We are nearly one full year into this new site. When we launched earlier this year—January 13 to be exact—our goal was to provide a place for humor, gossip, and culture—motorsports culture, that is. The idea was to provide a place for stuff that didn’t belong on Racer X Online. We wanted it to be funny, yet informative, and a place where readers could enjoy coming every day. 

Our first post was about how bad Weege sucks at technology and we hit the ground running from there. We’ve had funny stuff, interesting stuff, and well, just stuff. With that in mind, we wanted to look back at the most read stories of our first year. Remember, when we say, “most read” it’s important to note that the following are the MOST READ POSTS, BY YOU, THE READERS—NOT what we deemed the most popular, cool, or exciting—and is based on unique page views.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the first year here at Exhaust. Here’s to many more!  

10. Chad Reed Held a Garage Sale Yesterday and Some Fans Got an Awesome Deal

Anything with Chad Reed is going to be popular, especially when at the time, we weren’t 100 percent sure if he was racing in 2019.

9. Motocross Social Media Was On Fire Yesterday

It’s not often you have a day like this, where legends of the sport all conspire to break the internet, but that’s what we got. It all started with Travis Pastrana posting “training” footage of Kevin Windham getting ready for the Motocross of Nations, Forrest Gump-style. We got more, with RV calling out Dungey about racing Red Bull Straight Rhythm.

Oh, no, that’s James Stewart’s music!!!! 

Yes—a few days after Matthes and AC dropped part one of "Finding Stew," James Stewart himself came back into our lives and the internet officially broke.

8. A Modest Proposal: Restrictor Plates

Weigandt went out on a limb with this one. A lot of fans will claim that switching back to two-strokes would solve many of the problems the sport currently faces, but that's not realistic when (some) manufacturers don't want to build them anymore, and thus wipe out the zillions they've already spent on four-stroke development (which, the manufacturers will argue, wasn't there decision. AMA rules allowing 450s to race 250s made that happen.)

One can argue the merits of two-strokes and four-strokes all day long. One point that can't be argued is that 450 four-strokes can go very fast, and higher speeds and bigger jumps mean riders hit the ground harder when they crash. Could switching back to 250 two-strokes slow the riders down? Maybe, but it's not happening.

Weigandt made a simpler suggestion with this column about stuffing restrictor plates in the 450 intakes. Manufacturers still get to sell 450s without radically changing engineering or production lines. The bikes have less power, and maybe riders now crash trying to clear 60-foot triples instead of 90-foot quads. 

It's just an idea, but it got read by a lot of people.

7. Video: Tyler Bowers/Justin Barcia Incident at Las Vegas

BamBam vs The Bear? Yes, please.

6. Steve Matthes and AC Set Out To Find James Stewart, Part I

You know about this by now.

5. Travis Pastrana Is Bananas

In the lead up to his new film, Action Figures 2, Pastrana put some insane clips on his Instagram.

“Double Back Flip 360. Double Quark 1080. Ausi Roll.. call it what you will. I call it hard as sh*t and 10 years in the making,” he wrote in part.

4. Video: Moto2 Rider Grabs Front Brake of Competitor

This was a huge story in MotoGP. At the San Marino Grand Prix, Moto2 rider Romano Fenati was black-flagged for grabbing the front brake of fellow rider Stefano Manzi. Fenati was eventually fired from his team, but somehow has a ride for next year.

3. Harley Davidson Invests in Alta Motors

H-D announced that it has made an equity investment in California-based electric motorcycling manufacture Alta Motors. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well, as H-D pulled out of the deal rather quickly, and Alta halted operations.

2. Chad Reed Went Riding at the Stewart Compound and About Broke the Internet

Remember what we said about Reed?

1. Dean Wilson Wins the Internet with his 80-Year-Old Grandpa Skit

Amazing work by Dean.