Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Wasn't the rule initially augmented to give the privateer a chance against the might of the factories and to keep them honest so they wouldn 't come out with one-off megabuck specia ls? The claim ing ru le , as far as I can det ermine, was put into effect in the early 50's in Class C din track ra cing to try and make the racing open to th e average rid er. That was the ori ginal intent . Is Na tional Champions h ip ra cing (MX) for the average ride ri No w you take t he ru le up to 1979. Situations ha ve ch a nged , times ha ve changed. Do we want to follow that same intent? Do we want it so th at the average rid er ca n go bu y a bike and ride a National ? I don't t hink so person ally because I don't t hink that is what is going to provide a good show for the sp ectators. The way the rule wa s instituted it appears that it was an arm twisting by the Japanese factories because they didn't want their bikes claimed. Look , I'm not sayi ng it wasn' t a rm twisting . I'm not sa ying that t he way it was don e was th e right way to do it. I was put into a sit ua tion , three days before the National and I had to m ak e a decision on it. Could we then assume that it wa s a sim il a r si tu ation to Da ytona a few yea rs ago wh ere Ya maha threa ten ed to pull out all its factory road racer s . if t he claiming rule wasn't grea tly modified or sus pended? Well . if Yamaha came to me or Suzuki came to me or Kawasa ki came to me or Honda came to me and said ''I'm not going to race unless you change the ru les," I would have told them that the rule was there and that we would look into their reasoning for wanting it changed . If you want to race. fine , and if you d on 't want to race, fin e. A prilI , 1979 - a very appropriat e date - may well go down in th e moto cross history books as th e day the claiming rule was dealta death blow. On that dat e an int erim. rule by AMA Commissioner of Professional Racing Mike DiPret e was put into ef ect f suspending the claiming rule for an indefin ite p eriod of time so that th e rule could be reviewed and either modified or reinstated . . On th e previous weekend at the opening rounds of th e 125/2JOcc National Championships at Hangtown, a prioate er namedJohn Roeder presented the referee with a cashiers check for I),JOO and put a claim on Marty Tn'pes 'factory Honda RC2JO. To sway the odds in his favor, he had a [riend do th e sam e unth. another S), JOO check. Counter claims were filed . A drawz'ng was held and, to th e surprise of many, Roeder won . He had beaten th efactories . What was Roeder's motive for th e claimt "I wanted to make a point, " said Roeder . "I want to keep th e factories honest. The claiming rule was put there for a purpose - to make it fair for th e privateer. " The question in many minds was what was behind the suspension ofthe rulet We wondered too . To answer that question we contacted DiPrete at his AMA headquarters office in Westerville , Ohio . In addition, we also asked DiPrete about th e direction of professional road racingfor 1980. And if they came in unison , what would happen ? W hat happen ed was, in fact , that they did come in u nison . W hen you have four of the majo r m a nu fa ctu rers saying that if you don't do someth ing a bo ut th at (the clai m ing ru le) we aren't going to race - and they are saying tha t as a group - an d you ha ve th e p romoter saying tha t if th ey don't come he ca n' t put on his race, th en what do you d o? You'r e between th e rock and th e hard pl ace. I think wha t I d id was the best th ing at the time. Act ua lly. I didn't tell them anything at th e tim e. I said I would let them know (my de cision ) the day of the race. I ca me back to the office and thought about it. The solution I came up with was not to take the rule out of the book, but to suspend it temporarily pending a later decision on it . They could compete in the race, the promoter could go ahead with the event and try to earn some money off the investm en t he had made. In my opinion I did the right th ing. Shouldn't we either have the rule or throw it out entirely? the AMA, or rather Mike DiPrete, is be ing swayed by the Japanese factories. That's right . and that is what it probably will come down to. We have to do one or the other. - Actually, my interest. as well as the interest of the organization, is t ha t we provide the best program possibl e of decent, competitive racing. I guess everybody has th eir own thoughts on how to do that. Basi cally , you have to get enough good brands on th e t rack to give you a good race. That's what we have right now . The factories are all pretty competiti ve if you take Bob Hannah out of th e picture. Bob , for whatever reason , happens to be the fastest guy around . The next ten guys are capable of putting on a good close race, and that is what the crowd en joys . W aan't the r u le a good and useful o ne ? Didn' t it give the privateer a socalled weapon against the factories and their special bikes? I guess what we have to look at is do we want to give the factories a scare. One of the best things about MX is that a privateer can go out and buy a bike off the showroom floor and for a reasonable investment wind up with more power and suspension than he can probably use . The reason that you have that situation is that the factories do a lot of testing and R&D work on the National circuit. They put that stuff back into the bikes as soon as they _ DiPrete on the claiming rule, future of road racing By Gary Van Voorhis 24 You've created quite a atir with the auspension of the claiming rule in MX. Yes and no . There has been feedback from some riders, but none from others. I was in a situation three days before an upcoming National and I figured that that was the best decis ion I could make on a temporary basis . The current status is that I'm going to continue to review the rule .before we decide whether it should be in there or not. I'll also talk to the racing committees and see what they think about it after I present m y case - whether they agree or disagree - and to take it from there. Wam't it a rather arbitrary rule change? It gives the impreuion that ca n. Wha t I' ve hea rd is t ha t the moto r of th e Hond a th at was clai me d was a pro totype of next year's pr odu ct ion motor. Is it good or bad that they do their testing in actual r acing? I think it's good, Today the up-and -coming rider has a better shot th an five years ago at doing good because he is bu ying a decent bike off t he floor a nd it is ready to ra ce. The kid who claim ed th e bike is a Novice ride r who , and I'm not sure of this, has never m ade a ma in event. W hy did he want the bike? It is doing him no good. Now , if he was running consistently in the to p five a nd th ou gh t he cou ld do better with a fac tory bike, it m ight ha ve bee n d ifferent. He had no rea son to claim the bike ot her than to crea te a hassle. Would the factories ha ve gone through with th ei r threat not to race? I'm not sure tha t they woul d have gone th rough with their a lleged plans not to ra ce. My first impression was th at hey. you've got to race. You ca n't just pu ll out of it like th a t. But the word tha t I got was th ey would . We 'll never know. W h en you look a t it , the fac tories being abl e to put stuff ou t on the track and test it a nd work it has proven very beneficial to the pri vateer rider. If the factori es didn't d o th at. we'd still be riding bikes with four inch es of suspen sion trav el inste ad of what we hav e today. Do you think that the po wer to change rules, as it sta n ds now , should be absolute or do you fa vo r bringing changes before a board for some sort of evaluation ? I don't know if I hav e a bsolu te power, I d on't loo k at it that way. What I do ha ve is the au thority to ma ke a temporary change. I would not make a permanent change to anything without getting enough input to know th at I would be goi ng in the right di rect ion . The claiming ru le ch an ge is on ly te m po rary and that is so I can look at it in de p th . take in pu t, and see what type problems are associated with it. I want to find out if it is a goo d rule or if it isn't . or if, m aybe, it isn't ou td a ted as it stands . I don 't m ak e rule ch anges as I think th ev should be m ad e. T ake a look at th e claiming rul e in din trac k. If the rul e was intende d for a ride r to have a cha nce to claim t he best bike, th e bike that's winning, so you can have somet hi ng that is better than everyon e else , th en the riders should hav e bee n cla imi ng Men Law will 's bik es be cause they were un doubtedly the fa st est. Yet nobody claimed his bikes because he was, in effect, a privateer. So are we saying claim the fast bike or claim the factory bike? Suppose you went ou t and claimed a bike like the one Corky Keener is running with th e monoshock-style suspension , He and his tuner Doug Sehl have a lot of time and money invested in the bike. If you claimed it you would put Keener out of business. It that fair? It 's the rule. but is it fa ir? I don't know whether the claiming rule is fa ir or not. My own opinion is that it is not because you can effectively put anyone . with the exception of the factories, out of business just by claiming that rider's motorcycle. In MX it happens to be the -rnechan ics more than the factories that make the biggest noise. When a mechanic gets one of those factory bikes , he spends a considerab le amount of time fixing that bike up for his rider , and the bulk of the time and energy in that bike comes from the mechanic. If the bike gets claimed he has to stan from scratch again. If the rider with claiming on his m ind would spend the money for the claim building a stocker into a good perfor-

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