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/213117
IN THE WIND "No restrictors. Period. End of story," Ludington said. "You can't even run them if you want to. Look what the guys on the Harleys do on the half mile – they put a small restrictor in it. What we tried to do is two-fold. Trying to gain the Harleys back some speed on the miles to run up against the Kawasakis and trying to make the Harleys harder to ride on the half miles – to even them up on that side. Now they [the Harleys on the half miles] are going to have worry about throttle control and tire wear and stuff like that." Other changes to the rules on the Twins side include making carbon brakes legal. Ludington said this came about because some riders made the request after burning through back discs. "You just do a rear rotor on a twin, so you're not talking heaps of money," Ludington said. "There's product out there where the buy in will be more expensive, $400-500, but you will get a whole year out of them instead of one race." Traction control can also be used – if it comes standard on the homologated motorcycle. "Now keep in mind, once you get above 1000cc you can't run liquid-cooled motors anymore," Ludington said. "You can only go oil- or air-cooled and there's no big air-cooled bikes that come with traction control. All the big twins that come with traction control are liquid-cooled (the pre- PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARRY LAWRENCE P30 AMA Pro Racing has done away with the restrictor rule in the AMA Grand National Championship. vious model Ducati 1100 Monster is air cooled and features traction control). To the best of my knowledge, there's no OEM engine package that can avail themselves to traction control that run in our series right now. Right now it's a non-issue, but you never know what's over the horizon. We'll keep an eye on that." As for the Singles class, the biggest changes to the rules concern forks and throttle bodies. And, again, AMA Pro Racing is taking more of a hands-off approach. "We don't care if they want to mix and match forks," Ludington said. "We're letting them use whatever throttle bodies are homologated for any bike. The other big thing that's significant in Singles is that everybody was always trying to bore their throttle bodies. Basically trying to get up to the 50mm Honda offered in 2010 and 2011. Same kind of deal as the forks. Run any ho- mologated throttle body on any bike and we don't care. Basically it frees up their options without them having to spend a bunch of money." Ironically, the rule that ended up costing AMA Grand National Champion Brad Baker his second-place points at the openinground short track at Daytona (and nearly derailed his championship run) has also been scrapped from the rulebook. It is no longer illegal to use special friction-reducing DLC coating on the fork in the Singles class. Ludington said AMA Pro Racing looked at three things when putting together the new rules package: Cost, parity and enforceability. "This rulebook is unique," Ludington said. "All of our other rulebooks… if it doesn't say you can do it, then you can't. In the flat track rulebook, if it doesn't say you can't do it, then you can." Paul Carruthers