Rausch Creek Motorsports Park’s first scheduled event has been postponed due to weather-related construction delays. “Our first track event was going to be the GP Pro (CCS Northeast) race the first weekend in May. We’re looking into rescheduling. It looks like we are pushing things back about two weeks at this point. Our next racing event is our WERA event Memorial Day weekend, and we are working toward being able to run that event,” said Rausch Creek’s Marketing Manager Mark Deery March 26.

“With the winter as cold as it was, the frost line was down to 18-20 inches. Above that it was frozen solid, and you can’t work in earth like that,” explained Deery. “You either have to remove it and work below it or work in other areas where you make larger cuts. There was a ridge at the north end of our paddock that we cut into to expand our paved paddock to a little over 10 acres from what was once about eight.

“Now we’re back on track schedule-wise, and we can concentrate on finishing the track. We have to still do the stoning, the base coat, and the top coat. The cure time is between four and six weeks, and it’s the cure time that will preclude the Loudon Series (CCS Northeast) event.”

Deery also said that track officals have set up a test for AMA Superbike teams to come by and run the track June 19-20, the Tuesday and Wednesday immediately following the Loudon AMA National.

Located along I-81 between I-80 and I-78 near Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Rausch Creek Motorsports Park is a ground-up development that includes a road race course and off-road racing courses. The road race course is 2.33-miles in length with 16 turns. The track is 40 feet wide and has several hundred feet of elevation changes. The track was designed by noted racetrack engineer Alan Wilson with motorcycle use first in mind. In addition to Rausch Creek, Wilson also designed the new Barber racetrack in Alabama, Carolina Motorsports Park in South Carolina, and Gingerman Raceway in Michigan.

By Joe Facer

It’s long been possible for auto racing to implement aggregate timekeeping by going back to the gaps recorded just prior to the full-course yellow being shown, but the races could quickly become a blocking or tailing game of just-fast-enough strategy once the first-full course yellow occurred. If you had two or three full-course yellows, you wouldn’t know what you were watching without an annotated scoreboard to footnote how the track position of the car related to its position in regard to the aggregate times.

Instead, NASCAR and all the other associations using full-course yellow flags and pace cars accept the closing up of the field as the natural consequences of maintaining safe conditions during track clean-up. By accepting that, their races become straightforward head-to-head races from start to finish with the leader at the front and with what you see, being what you get.

I would like to see the same thing in motorcycle road racing. We have to have red-flag situations and restarts in motorcycle racing to keep it as safe as possible, but we also need to have as much straightforward close and exciting racing as possible too, for the spectators and the sport. Forget aggregate times. Forget the fastest bike and rider on the track running third as long as third place is close enough to first place. If that means that a couple of times a year, you have to have two good starts in the same race to win it, or you have to be the fastest racer at the end of the race as well as during the first few laps, so be it. If someone wants to cruise to a win, let him do it in front of the pack.

Everybody wants to grow motorcycle road racing, for the benefit of the racers, the spectators, the fans, the manufacturers, the trackworkers, the parts vendors and the performance shops. Fine. The key to this is to first maximize safety. Deaths and crippling injuries that are preventable are absolutely and totally unacceptable.

Work to eliminate anything that poses a hazard and does not promote safety.

That means eliminating full-course yellow flag situations and pace cars.

It means red flags when they are necessary and local yellow flags when that is the best response.

Finally, once that the safety aspects are dealt with in the best possible ways, let’s race.

Two-wheel Tuesdays get more interesting now that the racing season has returned. According to Speedvision’s online programming guide, Tuesday March 27 features both World Superbike races as well as the World Supersport race from Valencia, Spain. On the same day, the second part of Bike Week’s coverage of the “Numb Bum” Canadian 24-hour ice race coverage is scheduled to air. If you want to cheat, check out the February 25th Breaking News posting on www.roadracingworld.com and read about how the American “Dream Team” did.

By Joe Facer

I don’t think that there is a way to optimize the decision process behind throwing the red flag to eliminate controversy. The red flag is about safety and the way that you determine that you are not being throwing the red flag enough is that preventable injuries or deaths occur. So the proper course is to err on the side of safety. What there is room for is a discussion about making a red flag and the subsequent restart fair. Should we require that racers park the bikes on the grid and that the riders and mechanics walk away until the time comes to fire the bikes up for the restart? That seems fair. Nobody gets a free pit stop and racers with perfect set-ups aren’t penalized and those with mechanical problems aren’t bailed out.

Everybody starts off with what they had when they stopped. But I have a major problem with this. Motorcycle racing is dangerous and it is hard to deny anybody an opportunity to make it safer. Fresh tires for the restart, tire warmers on the bikes while they are waiting, fresh brake pads and/or rotors, suspension adjustments, and minor mechanical repairs as required, are all things that can make racing safer. They can result in a racer doing better than he otherwise would have without the red flag situation, but that’s racing. When you are on two wheels, there’s not much that isn’t safety related.

Should you use the scoring transponders to keep an aggregate time for both parts of the race, and make the finishing positions correspond to the aggregate times? Here we have something that seems workable and fair.

A racer creates a 10-second lead over the racer behind him, based on the time they crossed the finish line on the lap previous to the lap during which the red flag appeared. He keeps that advantage to the end of the race. He has to be beaten by the second place rider by more than 10 seconds to lose the first place. World Championship Grand Prix races are scored on this basis and you can’t ask for a much bigger precedent than that.

But I’d rather not see it. Here’s why: Everybody talks about the success of NASCAR, and what they do, and what we motorcycle racers ought to do, and what if only we could do. NASCAR is very effective in maximizing the entertainment value of their racing. They race formula cars, not stock cars, and the cars are built to a very tight spec. They are further held to a performance formula. If one brand consistently shows too much speed and is too successful, they’ll find themselves with a little more or less spoiler or restrictor or rake until the racing is head-to-head again.

Everything NASCAR does is done with any eye toward eliminating any technical advantage, and advancing the state of racing technology is of no concern, or an incidental afterthought at the very best. It is all about close racing The full-course yellow flag, pace car, and restart are very much a part of this. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was suspected that when the racing got too boring or processional, a full-course yellow flag, ostensibly for debris on the track, would go out to close up the pack behind the pace car and stir things up with a restart. When the drivers would come in and ask who caused the yellow, the crew would tell them that it was that driver with the French name that caused it, Monsieur Debris.

With real-time TV broadcasts and a multitude of cameras and high-quality mega-zoom lenses, it is hard to imagine very much of this happening today, without it being pretty obvious. Still, to a certain extent, the full-course yellow and restart closes the field and maximizes wheel-to-wheel racing in close quarters, keeping things more exciting than they otherwise would be.

To be continued…

By Joe Facer

But such interruptions cannot be avoided in the interests of safety. Motorcycle crashes result in riders lying on the ground. Best case, they get up and pick the bike up and go on racing. Worst case, they are highsided into the air and come down hard on the ground or into an obstacle, or are hit by their bike, losing consciousness in the process and lying unprotected on the ground. If they are on the track surface or in an impact zone, they are in danger of becoming involved in a second incident if another bike and/or rider hits them.

If the original crash was caused by oil on the track, the consequences of not stopping the racing or not moving personnel out of the impact zone can be extreme. But there are very good reasons not to move an injured or unconscious rider immediately since they may have broken bones, or spinal injuries, or head injuries. The crashed rider and the attending cornerworkers and medical personnel can end up exposed to very significant danger for some length of time before they can exit the crash scene. This is a very difficult situation. Complicating this is the problem of maintaining safety for the racers who are still out on the track.

Crashed motorcycles, as long as there are not too many of them, can be quickly removed by the cornerworking crew under the yellow flag. But safety personnel and a downed rider in an impact zone for an extended period of time can be serious hazards to the racers still on the track. Add a parked ambulance to the mix and it can become deadly.

A local yellow flag at the crash site offers some protection but has its limitations. The local yellow flag lowers risk by informing the oncoming racers that there is a hazard at that location and it eliminates passing in the crash zone, but it does not absolutely insure safety through the crash site. There is racing going up to the crash zone, so racers are coming up on the crash zone at high speeds. There is racing going on after the crash site, so lines through the crash site are chosen to allow passing on leaving the crash site. Speeds through the crash zone are chosen to create or deny passing opportunities at the end of the crash zone. A local yellow is a limited safety response to what should be a transitory and limited hazard.

The full-course yellow has its limitations in motorcycle road racing also. Cars are inherently stable, motorcycles are not. During practice two years ago, I came upon a crash scene going up the steepest hill at Sears Point. Bolt upright and wary, I went across an almost invisible line of oil at 30 mph. I was on my head and stopped so fast, I thought I’d been hit from behind by another bike traveling at high speed. The thought of being in the middle of a long line of bikes and riders in that situation gives me the heebie jeebies. I’ve gone through similar patches of oil leaned over at 80 mph without crashing. Slow is usually safer, but not always when it comes to motorcycles; motorcycles get less stable at low speeds.

Incidental contact in tight formation among cars usually wrinkles sheetmetal and scratches paint. If you’ve ever had your brake or clutch lever or your front wheel tapped smartly by another bike or rider, you know how fast things can go bad from just light contact in a pack of riders. Motorcycles don’t spin or slide out, they spit riders off.

Lining up the pack behind a pace car is another matter for concern. When cars do it, it is usually single file or in pairs, and this pretty much takes up the whole width of the road course. Keeping everyone in order and spaced is relatively easy. Starts from the grid are usually side-by-side and restarts are usually about as orderly as the starts were, since you can’t jump the start if there is no place to go except off the track. The pack usually hits the first turn in a fairly orderly freight train fashion.

AMA motorcycle road race starts are made with the bikes gridded four wide. Getting the whole pack lined up four abreast and with a uniform and reasonable space between the bikes and the rows while rolling would be difficult. Racers tend the follow the racing line and the pack would widen and narrow as riders straightened the esses and avoided the marbles, rode around where the track has been oiled and stayed off the off-camber parts of the track.

Anticipating the start would be a huge problem because with a four-wide pack, there is room for at least four more bikes in the row. A one or two-wide pack would have huge problems with anticipated green flags at the rear of a very long pack. With everybody already rolling and anticipating the green flag, you could have the pack entering turn one 10 riders wide and four riders deep and with no place to go if one rider gets a little out of shape. Starts are among the most dangerous aspects of motorcycle road racing. Rolling starts just accentuate the danger.

Finally, motorcycle riders are just too susceptible to injuries to put a seven-foot wide, two-ton moving chicane out on the track. The ambulance goes out on the track for a purpose. It is there to render aid and it is the most convenient way to move supplies, personnel, and medical transport to the injured rider. The hazard that it creates is balanced by the necessity for it being there. The pace car accomplishes nothing that cannot be done more safely and with less risk by corner workers and the flags. The pace car should be eliminated in motorcycle racing.

A badly oiled track, a rider down and not moving on the track or in an impact zone, or an ambulance on the course in an area where visibility is poor, or on the racing line, or in an impact zone probably calls for a immediate red flag. Rider, trackworker, and medical personnel safety demand it. Deciding not to throw the red flag is a judgement call with some risk. Not that the red flag HAS to be thrown, but the basis for that judgement should be sound. This is not good for broadcasters and TV programming, but these can be life and death matters and there is no room for quibbling.

To be continued…

By Joe Facer

The red flag is always unlucky for the racer who causes it to be brought out, but it can be lucky or unlucky or both for all the other racers. A restart, if it is early enough in the race, can wipe out a great start or erase a blown start and give you a second chance from your original grid position. If the restart comes later in the race, you can keep your race position when you grid in the previous lap’s race order. It can also allow you to correct a mechanical problem, make suspension adjustments, mount fresh tires, and save the day for you. But you can also find that all the racers that you had worked so hard to leave 10 seconds behind, are now parked alongside or right behind you. Or you can find that the change you made to fix a handling problem while you waited for the restart has now made the bike handle worse.

At Sears Point in 1996, Mat Mladin received a fabulous break when a red flag caused a restart and rescued him from having stalled his bike on the grid during the first start. Aaron Yates got a rotten break in the same race when he went from a 10-second lead to sixth place on the restart, but he also got a fresh set of tires at half distance, something that made his return to the front possible, and he made the most of the fresh tires and won the race. At Road Atlanta in 1999, Mat received a fabulous break when Rich Oliver’s luck went bad and Mat was rescued from a very bad situation that was not of his creation. The racers who were chasing Mat in the Championship missed an opportunity to take the points lead or draw ahead of Mat because of Rich Oliver’s bad luck. Fate gives and Fate takes away and it always favors someone over everybody else. But you cannot lose sight of the fact that the cause of a red flag is invariably that an incident has occurred that poses a substantial hazard to the safety and well-being of the racers. Whether it is a spot of oil or a 5-ton ambulance, the red flag is the surest way to minimize or eliminate the hazard and rider safety is always paramount. Well then, can we find a way to level the playing field and make the red flag situation more fair?

Not as much as we’d like to. There will always be too many red-flag situations in motorcycle racing, it is in the nature of the sport. I’ve had the opportunity to watch some vintage auto and motorcycle racing recently on Speedvision and it is painful to watch some of the early open wheel auto and stock car racing films because of the high standards of safety that we’ve grown to expect in auto racing today. Up until the 1960s, it was not uncommon to see open wheel race cars with the driver dressed in cotton coveralls. Often the driver sat with his head higher in the car than the roll bar, and was fully exposed from the waist up in a car that was no wider than his body, and that did not enclose his arms. When these cars rolled over, the end results were always brutal and often deadly. When you segue from one of these vintage programs to a current auto racing series with cars with full roll cages, five-point safety harnesses, and complete or virtually complete driver coverage, you begin to see why a full-course yellow flag with a pace car is so common in auto racing instead of a red-flag situation.

Roll cages and safety harnesses minimize injuries to drivers and the driver walks away from the typical crash. When the occasional broken bone or concussion occurs, the driver is protected and stabilized within the confines of the roll cage. Life-threatening injuries are relatively rare, even in the fastest cars. The recent death of Dale Earnhardt, an exception to this, has been laid to failed safety equipment/the racer’s choice to forgo a full coverage helmet and optional head and neck restraint, and just plain bad luck.

Advancements in auto racing safety have been significant and widespread. Usually crash cleanup in auto racing is about moving cars off the track or out of impact areas. A full-course yellow flag with pace car keeps the race lap count going while the track is cleared. The cars are bunched behind the pace car in the order they were running and circulated around the track at a very low speed. The race is kept from being overly long and the cleanup is kept safe since the pack appears at the incident at relatively long intervals and at a very slow speed. The track can even be completely blocked with tow trucks and wrecks in the process of cleaning it up while the pack is elsewhere. If need be, the whole field parks behind the pace car while the track is cleared. Many auto races are long enough that pit stops are required or can be accomplished without putting you out of the points. The full course yellow gives teams an opportunity to minimize the impact of a visit to the pits. Pit stops will move cars to the end of the pack but keep them on the same lap if they are quick about it. When you are racing for from one to four hours, or from 150 to 600 miles, a couple of 5 to10-minute sessions at 20 to 40 mph under the yellow flag and behind the pace car does not impact the racing in a major fashion. The full course yellow maintains the continuity of the race and allows spectators at the track and TV viewers to make their own pit stops. This is also an opportunity for the broadcasters to run commercials without cutting away from the racing. When the track goes green, the race gets a fresh start with the pack charging the first turn with all the excitement of the original start. This arrangement appears to work well for auto racing and is widely accepted as fair by the racers, broadcasters, and fans, and firmly incorporated into race strategies.

There are problems with implementing this crash clean-up strategy in motorcycle road racing. As a practical matter, the predominant type of professional and amateur motorcycle road racing in the world today is some form of sprint racing. Most races run from 20 minutes to just under an hour and over distances that can easily be accomplished without pit stops. Races of this type cannot withstand even a moderate interruption or shortening of the racing without profoundly affecting the race character and results. Motorcycles are highly tuned and the bikes and the riders run as close to flat out as they can and still have something left for the end of the race. Of the seven AMA Superbike races at the time of the Road Atlanta incident mentioned above, more than half of them, Daytona, Phoenix, Willow Springs, and first race at Road Atlanta, had Superbike races in which the podium was still in question going into the last lap or the last turn, or in which a conservative riding strategy up until the last few laps of the race played a major part in the finish. A 10-to-20-minute stretch of running at a third of racing speed under the full-course yellow flag would eliminate much of the race. Interruptions of the races or shortening the laps spent at racing speeds should be avoided if at all possible.

To be continued…

Paul Wright of Marietta Motorsports has announced a nationwide contingency program for riders who buy Kobe leathers. Marietta Motorsports is the U.S. importer and distributor of Kobe leathers.

A press release announcing the program read:

“Kobe World Class Leathers has expanded their national contingency program to include all WERA, all CCS/Pace, and all CRA road race events. Paul Wright at Marietta Motorsports says they are negotiating additional contingency deals with more racing organizations, and expects more announcements soon. The program pays back 8 places in each sponsored sprint class.

“Payout for WERA, CRA, and Pace Pro-Am classes: First place $50, then $40-$30-$25-$20-$15-$10-$10 for second through eighth place.

“Payout for WERA National Series sprints and Pace Pro classes: First place $75, then $50-$40-$30-$25-$20-$15-$10 for second through eighth place.

“Total contingency posted by Kobe for the 2001 season totals is an astonishing $496,930. Kobe contingency certificates are good towards purchases of anything in the Marietta Motorsports 1-888-FASTLAP Racers Catalog, making the Kobe program unique and very racer-friendly.

“Marietta Motorsports can be reached at 1-888-FASTLAP, or more information can be found at www.1888fastlap.com, or www.kobeusa.com.”

Traxxion Dynamics’ Max McAllister obviously thinks he’s on to something. McAllister issued a press release that read:

“Max McAllister, President of Traxxion Dynamics, Inc. has recently formed a strategic alliance with Shogun Motorsports, an active sponsor of many racing teams and general positive force in the sport of motorcycle road racing. Shogun will provide Traxxion with funding to develop a revolutionary new damping system for Supersport racing motorcycles.

“McAllister’s vision and concepts, combined with engineering commitments from Penske Racing Shocks Vice President Jeff Ryan, will bring Formula One auto racing technology to professional and club-level racers around the world.

“The concepts, while currently unable to be revealed to the public, have been approved by all major sanctioning bodies except for the AMA. Prototype systems will be tested later in the 2001 racing season. Production components should be available to the racing public in 2002.”

Car road racer Frank Parise, a member of the five-man commission that oversees operation of the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson, Arizona, is heading a task force to determine the feasibility of adding a road course to the drag strip and oval track already operating at the fairgrounds. Parise, 49, retired three years ago after a successful career in real estate and now spends his time on volunteer work–like serving on the fairgrounds commission–and on racing a Dodge Viper in the Viper Challenge Series. Parise is seeking input from motorcycle racing organizations, riding schools and teams to determine the level of interest in a road course.

“We’re trying to demonstrate that the track is financially feasible to operate, with cash flow sufficient to retire the cost of building the track,” Parise said in a March 22 phone interview, while driving to Buttonwillow for a car race.

Parise and his task force are asking the following questions:

1. How many weekend days per year should we assume that your club, school or race organization would be willing to rent the track for its exclusive use?

2. How many weekends per year should we assume that your club, school or race organization would be willing to rent the track for its exclusive use?

3. What do you consider to be a reasonable daily rental rate for the exclusive use of a desirable road course facility?

4. What are the most important factors in making your decision to rent a road course for your events?

5. On average, how many vehicles typically participate in your events?

6. Our current concept is to build a road course having the following features. Please list other features which you feel would be important.
a. Maximum length of 2.5-3.0 miles with a minimum of 11-12 turns.
b. Emphasis on safe and adequate run-off areas.
c. Multiple track configurations available.
d. Combinations of technically complex and high-speed sections.
e. Moderate elevation changes.
f. Spacious asphalt paddock.
g. Covered and/or enclosed garage space based on demand.
h. Conveniently located within two miles of an Interstate 10 exit.

7. Is there a maximum top speed you desire to see on a road course? How long should the straight be?

8. How long and wide should our hot pit lane be?

9. How wide should the track surface be?

10. What can we do to assure ourselves that you will use our facility?

11. What can we do to differentiate ourselves and be successful?

12. Would you be interested in participating in the ownership or operation of the track? In what capacity?

13. Would you be interested in establishing/operating a full-time driving school as the anchor tenant of the track during the week? Please describe the desired operating arrangement.


Parise has requested responses by March 31, and can be contacted via phone at (520) 906-6844, via FAX at (520) 290-3459 or via e-mail at [email protected].