Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Major delays in the AMA race program Sunday at Virginia International Raceway can be traced to one loose oil drain plug, but the burning question posed by fans who attended the event or tuned into SPEED to watch the races is, why did AMA Pro Racing run the Supersport race instead of the Superbike race when it had the chance on Sunday?

Sunday’s race schedule at VIR was slated to start with the 18-lap Supersport race at noon, but a rain shower just before the race forced an adjustment to the plan. AMA Pro Racing officials gave teams extra time to change to rain tires, quickly scheduled a short rain practice (something they have been criticized for not doing in the past) and planned to start the race following an additional two, consecutive warm-up laps. The race would have started at approximately 12:30 p.m. if had not been for one oversight – the tightening and safety wiring of racer Chris Peris’ oil drain plug.

On those two, consecutive warm-up laps, Peris’ drain plug fell out of his Honda CBR600RR and dropped several quarts of oil in turns three and four. Peris escaped injury when he fell in turn four, but the damage to the track was done. Such an amount of oil would be time-consuming to properly clean off of a dry racetrack, but removing the oil from the wet surface was extremely difficult.

After cornerworkers’ best quick-fix efforts, Supersport riders were sent back out for another warm-up lap prior to proposed 2:00 p.m. race start. Racers returned to the grid to immediately tell AMA officials that the track in turns three and four was in no condition to race on. Ben Spies said he had to put his foot down to keep from crashing on the warm-up lap, and Spies’ foot kicked up enough “white stuff” to completely cover Tony Meiring’s faceshield. Lee Acree said, “I can’t believe they sent us out on that.”

Cornerworkers went back out and tried to clean the track with a fire hose. Since the rain had stopped and the majority of the track was dry, workers then had to dry turns three and four with brooms and a few blowers. At approximately 4:00 p.m., Supersport riders went out for another 10-minute practice session to assess the track before their race, found it to be in relatively good condition and held an exciting 12-lap final, which was televised on SPEED well beyond the Superbike race’s live TV window, originally scheduled for 3:00 p.m..

Roadracingworld.com asked AMA Pro Racing Road Race Series Manager Ron Barrick why the Supersport race was run and not the Superbike race?

“The plan was to try and continue in the order we were running,” said Barrick Wednesday. “The 600s had already been out; they had had a little bit of wet track practice. It’s not so easy to all off a sudden make a decision, ‘OK, as soon as we get the track ready we’re going to bring Superbikes up.’ Because one, it’s impossible to say exactly how long it was going to be before the track was ready. The teams always want to prepare and have the tire warmers on for a certain period of time and so forth. It’s never easy to shift gears and tell one crew to go put their equipment away and tell every one else to bring their Superbike stuff out. In that transition time while you’re waiting for all that to happen you could have the track come good and be ready to race, and the 600s were ready to race. We could have actually wasted time by doing that, potentially, if the track had dried quickly. And of course they were drying it as quickly as they could with the blowers and so forth they had available, but it was difficult with the humidity and the heat, the conditions that they were working under.

“Had it not rained again, which it was impossible to predict with 100 percent certainty, we would have been able (with available daylight) to get the Superbike race in after the Supersport race. Or some race in after the Supersport race. Obviously, it started raining while we were doing the podium for the Supersport race, and that brought the oil back out of the track…The track was absolutely not raceable with the oil on the track at that point.

“The track promoter and myself evaluated the situation. We owed it to the spectators to make a decision and get the program moving again. So we rescheduled for Monday.

“We’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from spectators wondering what was going on. We’re even being accused of not racing when the track was ready just to wait for a TV window and stuff like that. Maybe through your magazine you could make it a little bit clearer to the public that we started racing as soon as we possibly could with the conditions of the track. It had nothing to do with waiting for television. Our goal is to put on a show for the spectators but on a surface that is safe for the competitors.”

Had it not been for the oil on the track, the day would have continued with a little tire juggling in the half-wet/half-dry conditions. Will any action be taken against Peris?

“His father, who, I guess, acts as his mechanic, had an apology e-mailed to me,” said Barrick. “I’m sure Chris feels as bad as he possibly can about the situation. You know, nonetheless, the rules do state, the technical rules, that safety wire on the drain plug is one of the mandatory items. There will be something, but I haven’t taken any action yet. It’s sad that the economic impact to everyone was so great and a lot of fans were disappointed, but we had to do what we had to do to create a safe racetrack.”