Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128341
By I CHICANERY HENNY RAY ABRAMS T he Road To Making It Safer n the day befo re the start of t he Road Atlan t a weeke nd , Mat Mlad in, Ja mie Hacking , Tommy Hayd e n and I s pent an hour and 40 minutes inspect ing the track with AMA road race manager Ron Barrick. It was ed ucationa l for the riders and me to witness the difficulties in improving track safety. It was also inst r uct ive fo r Barrick to get input fro m t he riders on what needs to be d on e and in w ha t or de r. But for a few exce ptions, riders and teams haven't bee n involved in the safety process for years. With increas ing speeds and diminishing safety margins on outdated tracks, the need for cha nge has become essential. Riders have always said they wanted to be part of the process, and AMA Pro Racing officials, during a rou ndta ble discussion with Cycfe News, agreed to meet with the riders. Th is was the first small step. The plan is simple: Prior to every race wee ke nd, those three riders and Ben Bostrom , the fourth mem ber of the group wh o wasn't able to jo in us, will inspect the track with Barrick and a tra ck re presentative. The purpose is twofold: Making sure the air fence and hay bales are in the right places, and making certain that any planned improvem en ts ar e the right ones . The calendar is littered w ith racetracks whose good intentions haven't bee n recognized. Two spring to mind: the MidOh io Sports Car Cou rse and Daytona Internatio nal Speed way. Mid-O hio was heavily criticized during a meeting I had with a gro up of riders in June: Walls we re to o dose, nothing was being done. Someone at Mid-Ohio noticed the criticism and got AMA Pro Racing CEO Scott Hollingsworth on the phone. The message was along the lines of "Don't they know we have plans?" My reaction was that I, too, have plans, and they involve Pamela Anderson and a batht ub full of butte rscotch pudd ing, but that was as likely to happen as Mid-Ohio changing. Turns ou t I was wrong. (Ms. Anderson is allergic to pudding.) Mid-Ohio did indeed have plans - it would have helped if the y' d told the riders - and the first stage of improvements was in evidence during the race weekend. The y shou ld be commended for moving a guard rail on the back part of the co urse. For too long, it stood threatening, guarding with menace the final right onto the back st raight. But no one could remember that corner causing a se rious accident O or red nag. The corner that most needs fixing is the slow, up-and-down left soon after the longest st raightaway. Crash there and you will hit the air fe nce and you may get stuck unde r it, as Aaron Yates did a few years ago. Though it's a fairly low-speed corner, the run-off is insuffic ient, and crashes often bring out a red nag, which drives the peop le in the television truck batty. Fixing that corner is far less com plicated than the one on the back straight, where land-o w ne rship issues intervened . Mid- O hio is now fixing the up-anddow n left, I've bee n told, in time for next year 's race . Had the riders' voices been hear d, it would have been the first fixed . And it would have preven ted the sort of harsh criticism the track suffered. The model for communication and cooperation , as I've said many t imes before, is Infineon Raceway. Faced wit h losing their date, they instituted massive improve ments, spe nding ove r $70 million of mostly NASCAR and NHRA money to upgrade the entire facility, not just the tra ck but the physical plant as well. Track pres ident Steve Page has involved the riders , and PR man John Cardinale has kept the world up to date w ith informative pres s releases. The Dayton a chicane was built to preve nt the sort of mass-bike collisions that plagued the Supe rspo rt race two years in a row. It certainly did that, but at the expense of tire life. Dunlop's Jim Allen, the most knowledgeable tire expert in the paddoc k, said that by le ngthen ing the run onto the turns three and four banking, tire life has bee n compro mised . He believes it contributed to the failure of the rear tire on Be n Spies' Yos himura Suzuki GSX-RI000 last October. It was anot her case of good intentions gone bad. Unfortu nately, changi ng the chicane won't be co nsidered until Daytona repaves the entire track, and that's not imminent. T he move to Formula Xtreme machines and eliminating the west bank ing, along with improve me nts in tire safety, should negate the negative aspects of the new chicane . But Superbikes will still reac h their highest tire temperatures in the east banking, though we do n't know for how many laps. T he issue of tire safety extend s far beyond Daytona . The failure of Hacking's Dunlop at Mid-Ohio, not long after similar tires failed in Canada, was a harsh re minder of a problem everyone thought was fixed following Dunlop's highly successful Daytona Bike Week and virtually every race since. T he riders are sens ible e nough to know they can't barge in w ith a list of demands. But they deserve to know what's in the works , and the ir input can only be a bonus. No one - no track des igne r, no track own er, no AMA official - knows more abo ut what should be done or has more at stake than the riders . They're the only ones putting their lives on the line. W hen I was in Brno for the Cze ch GP, I spoke with anyone who wo uld ta lk to me about safety - riders ' rep Franco Uncini, the 1982 SOOcc World Cham pion; World Champio n Valentino Rossi; former World Champ ion Kenny Roberts Jr.; race director Paul Butler; forme r racer and te levision commenta tor Randy Mamola; Nicky Hayden ; Co lin Edwards; and Peter Ingley, a former tire tech nician who was the World Supe rb ike riders' rep . The message from all was clear - patience and pe rseve rance . It's poss ible t hat the changes the AMA riders suggest won't be imple mented during the ten ure of the curre nt riders. Uncini told me it took three or four years befo re people started paying att e ntio n. It can't take that long he re . It too k the death of Daijiro Kato in wwwcuctenews.corn last year's Japanese GP to spark the formation of the GP rider-safety grou p Rossi, Robe rts , Sete Gibe rnau and Nobu atsu Aoki - at the following race in South Africa. Eve ryone involved in the process takes it very serio usly. Rossi singled out his home track of Mugello as being the least coopera tive. Changing the premier class to 600ccbased machines doesn't solve the prob le m. As Mladin has pointe d o ut, 600s have mo re corner speed than 1000s, w hich means they'll hit the wa lls soo ne r. It is in the best inte rest of everyone the riders , the tracks, and the AMA - to make this process work. Too much is at sta ke. The ride rs, and most every one in the paddock, have bee n critical of the lack of progress in track safety. They need to put in the time to make it bett er. T he tracks have the most to lose . As the AMA pointed out in our rou ndta ble discussion, they have taken the sanction away from tracks that didn't provide a safe racing enviro nment. Moto rcycle racing is the most profitable event at a number of tracks on the calendar, and the loss of the AMA weekend wo uld be a financial disaster. The wo rry is that the serie s wo uld end up with no tracks. Why not give the more coo perative tracks a second date? AMA Pro Racing is unde r attack for any number of reasons by fans, teams and riders. Their forceful advocacy of an issue most important to the ride rs willgo a long way toward br inging down the level of eN animosity. CYCLE NEWS • SEPTEMBER 15,2004 119