Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

everyo ne com plained fro m the test on , and not hin g was done. Were you told it was goi ng t o ha p pen? HOLLINGSWORTH : Absolutely. We knew it was going to happen. What the track was att empting to address was the transitio n from asph alt to con crete. I th ink they were probably successful in do ing that . As anything do es, it has some other side effects , and you have to figure out whethe r those other side effects are bette r or wors e . Just the mere fact that they 're new and it's a change and somebody's got to get used to it, that always brings out people's fears. GRAEBER: When you take all the rhetoric out of it and you look at results, they we nt faster and had less fall-dow ns at the e nd of th e weeken d . HOLLINGSWORTH : Just part of the gra dua l improve me nt process . He re 's the ot her changes made at Mid-Ohio. Do you know why t he wall wasn't m ove d sooner? HOLLINGSWORTH : Econom ics and the ability to do it. In that particular move, there's all kinds of stuff. She doesn't own the land beh ind the wall. There's propertyrights issues . BARRICK: Th e reason the wall didn't go back any furthe r is the trees back there are the prop erty line . The road that runs beh ind the track at th at point is part of the othe r person's prop e rty, as well as 12 fee t beyond th at road . They are right up to their property line now. You mentioned Sears Po int. Did n't you have a meeting with th e m several years ago at which essentially their race was t hreatened? FARRIS: I th ink every conversation on renewing a co ntract w ith the promoter starts wit h tra ck-safety issues. And seeking input from Ron and riders and us just going there and obs erv ing for however many years we've been going ther e. So the starting po int in any deal that has to be do ne is what needs to be done to the tra ck in orde r to make it as safe and racea ble as po ssible. And as you just heard , the complications with MidO hio on land own ersh ip and a plan that actua lly improves w hat the issue is, to try to balance the things that you have to co mpro mise because of such a change, are all factored in too, all right; the n the track's got to go back and put together a capital-expen diture budget and determ ine if it's economically feasible to make these changes. Do they need to stage them out? It's obviously not an e ndless bank account to make these changes. That's where we start with every track. That doesn't answer the question . Was their sanction threatened? FARRIS: That's kind o f a private negot iation, th at we insist on making the racetracks as safe as possible as part of cont inuing to have a sanction ed race the re . T hat's a gen er al sta te ment. To say specifically we 're out threaten ing tra cks, you're going to lose your race if you don't do this or that - that's rea lly not a style that we have in negotiation . So yo u' r e saying it didn't hap p e n. FARRIS: I don't think I said that. What power does the AMA have over tracks? FARRIS: Ultimat ely, I guess we ca n choose not to race there . If they don't conform to the proper safety issues... has that ever been done other than Loudon and Phoenix? HOLLINGSWORTH : Those are two w he re you stopped racing at. BARRICK: The re are oth er tracks that we' ve been to and we stopped racing there for... I guess you cou ld say it's partly the fact that the trac ks weren't necessarily that suitable and they weren't economically viable, so we saw no reas on to try to change th at econom ic climate so that we co uld continue to run there. Isuppose the street race in Pomona, that wo uld be an example of that. Where it was not a particularly great venue for the racers, or for anybo dy, for th at matt e r. And it really didn't turn out to be a viable event fo r the pro moter as well. So the re's no point in trying to work with the promote r to figure out a way to make it e co nomically viable , beca use the facility just wasn't worth trying to cont inue to work with. Homest ead , probab ly not tha t bad a track. There again, if you 've got a successful race there, yo u cou ld say, "O kay, let's try to wor k on this aspect of the track and th at aspect of the track to try to make it a safer and bett e r event ." But again, the econom ics we re n't th ere. There are other racetracks in the country that we cou ld prob ably look at going and racing at, But for other reasons - maybe their track is acceptable, but there're no facilities, there 's no place for spectators to park or watch. O r ther e 's no interest from the promoters in risking the capital for th e event. There are a lot of reaso ns why we don't have 30 possible racetracks to go to and whe re we can then go to one of the racetracks that we're at and say, "We 're just going to drop your event and go over to this eve nt." T hat's not our style, eithe r. Would you have raced in the rain at Mid·Ohio? BARRICK: I think the problem that I had the re was because we never had an opportunity to see what effect the surface grinding had on the bikes in the wet with rain tires. That's a rea lly difficult question for me, because we've always raced in the rain at Mid·Ohio. I know it's neve r bee n th e best surface ne cessar ily to race on in the rain. I'm not even sur e I cou ld answe r that until forced to be in that situation. Did you tell Dun lop to bring rain tires? BARRICK: I didn't tell them one way or the othe r. They do sometimes call me and say, "Is there any change of policy for this track or th at trac k?" I don 't think I had any conver sat ion with Dunlop prior to th is part icular event. If we'd have had an op portunity to test - say Friday mor ning was wet, and we could send all the differen t classes out in the wet and just get feedb ack and see what the situation really was - th en I cou ld probably answe r you r question. Until that act ually arose, I'm not sure that I co uld answer that que stion , VANDERSLICE: I think also, Ron, yo u've also got to evaluate every rain sto rm that you're going to be dealing With . Even at the racetracks that we do race in the rain at. HOLLINGSWORTH : Rain is not just rain. VANDERSLICE : What' s rain? Is it this much ra in? Is it a mist? Is it wh at? It 's what we've raced in be for e at Mid· O h io. VANDERSLICE: If it was a to rre ntial thing at MidO hio, even in the past and the re was pudd lingout th ere, we couldn 't race in that , prob ably. A mist - hard to say. www.cyclenews.com AMA Pro Racing vice president/director of cammunications Kerry Graeber That's the race director's, race manager 's job, to evaluate the situatio n as it is at the racetra ck on that particu lar we ekend . So you rea lly can't say. If t hey do n't test t here again, o r yo u don't get that op portunity to ride there again in t he ra in, you're going to be fa cing the same th ing next year. BARRICK: Well, that's one of the reaso ns we contin ue to wo rk with Mid-Ohio - to see if we can make som e improve me nts in that area. But do you understand how the teams could be frustrated by not having any idea if they were goi ng t o race in the rain? We know there are t ra cks where you don't race in t he rain. Like you said, Mid ·Ohio isn 't one of them, even tho ugh it is marginal or was margina l. Do we put t hat o n the list? HOLLINGSWORTH : It's a doub le-edge sword fo r us. We can be firm in our deci sion and damn the torpedoes , full steam ahea d . O r we can try to be reasonable and rational and look at a situation and try to make the best decision . Tha t's a tough call. Someb ody 's got to ma ke it; Ron's going to make it. But he does so with eve ryo ne's best inte rest in mind, and yes , that can cause some anxiety about whether you're going to go racing or not. But the fact of the matter is, you do have to we igh the situ ation , and it's not uniform . Y u cannot o pred ict what it's going to look like at 3 o'cloc k whe n the Superbike race is going to start. There could be rivers running across the racetrack, or there could be a fine mist that really doesn't affect ope rations at all. And 15 minutes in front of the race, you might not know which one you're going to have. So Ron's try ing to do the best job in managing that issue, combined w ith the fact that th ere's 30,000 to 40 ,000 spec tators who paid to see the race, and the re 's a live TV show and a promote r with hundre ds of thousands of dollars at risk, and make a decision that is the best one overall for everyone, wh ile not com promising safety. At the en d of the day, you neve r co mpromise safety. eN Part II will be featured in next week's issue... Editor CYCLE N EWS • AUGUST 18 , 2004 31

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