Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

MatMladln n..atlaN. the _partlanof the track. An overview of the _onfiaured Daytona International Speedway road course shoWI the new, darker pavement wit/; ricIen turning right at the kink ancllMlacling back toward the old _and hOneahoe before a right and left puts them back onto the banking. ollowing the first morning session of the three-day tire test, Mat Mladin's first impression of the new, 2.95-mile Daytona International Speedway road course was critical on the details, but generally positive on the big picture. By Tuesday afternoon. the criticism was more acute, the positive turning to negative. The reason was a violent crash between two first-gear left-handers in the new section. Mladin said the bike had wanted to spit him off all day and finally did. He'd saved the initial slide, just after clicking into second gear out of the new turn five, but couldn't maintain control and rode off into the grass. As the wall approached at 80 mph, the only option was to jump off the new Suzuki. "The bottom line is that I saved the original crash only to have to deliberately crash so I didn't do more damage than what I'd done to myself," he said on Wednesday morning. "If anyone can defend the reason that a wall was on a racetrack, that's their prerogative. "I was unconscious for quite a while and didn't start to become coherent until I arrived at the hospital," Mladin added. ''As a result, I've got a bit of concussion and the headaches that go with that, along with a swollen left ankle as a result of a small fracture." Tired of mounting criticism and exploding tires, Daytona International Speedway changed the 3.56-mile road course, eliminating the west banking. (Whether this was a qUid pro quo for the AMA switching the Daytona 200 to a Formula Xtreme race has never been fully answered.) The thinking was that the chance of tire failures, including two catastrophic incidents on Dunlop-shod race bikes during 2003 testing, would be minimized if one of the bankings was eliminated, because the tires wouldn't sustain the F 28 high temperatures and g-forces for nearly as long. But, as more than one rider pointed out, the tire failures all happened in the section from the chicane to the finish line, which wasn't altered. "We need to not forget that 75 percent of the track is the same," Mladin said. "It's really only 25-percent changed, which is great, and any change for safety is excellent, but it's still the banking in the areas where all the tires exploded around here are still here." Riders pushed for various configurations for the Speedway, many of which involved eliminating the east banking, where the highest tire temperatures are recorded. But the Speedway didn't want to lose the traditional run from the chicane to the finish line, so the west end of the road course was refigured to keep the motorcycles off the west banking. Australian Bob Barnard, a veteran of racetracks in the United States and abroad, was brought in to help with the design. The AMA and the Speedway were criticized for not involving the riders, though a numbers of riders were asked to come to Daytona, most begging off with scheduling problems. Floridian Michael Barnes had a hand in the design and American Honda's Miguel Duhamel was brought in late in the process. One proposal, which was floated in a conference call just before the final design was approved, was to pave a section following the arc of the west banking below the apron. That would have produced the most destructive layout possible, as well as turning the banking into a wall. Fortunately, that idea was short lived. Dunlop's road race manager Jim Allen said eliminating the west banking reduced tire temperatures by about 10 degrees Celsius. Ironically, the new N-Tech generation of Dunlop tires showed far greater wear than previous tires, though with JANUARY 19,2005 • CYCLE NEWS A look at what's been done to Daytona International Speedway Bv HENNV RAv ABRAMS increased stability on the banking and a lesser degree of performance decline. Still, the test ended without Dunlop having a viable candidate for the Superbike race, assuming the length is the traditional 100 kilometers, now 21 laps. (See next week's Cycle News for an in-depth report on the tires.) Though wear was an unexpected issue, Dunlop had no problems with tire integrity. Mladin's crash, and other incidents, proved you can't always win. Though the likelihood of a heat-induced tire failure has been lessened, new concerns arose about the layout that was squeezed inside the old road course. A critical view of the surroundings caused more than one rider to change his opinion over the course of the test. "I rode around today and took a good look at the whole new section and just kind of looking around, and there's stuff to hit in every corner," American Honda's Jake Zemke said on Wednesday afternoon, the final day of the test. "Whether it's power poles, concrete wall, Armco, whatever, there's a lot of stuff out there. Hopefully some of that stuff will be moved before we come back to race in March, because right now every corner's got issues. "The track, it's awfully tight, which that's not a real big issue," Zemke added. "It seems like more and more the solutions to all of our tracks and all of our problems seems to be just making the tracks tighter and tighter, which I don't think is the right answer to it." The general consensus on the track was decidedly mixed. Most everyone, but not all, agreed that getting rid of the west banking improved safety. "I come off the track with not as much anxiety as I did before," Jumpman23.com's Jason Pridmore said. Added Mladin: "I guess the first thing to look at is that I'm at least a little bit happy because one banking's been taken out of the racetrack. When the second banking gets taken out over here, I'll be a lot happier. But for now, it's good they got rid of that banking." Jumpman23.com's Steve Rapp was the lone dissenting voice. "I don't like it as much," Rapp said. "I don't know if it's because I'm used to the old track. It's such a fast track and then to be in first gear on a 1000, it seems so slow. It's probably not that exciting to watch maybe for people. But if it's safer, it's better." The flip side was that there were numerous problems with runoff and potential impact zones on the new layout. They start with the right-hand bend just before the old dogleg kink left. Overshooting that corner leaves a number of options, as more than one rider found out. Kawasaki's Roger Lee Hayden stood it up and went down to the old dogleg. Mladin ran straight at such a high rate of speed that he ran back across the track further on. "I've run off through that right-hander a few times, and I couldn't stop before I came back onto the track on the other side," Mladin said. "What they're going to do about that, I don't know. I'm sure they'll have some kind of defense of saying people shouldn't run off." Among the obstacles to avoid are a utility pole, which is fronted by a stretch of guardrail and Air Fence that will likely be shortened, and a drainage culvert. Dan Bilansky crashed the Hal's HarleyDavidson/Buell in that section, though no one else was involved and he didn't reach the other side of the track. The new road course adds a pair of left-handers, two of which are taken in first gear. For Dunlop's dual-compound tire, whose left side is predominantly hard to handle the destructive g-forces on the

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