2004 Daytona 200 Will Be On Saturday, And Other News From Daytona

2004 Daytona 200 Will Be On Saturday, And Other News From Daytona

© 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

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Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Daytona 200 by Arai to Run on Saturday

Daytona International Speedway officials announced that the Daytona 200 by Arai would run on Saturday, March 6, 2004, instead of the traditional Sunday schedule. The summary of the 2004 Bike Week events is as follows:

Wednesday, March 3:

Daytona 200 by Arai practice and first round qualifying

Lockhart-Phillips Formula Xtreme qualifying

Genuine Suzuki Accessories Superstock qualifying.

AMA Hotshoe Series and AMA Progressive Insurance U.S. Flat Track Championship at Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium at night.


Thursday, March 4:
Pro Honda Oils U.S. Supersport qualifying

BMW Boxer Cup qualifying

Daytona 200 by Arai second round qualifying

Lockhart-Phillips Formula Xtreme race

Genuine Suzuki Accessories Superstock race

AMA Hotshoe Series and AMA Progressive Insurance U.S. Flat Track Championship at Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium at night.


Friday, March 5:

Daytona Supercross by Honda at night.


Saturday, March 6:

BMW Boxer Cup race

Pro Honda Oils U.S. Supersport Championship race

Daytona 200 by Arai race

The main reason for moving the 200 from Sunday to Saturday was to give an extra margin to run the race on Sunday in case of adverse weather on Saturday. “It obviously gives us a hedge on weather,” said Daytona President Robin Braig. “Weather has been a problem in the past.”

Tickets and more information are available at 1800pitshop.com or by calling 1-800-PIT-SHOP.



AMA to Race at Indianapolis?

At a press conference to announce the new 2004 Bike Week schedule, reporter D.C. Williams of the Daytona Beach News-Journal asked AMA CEO Scott Hollingsworth, who was participating via speakerphone from Ohio, “What became of the recent tests by the AMA at Indianapolis Motor Speedway?” Hollingsworth replied, “It was the culmination of a dialogue that’s been going on with Indianapolis Motor Speedway for quite some time. We were fortunate enough to be invited there while they were designing the interior road course to make sure it took into consideration the needs of motorcycles as well as cars. We talked about doing a test there to see how the motorcycles looked on the road course. At the moment there’s just an ongoing dialogue between the two organizations about the possibility of some sort of motorcycle race over there. There’s nothing definitive on the table. We called it a ‘compatibility test’ and I think that’s an accurate description. We’d like to run a race there, but we understand Indianapolis’ position that there’s probably not an opportunity to add a fourth major event there. Should the opportunity present itself sometime in the future, we wanted to know what we were facing in terms of the ability to run a race there.”



AMA vs. FIM Superbike Rules

In the press conference at Daytona International Speedway to announce the new schedule for Bike Week, 2004, Hollingsworth also said that the AMA had been in constant contact with FCSports regarding the rules for Superbike in each organization. “We had exchanged a significant amount of information over the last year or more about the future of Superbike racing both here and globally. AMA Pro Racing has announced its ’04 technical rules package for Superbike racing, but I frankly do not know the status of whether the FIM has made a public announcement about its technical Superbike regulations at this point. Our goal in having extensive dialogue with FCSports was to try to create, if not an identical form of technical regulations, (then) regulations that were close enough so manufacturers could have some economy of scale in the development costs to go Superbike racing globally. I’m confident that, at the end of the day, whether our technical regulations are identical or not, that they will be close enough so that we will provide that economy of scale. The 64-dollar question over the last year or so was whether or not we were going to use air restrictors. At that time, the FIM was a proponent of air restrictors, and we were not necessarily in favor of that, and I think that issue’s been resolved. At this point, the differences, if any, will be relatively manageable.”



Hollingsworth: No 750s in AMA’s Future

In the press, Hollingsworth was asked, “Given recent events and Ben Spies’ comments and the fact that, in the 1980s, the displacement of Superbikes was reduced from 1000cc to 750cc, is it time to consider a similar reduction again?”

Hollingsworth answered, “We just went through a fairly lengthy process about what technical regulations are for Superbike. Some consideration was given as to whether it was time to reduce displacement or not, and the uniform opinion was that the 1000cc platform was the right way to go at this point in time. Obviously, we’ve dialed back significantly the amount of modifications allowable on the 1000s to keep a handle on performance.”

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