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Track safety to the forefront
RACE WATCHI
With the Las Vegas National complete, the 1998 AMA Superbike season is history. Mat Mladin, master of the off-handed understatement, won the race on a Suzuki GSX-R750. Ben Bostrom, who started the year as journeyman, went home with the master’s reward-the AMA Superbike title. Doug Chandler, second in the title chase on a Kawasaki, can now contemplate the strengths and weaknesses of his conservative, risk-limiting, craftsmanlike strategy. If it failed this once, it has served him well otherwise-he has three AMA Superbike titles.
Much of this past season’s potential drama ended in June against the Turn 1 wall at Loudon, New Hampshire. Points-leader Miguel Duhamel, trying to squeeze in one more qualifying lap on his Honda RC45, crashed in rain-dampened conditions. His trajectory took him past the crash barriers to an unprotected area beyond. A badly broken leg and other injuries put him out for the season.
Earlier in the day, Harley-Davidson rider Thomas Wilson had hit that same wall and broken both legs. Intense discussion followed. Brett Metzger’s Turn 12 crash and resulting head injury added more to too much. Veteran tuner Vic Fasola summed up insider opinion when he said, “Walls three, riders zero.”
Mladin remarked that he could go a second faster at Loudon but doesn’tout of self-preservation. Whatever the lay person might think about “goin’ for it,” most riders estimate risk and manage it, just like experienced infantry NCOs.
That day at Loudon, Turn 1 was not properly prepared. The barriers were placed based upon nine years of experience, but new riding techniques or bad statistics conspired to create a new crash curve that badly injured two men. Honda’s Gary Mathers said he would do what he could to assure his team doesn’t race there again.
Anyone who watches Grand Prix or World Superbike on television sees lovely, wide gravel traps that exist to stop machines leaving the track-in a > non-violent way. We would enjoy tracks like that, too, but motorcycle racing in the U.S. rides the shirttails of auto racing, using facilities designed for cars.
Safety is defined differently for two and four wheels. New Hampshire International Speedway is a NASCAR oval with a roadcourse grafted onto it. Walls and catch fences are part of NASCAR, and there is no room for gravel traps at NHIS. Track owner Gary Bahre has said he will do anything necessary-short of rebuilding the whole track-to make Loudon meet the AMA’s safety requirements. After the Route 66 debacle, when teams boycotted that new Illinois facility, the AMA appointed a track-standards group consisting of Ron Barrick (AMA), Larry Griffis (Yamaha), and riders Tom Kipp and Randy Renfrow.
Track safety seldom advances without catastrophe, or arguments over expenditures. I remember the wrangling that used to go on, back when straw bales were $l each, about whether promoters would spring for another 200 bales. Fortunately, we’ve come some way since then.
Romantic outsiders savor racing’s dangers, saying it’s a necessary element. This is nonsense. Racing is about going fast through skill and good thinking-not gambling with injury. The safer the track, the more likely riders are to make a race of it.
What to do? One of the safest tracks is Willow Springs, up in the California high desert, with runoff in spades. Unfortunately, nobody goes to Willow. Motorcycle roadracing is slowly growing stronger in the U.S., but no one has stepped forward to build tracks specifically designed for it. In the case of a facility like NHIS, which has walls and no room for gravel traps, is there no remedy but to bypass it and race elsewhere?
I recently visited NHIS to see its energy-absorbing “tire-string” system in action. Each string consists of 10 champ-car slicks, bolted together. Overlapping rows of these are placed to arrest men and machines before they can reach walls. I talked to Bruce Leung, an amateur roadracer who had just hit the Turn 3 tire wall head-on. “I was scared!” he declared. “Then, I saw all black and I was stopped.” He was unhurt.
Tire strings are not placed against walls, but spaced well away from them. As a rider hits a string, energy is consumed in dragging the string forward. This is entirely different from the old system of stacking hay bales against walls. The bales, backed by concrete, don’t slow you down gradually, they stop you with a terrible impact. Imagine jumping 10 stories onto a foam mattress.
Later, I watched another rider lose the front end and slide into the Turn 3 string. He jumped up, restarted and continued. This and other types of controlled-deceleration barriers, like Airfence, can be tested and their energy-absorption abilities measured, providing at least some assurance. National riders, however, knowing the history of certain venues, may not be as impressed. Some contend that NHIS is just too small for Superbikes. Retired rider Dale Quarterley has likened racing a Superbike there to flying a jet fighter in a hangar. And former AMA F-l Champion Mike Baldwin (who was badly injured at the old Loudon circuit in 1979) suggested that if the 75-year tradition of the Laconia/Loudon/NHIS National is so economically important to the state of New Hampshire, why not build a racetrack as part of a state park, and operate it to the benefit of all concerned?
So what can we expect next season? Will tracks such as Loudon and Route 66 stay on the AMA schedule? No one wants to lose a premier event, and the folks at both tracks have pledged to do nearly anything to make their facilities safe enough to get the riders back. New safety devices-and proper implementation-will help, but the final decision is up to the AMA’s track committee.
-Kevin Cameron
More titles for Doohan, Foggy and Polen
With one race remaining in the 500cc World Championship, Australian Mick Doohan clinched his fifth-consecutive Grand Prix title in front of a partisan Phillip Island crowd.
“The pressure was on for this weekend,” Doohan said post-race, “but it’s an incredible feeling to clinch the world title at home. It’s unbelievable. I hope it happens to others because winning at home is just fantastic.”
Series rival Max Biaggi fell out of title contention after he was disqualified for ignoring a penalty flag in Spain. Adding insult to injury, the Brazilian round of the series was canceled due to poor track conditions. So with only one race remaining, Doohan’s 37-point lead is insurmountable, making Biaggi’s quest to become a rookie 500cc GP champ a mathematical impossibility.
Following the Phillip Island race, Doohan announced he would return to attempt to break the record for consecutive titles he now shares with Giacomo Agostini. The outspoken Biaggi, unhappy with the equipment he leased from Honda, will likely leap to Yamaha, while tuner Erv Kanemoto is negotiating with Honda for additional factory support.
On the World Superbike front, Ducati has not announced next year’s team, but it’s likely three-time world champion Carl Fogarty will return.
Fogarty came to the final round in Japan third in a tight points race, behind fellow Ducati rider Troy Corser and Honda-mounted Aaron Slight. Corser, however, crashed in practice, breaking three ribs and rupturing his spleen.
That left Slight and Fogarty, both of whom had to fight their way through the local Sugo specialists. Fogarty won the title by just 4.5 points, after earning thirdand fourth-place finishes, to Slight’s 7/6 postings. It was the second time Slight had finished second in the series.
Slight will get another shot next year, as both the New Zealander and American Colin Edwards will return to the Castrol Honda squad. Suzuki hasn’t announced its team, but has enlisted Team Alstare to manage its WSB effort. Alstare captured the 1998 600cc World Supersport title with Italian rider Fabrizio Pirovano on a Suzuki GSX-R600. Yamaha has been courting another Italian, former 250cc GP champ Luca Cadalora. If signed, the two-time titlist will ride Yamaha’s new YZF-R7 alongside Noriyuki Haga.
In the last of the year’s major world roadracing series, American Doug Polen won his second-consecutive FIM World Endurance Championship. >
The former AMA Superbike Champi on now has four world titles to his credit. Polen and former CW staffer Doug Toland are the only Americans to canture the World Endurance crown.
-Paul Seredynski
One fine mess
Amidst racing conditions that six time 250cc World Champion Joel Robert called the worst he had ever seen, Team Belgium won the 52nd running of the famed Motocross des Nations at Foxhill, England.
Led by a pair ot wins trom Stetan Evert-who recently lost the FIM 250cc World Championship to bitter adversary Sebastien Tortelli of France-the Belgian team had the upper hand on both the conditions and the world's best MXers.
Rain began falling on the Midlands facility early Saturday afternoon. By the first moto on Sunday, the track was either underwater or ravaged by mud. Conditions were so poor that the organizers, realizing there were 45,000 spectators in the facility and no way to cancel the event, actually eliminated a large, hilly section from the circuit.
After slithering his way to the front of the field, AMA 250cc National Champion Doug Henry claimed the opening moto (for Open and 125cc bikes) over Francisco Garcia Vico, when the Spaniard tipped over on the last lap. Meanwhile, fellow American Ricky Carmichael, covered in mud and without goggles or gloves, crossed the line in 14th on his Kawasaki KX125.
Everts rode to an impressive second moto win for 250cc and 125cc bikes, a race tainted by chaos and confusion. Approximately three-fourths of the way into the moto, a group of racers, including American John Dowd, David Vuillemin of France and Italy’s Alessio Chiodi, were stopped in their tracks by the deep mud covering the big uphill, making the area impassable. The track steward reacted by re-routing the race through the infield-and all the spectators standing within it.
With the riders looking like cyclists negotiating a crowded stage of the Tour de France, the steward finally threw the red flag, stopping the race. Scores were > taken from the previous lap, which hurt the hard-riding Carmichael, who had begun a charge to the front through the murky brown soup.
In more rain and deep fog, Everts dominated the final moto, with Henry running at the sharp end of the field before dumping his Yamaha YZ400F in the mud and losing two laps. Dowd got a poor start, but came from 24th to ninth before the checkered flag.
When the final points were tallied, it was Belgium first-its third team title in four years. Finland finished second and New Zealand third. The U.S. squad tallied a disappointing fifth. The day was best summed up by Carmichael, who was overheard to say, “Man, this sucks.” -Eric Johnson
Parker breaks record
Harley-Davidson factory rider Scott Parker earned his ninth AMA Grand National Championship in the series finale at Del Mar. When the series rolled into the famous Southern Californian mile for the 19th and final round, 1992 series champ Chris Carr led the championship chase. But Parker did what he had to do, beating Carr to the line and capturing the title by a 2-point margin, 296 to 294.
It was Parker’s fifth-consecutive title, breaking a tie with 1958-61 series champ Carroll Resweber. Parker had tied the record with his first string of wins in 1988-91, but Carr interrupted the title march in ’92, followed by the late Ricky Graham’s phenomenal comeback season in ’93. Parker’s seven victories this season give the Michigan native 91 career wins, more than double that of any other rider in GNC history. □
