Jeremy McGrath had won seven out of the last eight 250 Supercross championships before this season. Make that seven out of nine, because second-year rider Ricky Carmichael blew away the entire field in 2001, winning the last 13 races of the 16-race series. Carmichael's 13 straight victories tied the record for consecutive wins held by, you guessed it, Jeremy McGrath. To break the tie, talkmeister Jay Leno organized a race-off on the back lot of the Tonight Show. The fellas from Dirt Wurx brought in 10 tons of dirt to craft a miniature Supercross course, and the scene was set.

It's an hour before showtime and Jeremy, his fiance Kim Maddox and I are chillin' in the green room. Jeremy is lying on his back on the floor in between signing autographs for staff members. Then I hear one of the most familiar voices in the world.

"Hey, how's everybody doing?" says Leno as he comes in to chat with us for a few. "You know I'm big into riding, too," says Jay of his love for Harleys.

"Yeah but we need to get you out on the dirt," McGrath replies. Jay admits he may not be ready for that and heads off to his own dressing room. One of the show's assistants wheels a food cart (the Jay Bar) into our (uh, Jeremy's) dressing room, so I do the right thing and grab a box of blueberry Mike & Ike's while others munch on cheese and grapes.

Freestyle wunderkind and 125 Supercross champion Travis Pastrana is also lured in by the Jay Bar. He's here to provide play-by-play for the race. A few minutes later Tonight Show talent associate Tracy Anderson brings in release papers and contracts for Jeremy to sign. She also hands him a guest book.

We skim the book and see signatures from The Rock (big, swooping letters), Calista Flockhart (chicken scratch) and Dave Chappelle (possibly high). Leno has had the guests from each of his 2,057 shows fill up seven different guest books over the years. One of the show's other guests, Christopher Titus, comes in and introduces himself but he doesn't recognize Travis. "Hi, I'm Travis Pastrana," says the kid. "You're Travis Pastrana?" says a stunned Titus to the clean-cut 17-year-old. "You're like Richie Cunningham ... but crazy."

The race is the show's second segment and begins on stage, heads out the studio doors, onto the back lot and finishes back inside on the stage. McGrath goes first and looks to be riding well until he miscalculates a turn on the course. "Ooh, that bobble is gonna cost him," says Pastrana. He clears the finish-line jump onto the stage at 48.8 seconds, skidding out right in front of Kevin Eubanks. Carmichael goes next and rides flawlessly, edging McGrath with a time of 48 seconds flat, a microcosm of the season. As Leno hands Carmichael the trophy he jokes "As you can see folks, it's already engraved."

After the show McGrath, Carmichael and Leno take pictures on stage with fans for 15 minutes. Later in the parking lot Leno is struggling to carry a load of Jeremy McGrath beanie dolls and other autographed items to his Corvette. The suns ducks behind a Burbank mountain and everyone gathers by McGrath's rig to talk about how much fun we had. It sure was a great day to go racing.

Chris Palmer covers The Life for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at christopher.palmer@espnmag.com.