I’ve been talking to the organizer of https://weberacing.com/ for about a year about their offroad racing series and specifically the possibility of entering ADV class bikes. He has been very encouraging and I’m planning on going to the first event in the series in Farmington, New Mexico on March 21-22. I know this is the same weekend as the Moab trip, but thought I’d post this in case others were interested. You don’t have to race big bikes, BTW, most people don’t.
Webe is a non-AMA harescramble race series in the four corners states. They are amenable to newbies and if you have ever wanted to try something like that it seems like the place to start. This will be my first event, but having spoken with representatives of the other series in CO the choice of which to attend was very clear.
I’m putting this here in case anyone else is interested in making a trip out of it, or potentially one of the later races in the year. Nucla, Colorado on September 19-20 is the other one on my radar right now.
Interesting… I’ve done CORCS, RMEC, GNCC and some AMA district races, but never a WEBE race. Are they creating an ADV class? Any idea what the rules would be? I’d love to do a Rally format event but not so sure I’d want to do a hare scramble race on my ADV bike. I heard from Jud that RMEC will have some good race locations on their 26 calendar, the Shady Burro is back!
Sounds like Webe is purposefully not a part of AMA so they can do oddball things like this and serve the participants a more grassroots series.
They will split ADV into it’s own class with at least 4 participants. If there are less than 4 you can enter in any open class, including Sportsmen. They are splitting up the classes and start times enough that I don’t think you’ll be starting off the line in too big of a group. I know of a couple yahoos from the western slope that want to bring big bikes, so hitting the 4 participants is likely.
It won’t matter much for my purposes, as I’m going in order to have a good time and compete with myself on a closed track rather than to win an established race. My goal primary goal is to keep the damage mechanical as opposed to medical and have fun learning something along the way.
I like the idea. I love to race but haven’t in a long time. I watched a YouTube vid of the Farmington course. Looks like fun but for me that’s a lot of sand to be trying to race a big bike through. I’ll keep thinking about it and I’ll check some of the other locations as well.
Yep, it looks like sand in all it’s many forms, rutted, deep, wet, dry, rocky with plenty of whoops. I like sand, might not anymore after this. Some of the other tracks have much tighter steep singletrack sections with trees, so mostly open sand seems preferable over that.
Monte Vista in particular looked like wheelbase and heavy steering might be a limitation in some singletrack sections.
That is cool that they’ll create a class with 4 entries.
I wonder how WEBE is getting event insurance?
I ran our local vintage race club, RMVMC since 2019 and last year with 2 major insurance companies pulling out of the market segment we were left with no coverage. I tried for 6 months to get insurance with different carriers and brokers and could not get a policy (same thing happened to George with CORCS) AMA Sanction was the only option in the end, that or cancel the 2025 season.
This a followup after the first race in Farmington.
Key takeaways: the Farmington course is 90% deep sand and 10% shallow sand. It was really tough, even for some of the dirtbike guys, lots of tight turns in baby powder and deep 2’-3’ sand whoops. Consensus among regulars was that Farmington is the hardest course by far. Needless to say it was quite humbling on the T7. All the other ADV bike courses will be more open with more hard pack.
The course is large enough and it’s well managed enough that even though it’s a harescramble style race it never felt crowded, reckless, or dangerous due to the number of other riders. This was a reasonable concern brought up earlier in this thread.
There were 3 ADV guys. I came in second, but the gap between all of us was huge.
The ADV bikes raced on a modified course for quads and big bikes that had some of the toughest and tightest sections removed. I verified this accidentally by getting lost at one point and wandering into the full course which was somehow even more sandy, steep, and tight.
The next ADV races are June 20-21 in Grand Junction and September 19-20 in Nucla. The Grand Junction race should be a much more accessible course for big bikes, though if this winter is any indication it will likely be quite hot.
Overall, I plan on doing it again. It is in some ways safer than trail riding, and I appreciate having a space where you can open it up, find the limits of yourself and the bike, all without having to worry about someone coming head on around the next corner.
Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or want to try the next race.
