Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

mot or cycles a while back, and w e go t so me p re tty good inpu t tha t the place wasn' t read y. We go t so me d rawings on how the tr ack was la id out a nd s tuff and we knew that there was a prob lem he re and we qu esti oned at the last cou ple of races. These people are nice peopl e, they're try ing rea lly hard , they're try ing now to do whatever it takes - but it' s too late. Even if they cou ld make all th e cha nges th at th ey tal ked about in the meeti ng this morning, it would take them the res t of toda y and mo st of tomorrow a nd th en nobod y ge ts a ny p ractice sessions. "1 wasn't here yesterday, I go t in late las t night. But I went around the track this morning in the rent-a-car and it was appalling th a t the li nes, th e ch ica nes, and the lines through the chicanes - and there are places where if you miss your ap ex in one chicane, your bike was out in the track in the next chican e. The lines were wrong and the ha y ba les were se t out wrong . Do w n o n th e o th e r e n d down th ere, th ere's a p lace, wh ere there's a sha rp right-hand turn that's 17 feet wid e and two bik es going in ther e bent over sideways would take up all that sp ace. It' s rid icu lou s. Th er e' s no way yo u can rac e her e. And it's a fas t race track - yo u kn ow, 170 mph - a nd there are just too man y wa lls to hi t. For me, it w as like co m ing here a fter that mes s we had in Loud on th is ye ar; it' s like sornebody's dropping the ball ." American Honda' s Miguel DuHam el and Harley-Davidson's Thomas Wilson , a long with pri va teer Bre tt Metz ge r , w ere a ll se rio usly inj u re d ' in se p a ra te in cid ent s a t Lo u do n, a tra ck m an y believ e has ou tlived its usefulness. "Our ag reeme n ts with the rid ers say we'll su ppor t them at the races," Mathers continued . "And the onlv reason we wou ld n' t do that (race) is if they'd say it's un safe. And they basically all finally ag reed that it' s unsafe. So once the rid ers say that, then we 're ou t. And that's unfortunate." One of the few di ssenting opinion s , came from Fas t By Ferracci tea m ow ner Eral do Ferracci. Ferracci believed that th e rid er s and teams sho ul d make the m ost of a bad s it ua tio n a n d not jus t wa lkaway. "We sta r t a ll this . It' s wrong . We sho u ld not be her e, but a lso w he n we ge t her e, we should try to d o the best we . ca n to acco m mo da te a ll the fans tha t bou ght a ticke t th at wa n t to come in here," Ferracci sai d . "And the next team that don't like it, who start all this trouble, it' s the people that lead the championship. The y want to go home, becau se, ' H ey , I'm better o ff if I don 't scre w around.' That's it." Even so, Ferr acci understood the riders' poi n t and agreed it should never have come to this. . ;'The AMA shou ld listen to the team and come an d check and see," he said . "Instead we come in here, we got th is mess. Th e promoter w ill get disgusted beca use he said , 'What the hell, we wa n t to do so mething , tell us what to do, we can tell yo u yes or no : I have 10 people coming here to wa tch the race on Su nd ay - th ree potential spo nso r. I have no race. "A lread y they go t her e they sh ould do the best you can, make a ru le," Ferracci su ggeste d . "Maybe you ha ve to have a d river me eting after they go on the track and look, and say , 'Hey, guys, maybe we got to pay att en tion, not to overtake u nd erneath the bridge, not d o th is, not d o tha t, pa y a tt enti on : This guy, they have advertised on television . They have live television." Track ow ner Dale Coyne exp lained tha t he'd first exp ressed interes t in having a road race at his facilit y when he m et with AMA boa rd membe r Cary A gajan ian durin g th e CART ra ce in Fontana, California, last year. He said it was o riginall y d es ign ed as a testing tra ck, and team s fro m both CA RT and Indy Lights had tested there. He knew there wou ld hav e to be changes made for motorcycle racing and left it up to the AM A to mak e th e need ed recommendation s. "We've m odifi ed th e track severa l times to accomm od at e s pecta to rs, to make the track safer for rid er s," Coy ne said. "Ron Barric k has visited here four times. He had a lot of thin gs he wa s concerned w ith , but we a lways answere d eve ryone of them. " _ Barrick first vis ite d th e track abo u t nine months ago and returned on tw o subse que n t occas ions . On the first trip, the track wa s mostly a construc tion p roject and ther e were no drawings of what the race course wou ld loo k like. Barrick go t asense of wha t the facility would be li ke , bu t he d idn ' t kn ow h ow mu ch prop ert y would be used for the layout. "I had ano ther visit after the major ity o f the facility was co m p leted and had some setup concerns an d so forth. I still didn't know exact ly what the final con figuration was going to be becau se they were playi ng with d iffer ent conf iguration s, but mainly for the Ind y cars," Barrick sa id. "I think the design that they did come up w it h for the roa d co u rse was more for the Ind y cars, wh eth er it be for racing or testing purposes." There had bee n an attempt mad e to or ganize a test for the supe rbike teams at the facility, but the tim ing was wrong . "We were trying to have so me teams co me here a nd test ea rli er in th e se aso n," Barrick sai d . "I know a cou ple of the teams had privatel y co ntac ted th e race tracks to try to set up pri vate tests th em selves . For whatever rea son, they we ren' t eve r able to put that together you' d probably have to dis cu ss th at wit h them or the race track themselves. Maybe the y called and the times they were available the track wasn' t availab le, or th e track wasn't ye t ready for that. I don ' t know the details. But I do know that att em pts we re mad e by so me of the top team s to come au t here and test." The AMA had hoped to have the factory teams test on their way back to Californ ia fro m th e Lo u don N a tion al in June. Ho wever, th e teams had earlier agreed to vis it th e Dunlop fac to ry in Buffalo at th e sa me tim e, so tha t idea was scru bbed . "Harley-Da vid son wo u ld have been willing to co me d own lat er th at week, but with the in jury to th ei r r id er (Tho mas Wilson) - basically, they went back to their race sho p,after Loudon and just basically took a week off, and regrou ped to thin k abou t wh at they we re go ing to d o with the rest of th ei r yea r wit h their program. So I guess just a lot of bad cir cu msta n ces led to o ur no t being able to organize a la rge-scale test:' The only rid ers to test we re Greaves and Harrington, and even they weren' t able to get in much track time. "They w ere on ly able to g et.a few laps in the morning and it w as a very hot d ay, ve ry uncomfort abl e for anybod y to be out here, let alone in leathers, or w ha tno t," Ba rrick sa id. "They gave us so me input, we had a list of things tha t th ey had seen and th e track had see n that list and we worked together to mak e they chan ges that they saw . Th e fact is tha t the were her e only for a brief peri od and it really takes a lot mor e than a few la p s on a motorcycl e to reall y, tru ly evalua te every aspect of the racing facility:' Ea ch tim e h e vi sited , th ere were cha nges that needed to be made, so me as recently as his visit two weeks pri or to the rac e, wh en the team s wer e noti fied th at th e rac e w ould , indeed, ta ke place. There had been mu ch speculation that it wouldn't. Barrick a rrived a t th e fa cility on a very rainy and inclement Tuesday. "I did drive through so me horrib le wea ther just coming d own to the track, and when I go t here the re was probably a foo t, foo t and a half of water in the padd ock, trying to eat its way d own the drains, " he sai d . "There was mud washing across the track in a lot of pla ces and debris all over from that. They were trying to p our co nc re te cu rb in g a n d so for th , a nd so they dug up mud . The place was in p retty roug h sha pe because of the wea ther. We' ve been stru ggling to do w hat we can to ge t the p lace ready to go. We're just pretty far beh ind the eight ball. There's still things that we're trying to ge t tak en ca re of a nd ba sic ally jus t running out of time to be able to acco mplish those thin gs: ' Barrick said the A..\1A was "comfortable with th e se tu p we were going to currently have for the event: ' The riders weren't, and one area about which they had great conce rn s was the tunnel leading u nder the facility building and onto the drag strip. With virtua lly no ru noff, after a s hort stra ig htaway, the rid ers had to make a ha rd rig ht and la u nch down the strip. The area was pro tected on the ou tside by Air Fence an d the rid ers wou ld have been slowed consid er a b ly b y th e tim e th e turn ha d to be made. "One of the co ns id era tion s was the tunnel," Barrick sa id . "We we re in a situation w here the facility was built, basica lly , arou n d tha t. That' s so methi ng tha t, on short notice, we ju st ha ve to be able to modify. The ow ner, Dale Coyne , has ag ree d to look at othe r options for this tu rn in the fu tu re, but in the shor t tim e th at w e h ad , th er e was no th in g more that we can d o, except ad just it as best we cou ld :' Ba rrick co nceded th at they wou ld take a look at how new faci lities w er e ap proved for racing. (Ab ove left) The Ferracc i team packs up the t ruck and prepares to leave. (Above) Route 66 track owner Dale Coyne and his track crew ran out of tim e in the ir efforts to make the track acceptable . "Obviously, we 're open to looking at how the process of ge tting a new facility on our event sched u le tak es place," he sa id. Though Coyne and his crew worked tireles sly to accommodate everyone, he knew they'd run ou t of time. "The ba sic d esign we did no t have time to cha nge," he sa id . "Even th is week, we d id everything that was ask ed for: more ha y bal es, foam , even so me things abo ve and beyond wh at we were a s ked. But w e co u ld n ot cha n ge the basic design of.the track. While it works for cars , it's a d ifferen t type of track for mot or cycles. It' s really a s to p -a nd-go tra ck. It' s a type of s tree t cir cuit w ith so me ru noff a reas. But it's the type of facility that they're not used to running. We do no t w ant to hurt anyb ody; w e wo ul d not run a race if we thought it was go ing to hurt rider s. We have the sa me concern ' on the car side; we d on't wa nt to hurt d rive rs - don 't wa nt to hurt any body." In th e en d, what d isappoin ted him most was th at he cou ld be put in th is posi tion . . "Safety can never be co m p ro mised and I support them (the riders) for that," he sai d . "We have those con cerns. It's impossi b le to m ake a tr a ck perfec t, becau se yo u' ve got to hav e spectators in order for the sport to wo rk. We're goin g to try to make it bett er. We want to get wit h some of those teams and those rid ers and talk about what we can' do ' here fro m a design stand point to change it to allow an eve n t for next year. . "We'd d efinitely like to have superbike. Th e Chicago market has alw ays been a strong place for all types of bikes, and' we thin k w e ca n do that. T he process (for approving tracks) needs to be differen t. We wan te d to ge t so me su perbikes in her e for some testing after Lou don , but at Loudon the re was a lot of problems and that ' s p roba bly w ha t stemmed a lot of thi s. Ther e was a lot of concern by the teams and the rid ers and the factories abo ut the safety of all their circuits. Unfortuna tely, it's fallen on our sho uld ers. But we' ve worked diligen tly a ll w e e k t o perform a ny t h ing th a t they' ve wa nted us to. Unfortuna tely, the only person from AMA tha t's eve r bee n here has been Ron Barrick, so we rea lly haven 't had the review that we shou ld have. On the car sid e; we go to a lot of temporary circuits w here you go ther e for the first tim e you ever run a race and we send a pretty th orough team in to evaluate it. It's still not going to be perfect w hen you show u p, but at leas t you try to be very, very thorough in yo u r preview ." l'~

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