Daytona Tire Test

[motomadness]

These tests are very interesting to observe.  I have spent many minutes are work watching the live lap time updates and have realized one major point:

- there's a lot of talent in the AMA, but the bikes do make one helluva differnce in lap times.  

Look at DuHamel and Yates are doing on their factory bike, especially the factory Honda FX machine.  They haven't lapped better than 1:54 all week.  Yates has been even slower at times.  The more refined bikes of KAW and YAM are performing as expected, but it goes to show you that sans the rider, a bike that is not setup perfectly (= average privateers bike) can perform as a factory bike.

What is the true sign of talent?
- being able to ride a crappy bike at or near factory racer pace

or

- being able to ride a factory bike as well as other factory racers

I believe it's the former.

Maybe it there were more factory rides available we would get a chance to see large fields = more racing for the fans.

[Super Dave]

Elimate the corruption.

Get the manufacturers to support teams rather than putting all their marbles in one team, maybe two.  

The racing would be better because there wouldn't be the corruption of the whole series because of the lack of distribution of special parts.  That would lead to a legitimate series where there is more excitement.  More excitement would lead to more people enjoying the racing, maybe TV, sponsorship, and then a whole slew of people employed in that industry.

I was at the Target IRL shop outside of Indy on Friday night.  They employ 120 people there.  

[Jeff]

A-FRIGGIN-MEN Super-Dave...

It's frustrating that there is really no means of competing against factory guys.

Equal equipment brings out REAL racing, where talent is what counts...

[Super Dave]

The manufactures don't want that level playing field.  Do we all understand it?

Once you're in a team, be it rider, tuner, crew, etc...you're IN.  You get the parts and the budget.  It's not that it's easy, but the doors are kind of closed behind you.  It's two races...the manufacturers and the rest.

They can be beaten, 4&6 proved that over a long period, and they even put Todd Harrington on the top of the box over Miguel, etc. in 600 Supersport.  

There are certainly talented riders out there, and there are others that are not.  But the equality of the footing is so different.

Meanwhile, NASCAR's top series has eighty cars trying to qualify for a 40 to 33 car field for 37 races a year.  Tight rules, lots of people making a living.

Back to Sean, there are two kinds of racers.  Those that can just run it in harder.  Wayne Gardner was good at that.  Then there are the thinking racers that worked to make the bike better.  Eddie Lawson is an excellent example of that.  

Really, the guys that do get the factory rides have some special ability to digest infomation differently that we do.  Even with their bike, we probably just can't process the infomation to excecute like they do.  Can someone be trained?  Maybe, but for most of us, no.

[DRU2]

So Dave, why don't they have a series where the non factory guys and factory guys are put ont the identical bikes ,and that is excluding supersport .Because those bike are still not the same as we can get.

[Zac]

Boxer Cup?

[Eric Kelcher]

FUSA  ;) and the factories have not liked it because money doesn't win talent does

[quicktoy]

what is really BS is how the factories wont release new bikes until after Daytona, cause they dont want privateers to be their teams...look at when yamaha released the FZR i dont remeber how many years ago and a privateer went out and whooped everyones ass cause he had it a few months early

[Super Dave]

Boxer Cup?

Ask Tripp Nobles about those bikes.  Lots and lots of tricks to making them go faster.

[Super Dave]

So Dave, why don't they have a series where the non factory guys and factory guys are put ont the identical bikes ,and that is excluding supersport .Because those bike are still not the same as we can get.

Well, the factory racers work hard so that they can get a ride the is presumably better than the private bikes.  

There are some special supersport bikes out there, but a lot of it does go back to preparation and familiarity.  If you could do some testing this month in Malaysia with some data aquisition, you could figure some things  out about your bike.  How about if you had eight hours to go through your bike some more today for the up coming season?  

Additionally, manufacturers want to have glory for their company.  So, they will contract their riders to ride their bikes exclusively.  When I had my Team Green ride in '99-'00, I had to ride Kawasaki's.  I was able to ride a vintage Honda though.

[Super Dave]

FUSA  ;) and the factories have not liked it because money doesn't win talent does

Exactly.

No predetermined outcome.

Additionally, no one is really "working it"...

Ok, so I'll kind of open up a little announcement on this thread, because it's relevant...

Super Dave's Race Against Childhood Cancer

For 2004, I'm putting together a program to race the FUSA series.  The primary goal is to raise awareness about childhood cancer, the disease that kills more children than any other disease, and raise money for the MACC Fund, Midwest Athlete's Against Childhood Cancer.

Why FUSA?  Because I can at least feel as though there is a reasonably level playing field, and I can probably get more interviews and so on for a FUSA event.  The tight budget that I have can at least be utilized in this arena.

Anyway, I'm in the fund raising stage right now.  I don't have enough to do it on my own.  I've been doing this a long time, so many things I can do myself or are taken care of by previous things, but I still need to raise some money.

I'll have some information coming soon on that....

[Super Dave]

Back to the spec bike thing...

In 1998, I raced the Skorpion Cup National Championship Series.  It was held at AHRMA events.  Rules were simple.  MZ Skorpion (uses a single cylinder 660cc Yamaha motor), stock shock, stock fork springs, etc.

I could change tires, brake pads (it had a steel braided line [single caliper]), fork oil, we could rejet it, and we could change sprockets and chain...  That was it.  I paid too.  There was some cheating that was going on that AHRMA didn't catch, but the racing was really, really close.  Contact happened only because we just were racing that close.  



Single cylinder bikes run yellow plates in AHRMA.  This was from Sears Point that year.  I'm #26, and #124 was the guy that I battled it out with, and lost the overall championship to, Dave Fulkerson.  Everything would stop when we'd race.  Best part was that we had so much fun.  Wasn't easy.  Oh, and I ran Dunlop K591's for the series.  Used two sets for the year, and I had the little seam thing separating...no problem.