop. Patrons can but race-used lug nuts (two for a dollar), tires and smashed up body parts.

There are houses in the Charlotte NC area that cost less than this motorized tool cart. The chairs and sun shades all fold under the panel on the right, and the whole cart rolls into the team transporter.

The machine shop boasts millions of dollars worth of computerized machine tools. These signs hang above each machine, since the team is sponsored to the equipment. Enough people come through looking at the machine shop that the companies sell a lot of the machines that folks see working here.

This area is where the pit crews train and practice. (Four days a week!) The company has a trainer and a weight room to help the pit crews stay fit enough to change four tires and fill the fuel tank in 12 seconds!

This miniature engine is made on a rapid prototyping machine. That means the entire mock-up engine is made from a single sheet of plastic at a time! Each layer is cut and layered with millions of others until there is a complete part. The engine sits atop a normal microwave oven. I put the tape measure in there to give the engine scale.

Part of the team's day was used up shooting a video for the SX series opening ceremonies. Joe Gibbs himself came down to help out, and he related having his heart in his throat when rider Josh Grant got a bale cover sucked into the rear wheel while leading Anaheim one in 2009.

Look for these scenes to show up at a Supercross near you.

Josh Grant: "How do they fit in these things?"