Somewhat surprisingly the first day of the third round of the world championship started with cloudy skies, cold temperatures and even a light shower on the way to the track. Isn’t this supposed to be California?

Entering Glen Helen was no problem at all and it rapidly became clear throughout the morning that the public attendance would not be an improvement on 2010 (for Saturday) and it probably wasn’t connected to the grey mass overhead. The clouds eventually blew away to reveal the expected ‘blue’, and one can only hope a similar shift might occur in the volume of spectators for race-day.

An unprecedented gathering of industry personnel from both sides of the Atlantic and also Youthstream and MX Sports held a meeting on Friday in which they agreed an alignment of rules from the 2011 Motocross of Nations onwards that will see ‘freedom’ over the use of fuel, the FIM weight limit for MX1 coming down three kilos (from 102 to 99kg) to sync with AMA regs (only a 0.7 reduction for MX2) and the AMA adopting the 2mMax test for checking bike noise as used by the FIM.

The union was the first step in a possible collaboration between the fractious parties and if the good vibe continues then there could be some ground-breaking changes taking place for the sport. One idea mooted and being talked about here was a round of the AMA calendar also serving as a Grand Prix with riders scoring points for their respective series. The rules alteration and newly forged dialogue open up possibilities and practical implications for more than one round of the world championship to take place in the States.

Former world champion Seb Tortelli was seen around (along with David Bailey and Chad Read) and will sit next to Youthstream and the FIM in a press conference tomorrow morning to help announce the 2012 Grand Prix of Mexico. The venue is unknown at present but Tortelli has a hand with the Spanish promoting group in control of the new race.

The renovated layout at Glen Helen was a topic of conversation throughout the day. A lot of riders remarked how the scenic track is still ‘full-gas’, despite new, tighter corners and a softer terrain. The prep on the jumps was a cause for concern with some commenting that the take-offs would be sketchy if they weren’t fixed overnight.

On the track Clement Desalle and Ken Roczen were clear and undisputed winners of the MX1 and MX2 heats. No major surprises but Zach Osborne tangled with Max Anstie in a battle for fourth and went down, suffering cuts and a slot outside the top fourteen. Team-mate Arnaud Tonus also crashed, bottoming out on a rut and cased the fast triple – holding up Tommy Searle. The Swiss was very luck to walk away. Tony Cairoli started badly (as did Steven Frossard and David Philippaerts) and in MX2 Gautier Paulin had no reoccurrence of his bad back even though he hasn’t ridden a motorcycle in three weeks.

Off-track I struggled through a couple of interviews and needed three attempts to try and hook-up with Ken Roczen, who now seems to be entering another stratosphere in terms of his profile. The teenage German pretty much retained an entourage whenever he wasn’t on the bike. Finally an interview took place outside his truck, the series leader wearing only underwear for the passing paddock people. A worthy mention must go to the media centre crew at Glen Helen who laid on a five-plate lunch for the press and those chocolate biscuits were horribly hard to resist (even some of the Italian team members came in to steal some of the impressive tortellini).

Bellies were filled until qualification was finished, press conferences were done, and the circuit started to filter out into the evening sunset in search of steak houses (and iPads).

Its likely to be crazy here tomorrow so will check in with another account on Monday and will tweet results and news through Sunday.