Behind the Scenes of Fox's World Cup Race Support

Jul 7, 2017
by Ross Bell  
FOX World Cup race support

There's more behind the bucket of wins from the likes of Greg Minnaar, Aaron Gwin, and Rachel Atherton than you might think. All of these racers (and any other Fox athlete) have a team of technicians at their disposal to help take their setup from woeful to winning in a matter of clicks at any World Cup or E.W.S. throughout the season. We swung by during Lenzerheide qualifying morning to see what was cooking on the grill and what was being worked on in the vices.

FOX World Cup race support
  Fox have a new rig setup that has given them masses more space inside and out.

FOX World Cup race support
  They are still tweaking the setup but will have two technician stations in the back.

First and foremost could you explain your role throughout the weekend?


We do service and tuning primarily for our sponsored athletes but we are here and will help anyone we can. Obviously, we’re not here to do scheduled maintenance and save you money, we’re here to keep people racing and at a high level. We will help anybody we can if the time allows.

We do all of the E.W.S. and sometimes we’ll hop into a Crankworx if it’s easy enough, we’re a small crew of around 2–3 per weekend, so we can’t really manage all of them. World Cup is our priority.

Have you got any rough figures for the number of services you’ll typically do in a weekend?


We do around 60 forks and 30 shocks a weekend, track walk day is flat out all day. The rest of the week is largely tuning, putting out little fires, small f*** ups, whether it’s ours or theirs…

Do you ever get team mechanics playing around with the suspension instead of coming to you?


Oh yeah, that happens. Little by little it’ll go down hill till they turn up here, have a little tizzy and we sort it out again!

FOX World Cup race support

FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support

FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support

Are there any particular riders than you demand more or less attention than others? For example, we see you in the Syndicate videos with Greg Minnaar pretty often.


Yeah, he’s pretty high on the list of people wanting to change things all the time. Aaron Gwin is probably second but he’s very narrowly focused, it’s a couple things here and there, and then done. Greg will go 180 degrees weekend to weekend and they’ll always be good, he can ride it. I’m not sure how it works! Those two riders we both spend a lot of time with outside of racing as they’re both pretty close to Fox, so we know each other pretty well, those are the two I spend the most time with outside of racing.

How easy is it to make changes off the back of rider feedback?


It's usually alright. I mean obviously, again you build up the relationship and understand, and use your base of knowledge to understand what’s going on. History and immediate feedback help to work things out.

Have you guys got base settings from tracks last year that you can work from?


We do track all the information but it changes year to year. Rider to rider, bikes change, setups change. Bikes are so finicky for setup, they’re not the same as other vehicles because rider input is a massive amount of it. You shift your body weight 10cm forward or whatever and it changes everything, in a moto or car that really doesn’t change as much.

Obviously you have the big truck here in Europe but how does it work when you fly to the likes of Mont Sainte Anne?


It's funny because we are an American company and Mont Sainte Anne is the hardest race other than Australia as we have very little support there. All of our product comes to Europe as that’s 90% of our racing—for me I generally have to fly with it and wing it. We try to get everyone sorted before those races, emailing teams to bring their spares as they all have them. We are limited on what we can do, like shipping stuff to Australia is really expensive customs wise. If it even shows up. We try to bring everything we can every time!

FOX World Cup race support

FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support

FOX World Cup race support


bigquotesThis is the second weekend we’ve had this truck so we have had no time to properly sort anything out. We’ve kind of just pulled all the parts from the old setup and thrown them in. This will be the primary interior workstation, [though we're] still sorting it all out. The toolbox shouldn’t be there, there will be another vice—by Italy, it’ll all be sorted. There’s two technician stations, a vacuum cleaner, three Bose systems because we can’t figure out the new Sonos system…Jordi Cortes

FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support

FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support

The new setup is massive, it's a more usable space. It's deeper and square, you don’t have the weird corner we used to have behind the van. We have plenty of storage for easy access to all the spares, we carry both individual spares and complete forks and shocks as there are more and more people riding our products.

bigquotesThe big difference with this setup is that we have a truck with four seats, so we can drive away and the tent stays up. The old setup we had to use the truck as part of the setup and that was a pain as we always had to have a rental car.Jordi Cortes


FOX World Cup race support
FOX World Cup race support



MENTIONS: @rossbellphoto / @foxracingshox



Author Info:
rossbellphoto avatar

Member since Apr 25, 2010
145 articles

60 Comments
  • 26 4
 This article sure had me sprung!
  • 11 5
 Being at work right now has my spirits dampened.
  • 5 6
 What a shockingly good write-up...
  • 4 2
 @RRMonster: Well, Spirits are usually best when moist anyways...
  • 3 4
 A tub of coils is only dropped once, just once. Suspension techs are only for the most well adjusted.
  • 4 3
 Looks like it didn't take them long to rebound from the smaller set up they were using before.
  • 2 1
 Wonder if they need a good bouncer to keep the fans from disturbing the techs?
  • 1 5
flag Boardlife69 (Jul 7, 2017 at 12:55) (Below Threshold)
 Want to pull up front cause you know that fork was stuffed.
  • 5 2
 I'd imagine they'll all have a spring in their step with the new rig.
  • 7 3
 They must've forked over a lot of coin for that setup.
  • 3 2
 Fox has been on the rebound lately.
  • 1 2
 Have you accidentally swapped Rachel's and Gwin's forks and shocks?
  • 1 4
 Ok enough with the puns!
  • 2 1
 @UserNumberTwo: it's punny you should say that, I was thinking the same...
  • 11 0
 Nothing but good things to say about Fox really. I take my fork/shock to them at Fort William when I was race 4X and despite a pile of 40s the size of your house, they always find the time to service them quickly and give you a lot of their time for advice. Jordi and Kolja are great reps for the brand.
  • 10 0
 Interesting drawer with what looks like fork springs. Do some fox riders use a spring fork??
  • 5 4
 I'm sure they do, always get a better ride out of a coil spring...
  • 3 1
 Was riding all coil today for the first time in awhile (Lenzerheide was full so we went to Chur) God I missed it. Smash through chunk goodness.
  • 7 3
 @freerydscott: yeah sure, just look at Connor Fearon s suspension last week ...
  • 2 0
 @Boardlife69: how is chur these days? Want to go back mid august, should I go?
  • 6 0
 I would be curious how much this all cost and actually if teams are paying some fee or it all comes as a support from Fox. Things we will probably never find out, but running this truck is probably not cheap at all. Also interesting point about Australia or Canada. One would thought they will have some basement here too but probably the market is really not as big as it looks. Good info. Thanks Wink
  • 6 1
 The cost for that support helps explain why their products aren't inexpensive to buy!
  • 1 0
 This is a good question. Outside of a few guys/teams (Athertons, Syndicate, Gwin) I wouldn't be surprised if other teams have to pay for support. Maybe even those teams do...
  • 2 0
 I would think any sponsored rider gets their service for free, but I may be wrong. This is a good question!
  • 2 0
 @dhx42: It was implied that tune ups for any rider are free. But it wasn't made clear. I wonder if any racer with a Fox can just role up and get a tune up for free.
  • 1 0
 @clarky78: Yeah, I guess my question is there a team upfront cost. Let's say for full fox factory support it costs 50K a season (totally made up number). The riders may get free forks, shocks, etc. but to be on the list for support on race days and training sessions there is a fee associated with it.
  • 5 0
 Companies pay to sponsor teams/riders, but this cost is offset by OEM purchases by the brands. In some cases there are specific OEM numbers the bike companies have to agree to hit to get X sponsorship dollars from the supporting companies. Sometimes this is contractual sometimes it is a wink & nod agreement. Have a look at the dominant brands supporting the team and in most (but not all) cases you will see heavy OEM spec on key bike models.

The shipping and import duty costs for wheel sponsors is even worse than for suspension.
  • 5 0
 kusa -- There is no fee. With the number of teams Fox sponsors, it's easier in the long run having a support truck than stocking up teams with product for back-to-back race weekends. It also makes sense having someone there to help tune setups (keep in mind, Fox has test and tune training camps for their sponsored riders). Outside of Shimano or SRAM, Fox is the next biggest sponsor (both conicidentally also have support trucks). As a privateer, I've had the guys at both Fox and SRAM rebuild forks that desperately needed it. No charge. It's great PR for them.
  • 5 0
 THE REAL QUESTION IS WHAT KIND OF GRILL IS THAT?????
  • 18 1
 It's an expensive outdoor camping/glamping grill that is capable of cooking damn fast. I found a vid of it on YouTube with a dude cooking a pack of bacon in 37 seconds flat! www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • 2 0
 @Jack-McLovin: you are such a funny guy! But seriously I need one of those grills in my life.
  • 1 0
 Love fox - fixed my fox 40 (first production round) at the US open back many years ago - changed the spring for free - great customer support- many thanks
  • 3 0
 Is that fleshgear tattoo on that dudes arm???
  • 2 0
 So what's this guy saying.. a lot of Fox owners are d****(don't get your panties in a wad, I'm one too)?
  • 5 2
 Neat.
  • 2 1
 Potatoes & eggs are pretty much the perfect meal. Gotta get me one of those flat top grills for my next tailgate.
  • 3 1
 This is pretty cool. I'd love to see the set up Rock Shox has as well!
  • 2 1
 And yet Phil Atwill with Xfusion fork&shock faster than load of folks with Fox Factory support. Smile
  • 2 1
 Why is there a marzocchi sticker on the truck
  • 4 0
 They bought Marzocchi amnd made it their low level brand
  • 1 0
 So this is where Jordi spends all his time away from home!
  • 1 0
 I'm pretty sure that a Dolphin goes with the Unicorn....
  • 1 1
 I love mtn biking but this stuff is an absolute joke compared to road racing
  • 2 0
 here for the puns....
  • 1 0
 yo
  • 2 2
 Pretty sick stuff for sure - I dig this type of stuff
  • 1 2
 No Fox models where harmed nor used in this article. DAMNN YOU FOX(shaking fist in air).
  • 1 4
 Shocking how much suspension work goes into a WC race.
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