Things Best Said

Dreams and the Daytona 200

I am a race fan. Even though I’m not be able to rattle off a litany of stats it doesn’t diminish the feeling I get when I’m watching those bikes speed around the track.

Two very vivid memories come to mind when I realized I would become a fan -

In April of 2008 I rode down, alone, to the Honda Superbike event at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL. Of course, I knew people raced motorcycles but this would be the first one I would watch up close. Pulling into the main drive, I looked over my shoulder and saw this…

…rows of bikes lined up, the vendor tents and the race track all laid out. I could hear the scream of the bikes as I pulled around the track. The crowd was great, lively and the facilities were amazing. That year Ben Spies and Mat Mladin were the royal court of racing. I remember counting aloud with the group around me 4…5…6…7 seconds. These guys were racing far ahead of the rest of the pack. It was amazing to see two guys with such talent beat the pants off the rest of the group.

The sense of smell, I believe the strongest of all memory-related senses, is tied to my second memory of that weekend. I found myself closer to the track than at the previous sessions. During, I think, the Formula Xtreme race the bikes came around…the sound was amazing. The wind shifted and I got a whiff of the exhaust. Now, I’m not into huffing gas, but this smell was/is incredibly intoxicating. And, yes, most of the racetracks I’ve been to since have made me think about the napalm scene from Apocalypse Now. I love the smell of burning dinosaurs in the morning.

But, you didn’t come here to read about me, you came because I promised (at least in the title) some bit of info about the Daytona 200.

Daytona 200 (circa 1948)

The History

The Daytona 200, is one of the most prestigious races and marks the beginning of the AMA road racing calendar. Riders from all over the world have flocked to Bike Week in Daytona, Florida and to race the 3.5 mile course.

At its inception in 1937 the 200 was run right on the beach. Hundreds of people would gather on the dunes surrounding the track (no barricades, fences or corner workers back then). Can you imagine what all that sand and salt water would do to a motorcycle? Not until 1961 did the race move to the new, and nearby, Daytona International Speedway.

Over the years, 44 different racers from 9 countries have won the race. An incredible 9 bike manufactures have been represented on the podium…go back far enough and it’s Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles knocking each other out to get on the podium.

To the untrained eye, this place, the Daytona Speedway, is just a concrete structure made for redneck debauchery. And it’s true, in part. However, it’s also a shrine of triumph and spectacle. Daytona Speedway has very few peers throughout the world — Indianapolis Motor Speedway (USA), the Nurburgring (Germany), and Le Mans (France).

The Dreamers

Out on that track, in every stadium seat and behind every inch of pit wall is a dreamer. Perhaps only in our minds we have felt the rush of the pack breaking away behind us, our bodies leaning deeper into the next corner so close to the pavement we can see the over-spray of paint on the stripes. And each of us, our face flush in a moment of dreaming, have seen the finish line, the wheel of our bike crossing it only inches ahead of the next bike. This place, like it’s few peers, is truly magical.

One of my favorite voyeuristic past times is meandering through the garages and hearing pieces of conversation along the pit road. I watch the teams talk to each other right before the race, some calm, some frantic. The rider, locked inside his helmet, wrapped in his race leathers tries to look anywhere but near.  The face of all racers fall into a roaming stare. Their eyes looking down the tarmac in search of the next turn; their minds are working it all out. The twists of a chicane become straight, a straight becoming faster. These men and women are working out every detail pushing their minds far into the next practice, the next qualifying, the next race.

Coaches and crew try to see inside the two inch space at the rider’s eyes. Conversations may be happening all around but everyone is looking at those eyes. What are they saying? What aren’t they saying?

Seeing the machines lined up on the grid moments away from the start I try to imagine the butterflies in the stomach of every racer. Even my hands get sweaty and my heart races watching all those emotions lined up one after the other. The countdown, to some, is a death sentence -the fear of speed, the fear of failure. For others that feeling, those pterodactyls flapping their great wings against the stomach wall, is the rush. It’s what we’re all here for. It’s the only thing that gives us our fix.

And then, a final horn sounds. The pomp and circumstance is over and everyone not sitting on a bike leaves the track. The motorcycles and their riders are alone. Wheels move side to side, nervous.  Engines rev, gloves are too loose, too tight. Throttles blip.

The starting lights go red…ready? At this Daytona 200 the sound of 44 motorcycles is deafening. Rev limiters crack to life, engines shake in their frames.

The world goes quiet for not more than a nanosecond. GO!

Privateers & Factory teams

Dwindling cash and an economic crunch has forced many of the factory teams to tighten their belts. In the last few years we’ve seen some of the big names pull out, leaving riders and crew scrambling to find other jobs, on other teams or out of the sport completely.

Some of the biggest names in the industry have pulled a tarp over any entrance to the series. Sure, there’s a whisper of KTM, of Aprilia, of Kawasaki but even they aren’t putting the dollars into an American race series this year. That’s all in the hands of the privateer teams now.

Privateers, like my friends on the James Gang who race Buell motorcycles make up the majority of the teams represented on the grid. I’m not biased when I say that these teams make up the heart and soul of the AMA Pro Racing series. Win or lose (hopefully the former) these teams are toting gear and crew across the country with a spirit that embodies more than just a love of the sport.

That adoration of speed and sport divided by the cost of bikes, parts, entry fees and travel comes with it a curious position…ride last year’s model or don’t ride at all. Since fewer of the manufacturers are willing to fully support teams it leaves the majority of teams to, not my phrase but I love it, “run what you brung”.

But, even in that there’s a sticking point. All of the AMA racing classes are built on a simple premise –you must race a (slightly modified) street bike. No prototypes, no frankenbikes and absolutely no bikes that aren’t sold in pre-specified quantities in the USA.

Where does that leave small, interesting companies who produce a few bikes a year? The answer, sadly, is nowhere. This might be a stretch, but I think you’ll find it appropriate, that AMA and bike manufacturers are like big oil companies. These companies don’t like competition and will do anything in their power (read: $$) to exclude the possibility of losing that advantage. These organizations have done so by setting the bar so that it’s impossible to bring a non-homolgated bike to the track to race against them. In other words, racers and teams don’t have much of a choice outside of the top manufacturers (Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, Ducati and Kawasaki).

What does all this have to do with privateer racers? It limits innovation at lower threshold investment levels. Men like Erik Buell (post 2009/10 anyway) or the late John Britten cannot engineer a new bike, test it and put it up against the ‘best in class’ bikes with the way things are run today.

*start soap box rant/*

If we are to push toward the mighty goal of reestablishing America as a leader of innovative engineering or manufacturing why should it be stopped at the track gates? Why should competition be stopped at all? Why shouldn’t prototype bikes, meeting certain specs, be allowed to compete against the ‘best’. If they’re found lacking, so be it. At least they will have tried (and hopefully learned something of the opportunity).

Competition is good for everyone but the comfortable.

That’s my 2¢ anyway.

*/end soap box rant*

The fans

I promise to wrap up this post with some sort of take away, some meaning outside of my own peccadilloes with the current architects of racing. I think the only way to do that is by returning to where I started, talking about the fans.

Let me just tell you, this place – the Daytona Speedway, I mean – it’s history, the people and the legends seep into your subconscious. I took a very short walk up the front straight embankment just to see how steep the road felt (31 degrees at the steepest in case you were curious). Amazing. Later that night I had dreams of extreme tire wear. In the dream a bike came in to pit with the outside edge of the tire worn to a very distinct L shape.

So, Bike Week was smaller. Crowds in the stands were thinner than Billy Bob Thornton’s hair, I’m told.

I asked lots of people who had been to the 200 before, some many times since childhood. I asked not so much about the people in particular but the number, the volume of people at the event. In many cases they told me stories of packed streets and restaurants overrun with patronage. This year was not the case, it seems.

Everyone who could remember far enough back thought about the ebb and flow of motorcycle racing. They remember going to see the Harley’s outrunning one another, remember when the Japanese bikes started to invade. Most who were fans that far back remembered another time when the stands didn’t feel quite as full. And, as soon as they found their way to a memory from adolescence, each pair of eyes would alight.

They began to tell stories about when a snap of engineering, two-stroke, 4-stroke, V-4′s, made all the difference. The bikes, the racers and the crowds, they told me, always return when there’s something new to see. When the Phoenix has reemerged.

Until then, those leather-clad jockey’s will continue to grind away the ‘hard parts’ of their bikes searching for a better line. Tires will be spun, dinosaurs will be burned. And, eventually, there will be new machinery or new names and the sights and sounds of motorcycle racing will once again engulf us, the fans, in a hysterical rush.

I’ll be there, rooting for the underdogs, drinking cheap beer and waiting for the wind to bring around that smell of fuel.