Trouble By the Beach
Trouble by the Beach
UP FRONT
David Edwards
I MISSED DAYTONA THIS YEAR. ACTUally, let me rephrase that. For the first time in many years, I didn’t attend Daytona Bike Week. I didn’t miss it a bit.
Don’t get me started about the ongoing Rubbification of the place. As at the Sturgis Rally, the dreaded Dimestore Outlaw Effect has run absolutely amuck. “Halloween for aging baby-boomers on a leather kick,” laments one hard-core Harley-riding friend of mine.
Writer Kate Santich of the Orlando Sentinel went to Main Street looking for real bikers and had a hard time finding any. Of her quest, she wrote: Next up was 32-year-old Gaetano Passaretti of Titusville, an Italian Stallion of a man, whose bare torso sported a tattoo of the seal of Rome and whose considerable biceps featured a rendering of the Egyptian god of death.
At first glance, he seemed like the perfect candidate.
“You’re looking at the real deal," he said, puffing his chest out a little further.
And what does the Real Deal do for a living? Does he rope cattle, perhaps? Dig ditches? Pour hot tar in the blazing sun while dripping sweat and spitting liberally?
“I’m a pre-kindergarten teacher at a La Petite Academy in Rockledge," he said. Oh.
Perhaps the cell phone and pager set on “vibrate ” should have given him away...
Like I said, don’t get me started. More of a concern, though, is what’s become of America’s Great Race, the Daytona 200. This year’s running was a comedy of errors, except there was nothing funny about it. Three red flags were thrown, the first when the pace car-questionably brought out while a downed rider was attended to-intersected the lead pack at the worst possible place, just as they were coming off the west banking, where speeds are high and seeing ahead is difficult.
“We were all coming on, full noise,” said Yamaha’s Anthony Gobert. “As we came off the banking at 180 mph or something, everyone saw this guy in the middle of the road...at that speed you can’t stop, so everyone just piled into the back of everyone.”
In the ensuing carnage, top riders Aaron Yates and Jamie Hacking hit the asphalt, and luck alone kept Gobert, Kurtis Roberts and others from doing likewise.
On the restart, Scott Russell’s stalled Ducati was savagely broadsided by two bikes. At least one rider put blame for the bog on an overheated engine, not helped when Russell’s team took time to top off his fuel tank after the warmup lap. World Superbike expatriate Aaron Slight, also on a Ducati, said, “Anywhere else in the world, as soon as you leave the pit, the race has started. You can’t put fuel in the bike on the track! What sort of garbage is that?” Russell, five-time winner of the 200, is fortunate to have all his limbs and his life, though it’s unclear if he’ll ever race again. (Sadly, Pro Thunder rider Dirk Piz, 45, was not so lucky, losing his life earlier in the day valiantly avoiding a crashed rider in the chicane.)
Yet another red flag came out when Ducati pilot Larry Pegram lost it in the chicane and somehow set the haybales afire, thick smoke drifting across the track. During the downtime, Pegram hitches a ride back to the pits, mounts a backup bike, makes the restart and eventually finishes sixth. The guy who caused the red flag! No slam on Pegram, who deserves all credit for carrying on, but what kind of wacky rulemaking is this?
Oddball incidents, you say? That’s just racing? Perhaps, but Daytona has other problems. Scan the starting grid. Maybe 15 fast guys, an equal number of talented up-and-comers, then 30 or more club racers on Supersport-spec Suzuki GSX-R750s, many not even bothering to mount slicks in place of their usual DOT rubber. No disrespect meant, but this unending army of backmarkers has no place in what is supposed to be the biggest bike race in America.
Even so, Daytona management was unhappy that “only” 60 entrants made up the field, a full 80 being their ideal number. Maybe conscripts should have been plucked from the speedway’s infield parking lots?
“Part of the problem is the AMA’s split personality,” says our own Kevin Cameron. “On one hand, they want a professional show, with factory efforts and superstar riders, but there’s also a Ma-and-Pa populism at work that would like everyone to have a chance. You can’t have it both ways-well, you can, but it doesn’t work very well.”
Don Emde, Daytona winner in 1972, thinks it’s time to thin the shuffling herd of lappees. He suggests a 48-rider grid, the front row set by Thursday’s pole qualifying, the 44 other positions determined in heat races on Friday. “Will there still be riders getting lapped? Yes, of course,” he says, “but at least questionable riders who are 15 seconds off the leaders’ times won’t be out there getting in the way.”
A more radical approach is needed if Daytona is to return to the glory days when world roadracing luminaries like Mike Hailwood, Barry Sheene and Giacomo Agostini regularly attended. What would it take to run the race as part of the World Superbike Series, maybe a double-points affair with two legs on Saturday, two legs on Sunday? Get a big-name sponsor to offer a record purse. The worldwide TV audience would be huge, maybe enough to attract Grand Prix stars for one-off rides before their season starts. Kenny Jr., Rossi, Biaggi, Haga et al bangin’ bars with AMA and World Superbike regulars? Now that’s a race worth watching.
Jim France, a thoughtful man (and avid rider) who oversees motorcycle racing at the speedway, isn’t so sure. “Our focus is on being the cornerstone of a good, strong American roadracing series,” he says. “We don’t want to narrow things down so much that it becomes basically a domestic Grand Prix.”
Something needs to be done, though. The Daytona 200 used to be the most important motorcycle race in the world. That seems like a very long time ago. □
