t’s practically a fact in motorcycle racing worldwide right now: there will be orange bikes at the front. KTM has conquered nearly every discipline it has set out to win in the dirt, so it’s a stark contrast to see the Troy Lee Designs/Red Bull KTM 250 squad sputtering in America. A season built around title hopefuls Shane McElrath and Jordon Smith has come completely apart due to injury.

“Last year I think we got second in all three series; not much has changed except our luck,” team manager Tyler Keefe says. “We had high hopes, but this year bit us in the ass.”

Now the focus is on young amateur grads and whatever other talent the team can find in between the cracks, like McAdoo and Australian Wilson Todd, whom the team picked up for three nationals before he had to resume his championship Down Under. That’s okay with TLD, as they’re considering the whole summer an audition for a lot of riders. And with Todd back home, they can try something new, like putting Pierce Brown—still supposed to be an amateur through Loretta’s in August—on the pro team. A new rule allows amateurs to race Pro Motocross as long as they don’t cross the 40-point threshold, so Brown brought new hopes for a team in need of a spark.

“Yeah, I’m the veteran of the team now,” Derek Drake jokes from the riders’ changing area. Drake turned pro in May at Hangtown. Indeed, Todd, McAdoo, and Brown were not part of the pro team then, 35 days earlier.

GEICO Honda didn’t need McAdoo’s services outdoors because Australian Hunter Lawrence was back after a shoulder injury knocked him out of supercross. The GEICO team took a huge gamble signing Lawrence back in late 2017, even though he wouldn’t arrive in the U.S. until this year, and then he missed supercross. The gamble paid off when he delivered a moto win at High Point and started running up front routinely.

Bringing riders over from the GPs is no guarantee of success. Thomas Covington’s year with Rockstar Energy Husqvarna has been a disaster—the American expatriate-turned-homecoming rider didn’t miss supercross like Lawrence, but it felt like he did, because he was having a tough time just making mains. Surely he would turn it around in motocross thanks to his GP chops. Instead, he again struggled to even be a top-20 guy.

Finally, Covington revealed he has the Epstein-Bar virus, an ailment familiar enough in the pits that most industry folks believe in it and don’t consider it code word for lazy as it once was. However, that only occurs after diagnosis. Before that, when Covington was just struggling, folks around him wondered why he wasn’t pushing harder on the track, and even Thomas wondered the same. He admits he simply lacked intensity and couldn’t find it. Once he finally had the diagnosis, he skipped High Point, but then suddenly was back for round five, the hot and humid Florida National. That’s probably the worst race for someone with a virus sometimes called chronic fatigue syndrome.

Not surprisingly, Covington only rode practice and once again missed the motos. Why even try at all? A conversation with Thomas the day before the race indicated that Husqvarna higher-ups in Europe weren’t necessarily a fan of him sitting on the sidelines all summer. Covington has a two-year deal stretching through next season, but job security in this sport never seems all that secure.

One problem for Covington is that he can’t just go back to his old ways in the MX2 class in Europe, because he’ll age out of the FIM under-23 rule for 2020. The rules are a constant thing to follow in the 250s. In the U.S., riders can compete even at an advanced age, but supercross does employ a pointing-out system that bumps yearly title contenders to the 450s. TLD’s McElrath was about to cross the points threshold this year, but when he tweaked his back, Keefe and company did him a favor by keeping him out of the races so he could maintain eligibility for 2020.

Meanwhile, McElrath’s contract was set to expire. He’s gone shopping and is linked to a possible ride with Monster Energy/Yamalube/Star Racing Yamaha. TLD might just have helped their man keep his eligibility, just for him to race for someone else next year.

This class gets crazy sometimes.

Speaking of Rules

Forget pointing out—no one has scoured more rulebooks than Christian Craig, who found out in January that he’d failed an anti-doping test . . . wait for it . . . in March of 2018. A World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) test indicated a trace amount of Heptaminol, which is on the banned list. The FIM, the signatory of WADA, didn’t alert Craig for ten months. By then he was already out injured with a bad thumb, but he tried several comebacks in supercross, each short-lived. His opening races in the nationals weren’t great either, and then finally, after High Point, he revealed he had been popped by the WADA test. Also, by then he was already hurting from another crash at High Point, but he showed up at the Florida race anyway, not really prepared to do 30-plus-2 in the heat and the rough. He didn’t make it to the motos, and now his future is in question. While Craig seems to believe a decision is coming shortly, nothing from past FIM/WADA scenarios indicates that will be the case. If he’s back on the track soon, he should actually consider himself the luckiest rider on the circuit this season, even though he’s missed nearly all the races with injury.

Back to that pointing-out rule: The clock has finally expired for Martin Davalos, who started racing 250 supercross in 2006, just months after the class had changed from 125cc supercross. Marty is usually a contender, sometimes a winner, but always luckless. On the positive side, potential doesn’t count for points, and so Davalos’ heat race and fast qualifier tally never entered his career tally. He somehow stayed under the points threshold and on factory equipment with factory paychecks, only going over the line this season. That’s okay with him, as even Marty is tired of racing 250s. Points or not, he said it’s 450SX or retirement for him in 2020. His Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki team doesn’t race 450s, so now he’s looking for work and they’re looking for a rider. The team is in talks with Jordon Smith, who has raced (and won races) for TLD KTM for the last three years. If Smith takes the PC gig, that means TLD could go into 2020 losing one rider (McElrath) because he didn’t point out and another (Smith) because someone else did.

RJ Hampshire has been part of the GEICO Honda team since his amateur days. At one point, Jordon Smith was his teammate and best bud at the races, but Smith moved to the slot at TLD KTM. Hampshire kept developing with the GEICO crew and scored his first overall win in Lucas Oil Pro Motocross last year, and this year he hoped to be a title contender. He’s been just short of that mark and is now looking for a change of scenery, hoping that’s what he needs to finally grab a #1 plate. Hampshire is now linked to a Rockstar Energy Husqvarna ride in 2020.

Who will join him? The Husky squad has been priming the pump through its amateur division with Jordan Bailey and Michael Mosiman. They’re two of the friendliest, most well-spoken riders in the pits—two of the friendliest, most well-spoken 19-year-olds anywhere, really. Unfortunately, teams don’t sign riders based on manners. They need results, and lately Mosiman has been getting them and Bailey has not. If Covington is back next year alongside Hampshire, Mosiman is in position to get the final spot. By next summer, they’ll have amateur grad Jalek Swoll racing for them as well. Swoll generally battles with Pierce Brown, the kid TLD moved up early. We asked Swoll if Brown went 1-1 in his pro national debut, would he ask to line up early also? He said yes with a laugh. But Brown, while solid, only went 14-10. It was enough for Keefe to sign him for more pro races, but not enough for Swoll to beg to ride early. You’ll see Swoll as a pro at Unadilla, after Loretta’s.

By then, in August, the 250 Class title picture might be fairly clear. However, the world today isn’t only interested in the action that takes place on the field. In all fields, from sports and entertainment or politics, it’s the action behind the scenes that often catches the most buzz, and in the 250s this year, it’s the machinations behind the machines that are providing as much intrigue as the racing on the track.