Gateway this past weekend

[CCS]

We look at number of entries, number of riders, injuries, their severity, the actual cause of the injury (track, another rider, wall or some other immovable object like guard rails etc...), the number of bikes involved, the number of crashes (handlebar meeting the asphalt) and Gateway, like Loudon (you want to talk percentages-Loudon is the best for number of entries-number of riders versus injuries), has a better safety record than Blackhawk, Road America and Road Atlanta. Does it mean it is totally safe? No it doesn't, but at this point it shows that either the riders are riding smarter there or the track is not as bad as you paint it. I don't like walls anymore than you do, but I do know that there are not a lot of dates at all these other tracks that are around. (Road America doesn't have an open date during any month that you'd want to be there, MAM is full, Blackhawk is full, Gingerman actually had to ask us to give up one date this year to accomodate a long time customer that got shut out becasue of a date change for the SCCA National. Mid-Ohio has weekdays available, how many guys want to race on Wednesay and Thursday. Heartland has a couple of dates, but you all complain about the facility there to, so it's a no win situation.

Racing is dangerous, you know it, we know it, I know it. The final decision comes from the rider on whether he races somewhere, not the sanctioning body, all we can do is make sure the facility meet our  standards, which Gateway does.

[Bender]

Racing is dangerous, you know it, we know it, I know it. The final decision comes from the rider on whether he races somewhere, not the sanctioning body, all we can do is make sure the facility meet our  standards, which Gateway does.

Kevin,

For all of our benefit, would you mind elaborating a bit on the criteria that a facility must meet?  I'm actually very curious how this process works.

Mike Bender
CCS EX#216

[Super Dave]

The Supreme Court stated basically that something being safe does not make it risk free.

I have raced the Streets of Steamboat, Park City Utah, and the Pomona Fair Grounds at the AMA National.

Indeed, Gateway has some places that are not "the best", but that is where the rider must take some responsibility in deciding where to "push it" or be patient.

There was a post where someone suggested that Gateway be ran backwards.  It might be a thought.  Has anyone else thought about this?

Super Dave
www.team-visionsports.com

[GKing]

Run Gateway backwards?  Are you nuts?  Can you imagine using the pit-in road for turn 1, with or without the chicane?  

Move the chicane so the transition onto the front straight avoids that big bump.  Fasten down the chicane with mechanical fasteners.  SCREW it down to the track.  There are fasteners that are permanently installed flush with the surface.  The most common complaint I've heard with the chicane is that it moves.  The rider comes through there expecting it to be in one spot and another rider has hit it and moved it.  They hit it and fall.  The one lap penalty is hard to assess and wouldn't be fair to the guy who hit it because somebody else moved it.  Tie it down!

[sdiver68]

I was the one who suggested it could be run backwards.  Did I also mention I prefer rights? :)

But seriously, running it backwards you run the banking and therefore take the whole pit road problem out of the equation.  Well, then why not run the banking going the other way?  Well, they did once, but deemed Turn 1 speeds too high with a whole banked curve and front straight.

So its not a perfect solution, none are!  If you fix the Chicane/bump problem (which BTW would help if you ran it backwards and retained the pit road)running current direction, you are still left with turn 4 being slippery and heading right for a wall.  Not to mention Turn 7 aimed at a wall as well.  Backwards, no walls there.  The only wall left, running backwards, is turn 1 onto the front straight.

I'm still not saying I'm totally wrong, but I don't think it is crazy to at least consider it???

[GKing]

WERA ran the first sanctioned road raceing for motorcycles at Gateway and used the banking on the north end, which is the way the track was originally designed.  The problem wasn't Turn 1 speed, it was the banking.  The guys were flying through there.  The fast guys were dragging a knee all through the corner.  Because of the banking their bikes were literally horizontal to the ground.  The problem, again, was the wall.  A couple of guys touched something hard on their bikes and they went straight up into the wall.  One is still a quadraplegic.  

They tried another configuration that made turn 1 into a hairpin.  Nobody liked that one.  Ed Bargy came up with the current track layout.  There are still walls but they are in slower corners, not where racers are trying to get a drive for the front straight.

Any idea is worth checking out but IMHO running that track backwards would be a bad idea.

I still say either remove the chicane or fix it.

[Super Dave]

I would have to look at the track backwards, but potentially you could slow down turn one (counting the current way) with a chicane going onto the front straight on the oval.  If you crash going into one now, you hit the wall.  I know this.

If you crashed going into the last corner going backwards, there is nothing to hit.  

The space available coming out of one is very wide.  The chicane could be in turn one rather that entering the oval.

Again, I do not know what the other corners would look like while racing, but it might be worth looking at.