All three of Team Valvoline EMGO Suzuki’s riders suffered injuries during two weeks of racing at Daytona International Speedway February 28 – March 11, but all three are likely top be fully recovered in time for upcoming races and test sessions.

Grant Lopez, 29, suffered a broken thumb on his right hand as well as possible broken ribs in a highside during practgice February 28th. Despite the injuries, Lopez ran away to the Formula USA Unlimited Superbike win Sunday, March 4 in rainy conditions–conditions which Lopez said helped his cause.

Lopez crashed again, after Roger Lee Hayden’s blown-up Erion Honda deposited oil in turn one during the March 9 AMA 600cc Supersport race. After repairs were made to bike during a red-flag break top clean up the oil, Lopez restarted and eventually finished 17th, despite taking the re-start from the back of the second wave of the grid. As of March 26, Lopez had not sought further treatment to his injured thumb, saying that he planned to resume training on his motocross bike before the end of this month. Lopez plans to attend a test session at Road Atlanta April 10-12 before continuing to defend his Formula USA title at Willow Springs International Raceway April 19-22.

John Hopkins, 17, broke his collarbone in an incident following the red flag during that same 600cc Supersport race, after leading the race at several points. Hopkins looked over his shoulder as he slowed down on the back straightaway after the red flag, and Miguel Duhamel drifted in front of Hopkins. Hopkins looked forward again just before he hit the rear tire of Duhamel’s bike and fell; Duhamel did not crash as a result of the incident.

Hopkins’ broke his collarbone, but it did not require resetting or any medical treatment other than immobilization. Hopkins will miss the upcoming AMA team tests at Road Atlanta, but expects to compete in the next round of the AMA series, scheduled for May 4-5 at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, California

Ben Spies, 16, broke his left hand after highsiding in the International Horseshoe in practice for the Formula USA Daytona event. Spies sat out that race weekend, but got back on the bike for the AMA sprints, and took second place in the AMA 750cc Supersport race behind former 750cc Supersport Champion Jason Pridmore. Spies also sought no further medical treatment than that received from Dr. David Kieffer at Daytona. A knuckle on Spies left hand is slightly displaced, but Spies already has 80 percent of his grip strength back, and the hand caused him little trouble in the 750 race.

Originally scheduled for November 4, the final round of the FIM 500cc Grand Prix World Championship Series at Nelson Piquet Circuit in Rio, Brazil, has been moved up one day. The Grand Prix will now be held on Saturday, November 3rd, with practice and qualifying also moved up a day each to Thursday and Friday, November 1-2.

According to a posting on Scott Russell’s official website, www.screamingchief.com, Russell has been transferred via air ambulance to Piedmont Hospital in the Atlanta area but may be only days away from going home. With his condition now fully stabilized, Russell’s sister Sheri reports that Scott may be able to go home under the care of a private nurse until doctors are ready to begin performing skin and bone grafts. Russell has said that he wants to try and race again this season.

In the meantime, Russell’s website now features photos of Russell’s injured leg as seen from his hospital bed with the bandages on and off. Warning: These photos are very graphic.

Also, Russell did a TV interview with ESPN’s Motoworld and Speedvision’s Bike Week. The Motoworld interview is scheduled to air Tuesday March 27 on ESPN2 at 6:30 p.m. The Bike Week segment is due on the same day at 7:00 p.m. Both times are Eastern.

According to a March 23 report on Britain’s Motor Cycle News Online, Aaron Slight has signed to drive a Peugeot 406 Coupe in the British Touring Car Championship in 2001 and 2002.

Roadracing World had been led to believe by Ducati North America officials that Slight had agreed to compete in the entire 2001 AMA Superbike series. But in the days following Slight’s arrival in the U.S., it became clear that no such deal had been made. In reality, Slight had only agreed to ride the Competition Accessories Ducati 996, vacated by John Kocinski, at Daytona, and then make a decision whether to complete the series.

Slight was less-than-impressed by race control and operations at Daytona, specifically with the red-flag-causing pace-car incident, Scott Russell’s horrible starting grid collision, and the bizarre AMA rule allowing riders to switch to back-up bikes in the middle of the Superbike race. All of the above contributed to Slight’s decision not to remain in the AMA Superbike series.

Although Ducati North America and both the HMC and Competition Accessories Ducati teams remain officially mum on the subject of replacement riders, it is believed that Mike Hale, Tom Kipp, Craig Connell and Australian teenager Anthony West are at the top of the short list to fill the vacant seats.

Toru Hasegawa has been appointed the new President of Yamaha Motor Company. Outgoing Yamaha President Takehiko Hasegawa (no relation) moves up to become the company Chairman. Both men move into their new position as of April 1, 2001. Before his promotion, Hasegawa served as the Senior Managing Director of Yamaha. Yamaha is the second largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.

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…