Interview with Rich Winkler; owner of Dirt Wurx.

The following interview was conducted in June of 2005 with Rich Winkler from Dirt Wurx, the largest and most well known builder of MX and SX tracks in the world. When this interview was conducted Rich was hanging out at the Winchester Speedpark complex during planning for the first New England Regional Championship.


How long have you been interested in Motocross, did you ride as a kid?

Oh yeah, I guess my first motorized vehicle was a lawnmower engine powered mini-bike, a Rupp Roadster. It was one of those with the pull starter and that was about 1969, I was 11 or 12 years old when I started. Then I graduated up to the bigger bikes and eventually I was a number 1 ranked 250 rider in District 2 which is now District 34 and then I rode 2 years as an AMA pro.

Was your family into racing as well?

No, not really. I have a brother and a sister my brother rode sort of recreationally but never really got involved in racing. Racing is different now then it was back then, most of the time the more serious riders, the guys in their late teens early 20’s came pretty much in their own vehicles. The phenomenon you see today with the whole families and the motor homes was just starting as I was sort of tapering down my racing. I mean my folks came and watched me race a few times but it wasn’t like the family effort it is today.

Still ride to this day

Oh yeah.

Do you do any riding competitively?

Yeah I try to get out to a half a dozen or so races a year, plus 40 class. I rode 6 or 7 races here on the WSP MX track last year plus a few in District 34.

How did your riding and racing transition into building tracks?


Well, when I was riding as a pro it became pretty obvious I wasn’t going to make any money doing that. (Laughs) I started to look around for something to do that would be inside the motorcycle industry and somehow I got a resume to Mike Goodwin, the original SX promoter. At that time I didn’t even realize there was such a thing as a promoter; I thought the AMA put the races on. I didn’t set out to do it but I must have sort of hit him at the right time and they offered me a job as what they called a “Production Manager”. So I went to work originally as an employee of Goodwin and then later on for Pace who was the forerunner of Clear Channel. At that time I did primarily the operations side of the events much more than just the tracks, it was setting up the ticket takers and finding out how many ushers we would need, everything from the amount of fencing we would need for the pits to how many porta-potties for the night. That is how it started and then eventually CE Altman from Pace and I sat down and discussed the quality of the race tracks from one event to another. At that time the quality of the tracks varied greatly some tracks cost times more than others and some of them were frankly horrible.
We just started to think that there was a value to standardizing it, trying to make it cost similar and have the track quality be similar from week to week so that’s how it got started.

When was this happening?

About 1991, we did it for a year before we actually named the company Dirt Wurx. That first year things were still sort of spread out Pace only had about 5 rounds of these events. The rest were promoted by people like Bill West and Mickey Thompson. So that first year or two we all had regular jobs too, we built the tracks but then we would have to come home and do something else. It wasn’t until the third year that we got the whole series and then it started to be viable to make a living doing it.

What is the basic process of designing tracks for the upcoming season, do you do them all at once?

Today the tracks are all designed at the same time which is a necessity because of the internet. People want to be able to buy their tickets ahead of time and they want to be able to show the whole season online. Clear Channel wants the tracks done no later than September and in fact they are pushing for them before that. They would really like them now and it’s what June? Once they have them the track layouts are provided to the factories and the AMA for a look see and when everybody is happy with them they send out packets to the factories and Privateers. That is the positive, the fact that everybody gets to see the track ahead of time, the negative is that it can be a little close to the past season which makes it kind of hard creatively. Coming up with new stuff can be tough because your mind is still in the mode of the tracks from before and then when we do come up with something that we like if it works great but if it doesn’t…we may have put that in say 3 more tracks later in the season. In the old days we used to do the first 5 or 6 drawings and submit them, then after the Daytona break we would do the rest. By the time we got to the Daytona break we had a lot of input from the riders and a lot better feeling for where we wanted to go. In a way I kind of like that better, I mean I understand why it has to be done all at once but I like the way we used to do it when the second half of the season had a little modification.

How much of the track design is dependant on the venue?

It’s not so much a restriction because of the venue but there are a lot of constraints when you build these tracks. As a track builder reading peoples opinions on internet chat boards and such, there’s tons of criticism of the tracks the design and such, a lot of armchair quarterbacks. What people don’t realize is that there are a lot of other factors, were not in a field here and we have a lot of finite restrictions. There is X number of square footage, there is a concrete floor we can’t go below and the there are sight line restrictions as well. We can go too high with some of the stuff because people on the other side of the stadium will complain that they can’t see. There are certain things that are required the promoters expect there is going to be a triple jump on either side and at least one set of whoops and I mean you get down to where your sort of stuck with how you lay the track out on the floor. You get some creativity with the rhythm sections and stuff but you know quantities of dirt, manpower, time, budget numbers can limit you as to what you can do. My opinion is that the look of SX is kind of stale, it’s always the same, jumps piled up on the flat you know. We are looking into some different things, structural Styrofoam and some other fillers where it would make it feasible economically and time wise to put some changes into the tracks. Hopefully for 2006 we will see some new stuff.

How much do you take “the fan experience” into consideration when building the newer tracks?

In my opinion that is 50% at least, maybe more. Let’s face it motocross is more popular now than ever before, most of that is being driven by the popularity of SX both live and on television. SX popularity is fan driven the reason SX is popular is because relatively uncommitted fans can see it very easily as opposed to having to go out to say Unadilla or Southwick. If you want to go see an outdoor national you have to be really into it where as Supercross is much easier to take in. The problem is you try to build a track with a balance between what the fans want, what is best for them to see and what is challenging to the top riders. The top riders right now Ricky, Chad, Bubba and Windham are on a level one rung higher than even the other factory riders so it is very common to hear that the tracks are too easy. Yet we are trying to build a track for these guys and like 60 or 70 other riders so it is a little tough. If we built a track that was brutally challenging and edgy for say Ricky and Chad, 50% of the other riders would be Trials riding around it and that is not what the fans paid to see. The fans pay to see racing not an obstacle course so it’s a knife edge to make something that challenges those top guys but looks flowing and fast at the same time. It’s tough. The whole idea, the whole theory that the track can determine the race outcome I just don’t believe it. I wish I could build a track that would make every race epic. Reality is that this is racing you know, why are human beings interested in sports? 90% of football games are pretty boring, we watch it because we want to see that 10% that’s epic. That is what sports are about.

What are the logistics for taking the whole circus on the road?

I think the outsider would be surprised what goes into it. Not counting the race teams just the people putting the race on, there are 6 semis plus our half a semi rig on the road each week. The work that goes into putting that thing together and then tearing it down for the next city, it’s very common to have a 90-100 hour work week. I feel really proud of our guys, our crew for putting it together every week. Also the production crew from Clear Channel they are a dedicated hardworking bunch of people. That’s another reason I like some of that internet trash talk, they talk about CC like it’s some evil empire and you know what…who knows maybe at the very top levels of the executive offices they may be right...(laughs) I don’t know. I do know that the people there working every week are just like you and I, they love motocross and they want to be there. The work their asses off so it’s tough to see that type of trash talk when I am there every week looking at this group of people that are breaking their stones to put on something that they can be proud of. They don’t have anything to do with the high end negotiations with the AMA or what Howard Stern can say or not say, they just want to put on a good show.

What is the off season like for you?

We get a lot of pressure towards the end of the Supercross season with people interested in having us build tracks so maybe we don’t pay enough attention to that plus about 50 percent of that is just tire kickers. So sometimes when SX is over we have a little lull because either we didn’t do our homework enough or some of the people that we talked with were a little flakier than we expected. Towards the middle of the summer we will do a lot of Amateur tracks like here, private practice tracks and things then towards the beginning of the fall our regular events start up again. In real life the stuff we do with CC is like 65 percent of the business with the rest being public riding areas or tracks like this.(WSP) That smaller percentage of the business is a much easier dollar to earn, I enjoy coming out and doing this stuff. Obviously it’s not as lucrative but it doesn’t have to be, a couple or three of us can take out the rig and do a small track and it’s not a big time pressure which makes it more enjoyable. The general reaction when we quote numbers to people for smaller track jobs is shock that it’s so reasonable. That’s the reason that I want to be involved with things like that and the big event at the end of the summer. (New England Regional Championship) There is just a huge interest in that kind of thing now, whether it’s a public riding area or private tracks. It is getting tougher to find places to ride these days.

What is the biggest challenge with building Amateur tracks?

My own opinion and I’ll be the first to admit I’m probably not in the mainstream but I don’t believe that amateur motocross needs gapped jumps of any kind. This WSP Motocross track is a perfect example, it was totally flat when we started, beyond flat and we have built it up to give the rider the feeling that they are negotiating terrain. There are some things to jump but there is nothing on this track that really has a penalty if you don’t make it. I see some amateur tracks that are intimidating to me, I mean I’m admit I’m an old guy now but I raced professional MX and I see some things that scare me. I just don’t think that kind of thing belongs on an amateur track. It’s almost like a moral issue for me; I don’t want to see some kid in a wheelchair because he forgot to switch his gas on and cased a big gap. SX is a little bit tougher the current track layout for WSP is about as far as I would go with an amateur SX track. Most of the stuff over there is step ups or step downs with different smaller jump put in front of it so even the younger riders can at least jump onto or off of something. I forget that I am old guy while most of these riders are young kids and they like to jump. I just think that for me since like 1969 motocross has been my whole life and a lot of the things that make me a person come from motocross. It’s individual, there are no excuses and it teaches you your strengths and weaknesses. I have a ton of respect for motocross and the things that it has done for me. On the other hand you have got to be realistic and the reality is that motocross is not town soccer or Pop Warner football; this is a very dangerous sport. At a Little League baseball game your probably not going to end up in a wheelchair, you can end up that way here. So as a track builder it has always been my philosophy that you have to take that into consideration. Build it so it is fun, it’s challenging, it’s athletic but it’s not the X games You just don’t need it, motocross can be fun without that kind of crazy stuff.