Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Daytona Recap Roberts, naturally, disagrees. "To start doing that is just dumb because people race - Honda and Suzuki and everyone races to learn more and to make better things. It's not to race last year's bike. It's to race a few years ahead so they can bring it into production and get their R&D done. I mean, look what racing's done for 600 Supersport. If Mat [M1adin) and those guys want to race those, that's great. Let us know a couple of years early so we can get the hell out of here bE;cause I don't want to waste my time doing it." MJadin's solution addresses another pressing issue, the anemic size of the fields. Roberts doesn't believe you need to. "How do you solve the problem of small fields?" he asks. "You're not. You're still going to have the same eight or nine guys that are going to be way out in front anyway." Roberts' boss, Honda's Chuck Miller, agrees that the best will continue to dominate, regardless of machinery, but believes the fans have to be considered in any change. "Coming from the show side, you better have those fans up there and the fans want to see technology, they want to see development, they want to see trick bikes." Miller says. "They don't want to just see a bunch of stock motorcycles out there. They want to come down and see the trick Honda or the trick Kawasaki or Suzuki and what it looks like. And, yeah, it's best if it's a close rendition of what they buy, but to completely stifle technology and say you've got to have a, 'quote,' production rule, and this goes in motocross and supercross, too. If they limit all the technology, the fans aren't going to want to come quite. They're still going to come watch Ricky [Carmichael] or Jeremy [McGrath] race, but they also come to see the trick pegs and the forks and what Honda is doing this week. And I think that's part of the whole puzzle too. To completely dismiss it, I don't think is fair. To disre· gard what the fans are there for isn't fair. We're kind of going through those pains in supercross as well with the production rules and what they allow. If they make some production rules for road racing, everybody's going to follow it, but the best riders are still going to win. It's still going to be those three guys on Suzuki and the three guys on. Honda because we're going to hire the best riders and - the best riders always seem to win, no matter what type of racing it is." The point Miller makes is born out by the 600cc Supersport race. By the end of the 18-lap race, there was a pack of five factory riders running in a chain. No one was mOTe unsettled than Nicky Hayden, though he wasn't alone. 28 AF>AIL 3. 2002' cue I • "I feel a lot safer there on Superbike than I do the 600," he says. "I mean the Superbike's kind of a bit gnarly on the banking. But, to be honest with you, I think the 600 race there, it's just so crazy. There's so many guys riding so close together that, well, two out of the last three years we've had problems on the banking. I don't see how it doesn't happen more. Right now, there's so many fast guys all on good equipment and everybody wants fo do good so bad that the 600 race is definitely, when it's over you just kind of think, "m glad it's over and made it through it okay. "I'm glad that we don't got to run Daytona more than one time a year on 600 because I don't see how we don't have more problems on the banking, guys getting together. It only takes one mistake to take out a bunch of guys." Hayden won't come right out and say that he doesn't want to race in the 600cc Supersport class, but you can hear it in his voice. Bostrom sees the problems as well. DuHamel sees it differently. "What do you want to do with the 600, you want to slow them down too?" he asks. The same thing could happen if they go to make the lightly modified IOOOcc FX standard. "It's like, say, you make the fields more bunched up and you're going to get bigger wrecks," Roberts says. "We already know the AMA doesn't like dose passing because, why? You have to do that, and they get pissed off when you do it. The safest race really, other than tire problems, which having to turn the laps mainly because of horsepower issue because the track's so fast, is the Superbike field." It's a valid point. The most tragic accidents have come in other classes. Dirk Piz was killed in the chicane in last year's Pro Thunder race. Last fall, Stuart Stratton was killed when he crashed on the pit lane at the start of a CCS race. In March 2000, Chris Tatro was killed during CCS practice. Roger Reiman, the 1964 Grand National Champion, died in the 1997 BMW Legends exhibition event. Jimmy Adamo was killed at the Speedway in 1993. It must be said that the fields the Speedway hosts twice a year are far greater than those at most any other track. That said, the track's safety record falls well be.lowa track like the dreaded New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which has considerably more race meetings and where the only serious accident in last year's AMA race came when Yamaha's Anthony Gobert crashed his Superbike dUring practice. n __ s "If you look at Loudon, coming out of the last corner, we're just aiming straight at the wall, but at let's say, 40 mph," Pascal Picotte says. "Coming out of the chicane at Daytona you're carrying IOO-something miles per hour with no grip. That's a big impact zone." The worst of the Superbike accidents came in 200 I, when the front of the Superbike field was involved in a pace car pileup on the back straight, though the blame for that rests clearly with the AMA. They've since improved a number of procedures, including flagging, and had a more sensible yellow Pontiac Firebird this year, rather than last year's wallflower maroon Pontiac Aztec. The damage at this year's Bike Week was disturbing. Randy Renfrow was badly hurt on the warm-up lap of a Championship Cup Series race and fellow 250cc stalwart Rich Oliver broke his pelvis and lost part of a finger in a solo bike practice crash exiting the chicane. The crash Bostrom avoided sent the Gobert brothers, Anthony and Aaron, both to Halifax Medical Center. Anthony's neck puncture was stitched up and he returned to race to a gutsy third, nearly second, in the Daytona 200. Aaron suffered serious injuries, including a broken right leg - tibia and fibula - broken right ankle, broken right collarbone and right shoulder blade, and multiple ribs, which punctured his lungs and caused them to collapse when Anthony ran into his Yamaha R6. It may have saved Aaron's life. "People were telling me it looks like I kind of more helped him than anything else, because if I hadn't hit his bike and pushed them ouLof the way, then he would have gone headfirst into the wall and the bike would have followed him in," Anthony said after the Daytona 200. "He probably would be dead right now." Will anything change for 2003? Probably not, and Mladin understands why. "From a rider's standpoint, from my standpoint, there's really not much I can do about it," he says. "The manufacturers really don't stand behind riders as much as what they need to when it comes down to the crunch. Again, I understand the importance of the race, but history's history and the future's the future and there comes a time when you need to look ahead and say, 'Well, this place isn't the best choice any more and maybe there needs to be something different.' I think this championship is large enough that we need to start looking at going to different racetracks, some proper road circuits and that sort of stuff. "I understand the nature of the race here in America and what it means to manufacturers and that sort of stuff, but the unfortunate thing is that, with time, , guess the easy way to look at it is that the motorcycles get faster and sometimes you have to make a decision that isn't going to please everybody. Personally, I don't think it's a great racetrack for motorcycles. I just think it's vastly dangerOUS." Honda's Miller believes there needs to be a move to a more production-based field to make racing safer, especially at Daytona. "If we allow chassis improvements and regulate engine improvements or direction, then that would limit the speeds and ultimately, hopefully, make a safer racing environment because we're allowing riders and the aftermarket, more importantly, to build better aftermarket suspension components, brakes, chassis, pieces that affect that can improve the handling of the machine, yet at the same we would be limiting the top speeds," he says. Others aren't as optimistic. Sakakura says: "I don't know what can be done. Obviously, Daytona's been an event for so many years now, and I think, obviously, the level of the technology of the motorcycle, and engine in particular, chassis as well, maybe it is, maybe it's too much speed for that type of a high gload on the banking there." "I don't know what the total answer is," Yamaha's Keith McCarty adds. "I guess you could restrict the speed somewhat, you could add weight. But to come up with that kind of formula that's fair and equitable for everybody out there, I don't know. Something obViously needs to happen and -happen. pretty quick." McCad~g· ures that we've got a "rough couple of years to get through. I think there are a lot of people thinking that they can make the current equipment work if the rules equaled out the Hondas or Ducatis or whatever a little bit more to afford. We saw the ground that Honda got in this past year. It's great for them, but it's bad for the sport in general for there to be such a separation now. We'll see how, as the year goes on, how big a role that's really to play." Is it conceivable that some day the Daytona 200 won't be on the sched- _ ule? Probably not. Despite being the most difficult race of the year for the AMA, there's virtually no chance they'd turn their back on the facility. Remember, it took bitter personal attacks on AMA personnel, two years of rained-out Superbike races, and a rider boycott before Loudon was: removed. And come next March, we.:J1 likely still be having this same discus· sion, and holding our breath until the' checkered flag falls at the end of the eN Daytona 200.

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