Here’s How Red Bull Built Its Straight Rhythm Motocross Dirt Track
The 25-foot-wide dirt track must be identical for each rider, requiring extra precision.
The track near the shore at Huntington Beach requires 9,000 yards of material.
The 1,800-foot-long track will feature 80 obstacles, all constructed to exacting specs.
Across the 25-foot width of the Red Bull Straight Rhythm motocross dirt track, builder Jason Baker can’t allow for any variations. The unique nature of two motocross riders, racing side-by-side down an identical dirt course, requires exacting precision for all 1,800 feet of track.
“The best way to sum up Straight Rhythm is it is a supercross drag race,” Baker, owner of Florida-based Dream Traxx, tells Popular Mechanics of the track nestled against the shore in Huntington Beach, California.
“We are doing a half-mile drag race, and riders have to navigate 80 obstacles. Both sides (of the track) have to be absolutely identical.”
Red Bull brings this unique brand of racing to Huntington Beach on October 15 for the first time, turning a beachside parking lot into a dirt track. That will require Baker and his team to haul in 9,000 yards of material and use a stable of machinery to craft a track for the 32 competitors vying for the Straight Rhythm title.
“It is like constructing a road,” Baker says. “We are a construction company, and our product is an abstract version of what a typical construction company would do, but the process is the same.”
To start, Baker works to get a solid flat base with good compactness for maximum consistency. “The process of doing this is no different than a road, building the highway near the beach where the course is,” he says. “Then we go in and add those obstacles. Part of the process is keeping everything to the most specific and exacting levels, the distances between the jumps, the dead-straight line, there can’t be any curvature impacting the distance between the jumps.”
Dream Traxx works with Trimble to bring in the technology. Baker creates a digital plan of the track and converts that file into a 3D model via Trimble’s software suite. Now in digital form, the file serves two major purposes, one for Baker and the builders, and one for everyone else.
By working the file into an augmented reality set-up, it allows visitors to the site to walk the course and use their phone to understand the layout before a speck of dirt is laid. This can help the ESPN crew understand where they need to place cameras, by getting a sense of how high a jump may be. It can help an event organizer understand where they can lay cables.
For Baker, though, the design loads straight into the cab of the dozer. Dream Traxx uses GPS for machine automation and laser guidance, allowing Baker to build without getting out of his cab for measurements.
Straight Rhythm is a different type of track, so it takes a different style of build. Most motocross tracks get designed with curves and bends mixed in with the obstacles, all designed for one rider to take the entire width as they choose. Straight Rhythm splits the 25 feet in two, with white chalk delineating the middle, giving each rider 12.5 feet to work with.
“Because this is dead-straight, you have to stay in your lane the whole time,” Baker explains. “If the right side or left side has any deviation or variation, you are dealing with top-level pros, and they can notice the difference.”
The process starts with the dirt. A logistics team scours local construction sites and mines to take soil samples. They find 9,000 yards of material they can truck in—expecting around-the-clock hauling with 30 trucks—from a reasonably close location. The optimum dirt is a 60 to 70 percent mix of clay and sand. The clay allows for compaction, while the sand ensures the soil can accept penetration of water for optimum grip between the tires and dirt.
At the start, crews use machines with rubber tracks and tires to build the first 100 feet of base, so they don’t damage the asphalt parking lot. With the base down—including building a scaffolding to go up and over a public restroom that sits in the middle of the track—crews will start building super compact pads 25 feet wide and 2 to 3 feet tall that they can jump out of. “The technology is showing where each piece is and where to cut and where to stack the obstacles,” Baker says.
Each obstacle, or feature, can vary from a single 3-foot-tall jump (in the shape of an A-frame) to a tabletop up to 20 feet long. The course is split into five main sections with a tall “speed check” feature delineating the end of one section and the start of the next.
“We take all these different features and put them in a random order,” Baker says. “We basically build a puzzle for the riders to figure out.” Each rider will then decide which jumps they can “double” or “triple,” putting together jump combinations to determine the fastest rhythm to get through the course.
Once built, riders have a chance to test the track before the competition. The build team stays present throughout it all. Baker says the key maintenance aspect is getting the track’s material compact enough to hold up, but not so compact it can’t accept water. “We don’t want super hard, dusty conditions,” he explains. “We like to have a little moisture for traction.” The areas crews pay special attention to during competition are the jump’s landings. Any spot where a tire is landing at a high rotation of speed, “that tire is almost like a saw blade on the dirt cutting down every time it hits the top,” Baker says.
The fact this is a new track at a never-before-used location causes Baker to worry about the logistics of staying within the timeline. “How many feet of track do we have to get done per day? That is the one unknown,” he says. “Something as simple as two trucks having issues importing materials could add up. The logistics is what is keeping me up at night.”
But when he has all the material in place, he’s confident that the precision of the build will make the track pristine. “This is one of the first moto-specific events that I am aware of that technology has been a part of construction,” he says. “I’m super excited because the level of precision we will offer is really unprecedented.”
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