Miles Away
Race Watch
THE MILE LEFT TURNS SCRAMBLER DUCATI
THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PADDOCK
MILES AWAY
DIRT TRACK
Where World Champion Troy Balsas drowns in the depths of dirt track and the world learns just how good these guys really are
Gary Inman
After being on the ropes for 30 years, the most American of motorcycle sports is making an unlikely comeback thanks to a high-profile list of international heavy-weight allies. Now dirt track is blinking in the spotlight, unaccustomed to anyone giving a gosh darn about it.
Valentino Rossi has his ranch and a Harley-Davidson XR750 in his private garage; Marquez brothers Marc and Alex as well as Tito Rabat (that’s all three current Grand Prix champions, by the way) let it hang out at the Superprestigio extravaganza in Spain; and, most recently, Troy Bayliss is taking on the Grand National Championship’s miles mounted on a tire-shredding Ducati twin.
Social media static of a spotless doctor roosting rural Italy with a steel shoe on his left foot is turning riders of all abilities onto the joyous beauty of going fast and turning left. The Marquez-endorsed Barcelona invitational has educated European roadrace fans about the spectacle of a fistfight-in-a-phone-booth indoor short track. But these examples are really just satellites of love orbiting Planet Dirt Track.
Bayliss starts the semi from the inside of the second row. Unfortunately, he ends up in the fence with a broken ankle.
Although we have no doubts about Bayliss ability, AMA Pro Flat Track miles are a highly special ized discipline.
With all due respect, those Euro icons are playing at it; only the Australian has truly crash-landed dead center into the insular world of AMA Pro Flat Track. Unfortunately, as analogies go, this one is prophetic. And this is how it came about...
“Basically, you could say it
started three years ago when I did some work with Bell and we went to Chuckwalla [Valley Raceway in California] and did some riding down there,” Bayliss explains between phone calls back to Australia to see how his son’s own dirt track racing is progressing. “I met JD Beach and Hayden Gillim, and we went out to Kentucky and did some video footage on their little short track.
I grew up doing a bit of dirt track, and since I retired I’ve supported our local club in Taree and things have progressed from there. After years of racing for the best teams in the world, working out of air-conditioned pit boxes, I found myself back in the dirt and working on my own bikes sometimes, so it proves that I must love it.”
He certainly looks like he loves the sport—and America. We meet in a budget hotel in Sacramento. It’s Friday afternoon, a day before the Sacramento Mile and just five days after the Australian’s pro dirt-track debut. The 46-year-old is in a great mood having recently arrived from a multi-state, weeklong trip with his team co-owner, David Lloyd, and Lloyd’s two children. The four had traveled in the race truck from Springfield, Ohio, to California. The Aussie stopped to buy a pump-action shotgun en route. He’s even dabbling with chewing tobacco. But Springfield was a something of a shock for Bayliss. He had serious hopes of making the 18-rider main. He wasn’t even close. Like he says himself: “You can make it sound easy. It’s an oval and it’s only one mile, but, of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.”
Dirt-track people are good at making their sport appear exceptionally lo-fi. Steel frames; right-way-up forks; bias-ply tyres; pushrod engines winning races! What is this, 1972? That’s what the outsiders assumed and some even intimated. The thinking: Bayliss is a world champion and a MotoGP race winner. He’s also been winning on Australian dirt tracks on a regular basis. Surely he was going to show those inbreds what time it was. Bayliss admitted he had hopes of making the main, so the difference between his lap times and those of the current cream were unexpected.
It takes time to get up to GNC speed, and Bayliss hasn’t had it. He is fearless and possesses the confidence of age and experience, knowing he has nothing to prove. His reputation and legacy is bombproof. So if he wants to change disciplines and battle two younger generations of hungry badasses racing for their next tank of gas, he will. I can’t name another rider of his stature who would. But none of that helps when you have four minutes of free practice before qualifying starts. That’s right, four minutes on a track he’d never lapped on a bike he’d tested once, against the world’s best.
“I’ve never ridden a big bike [on the dirt],” Bayliss admits. “I’m riding a Ducati 1100, and when you hop on it it’s completely different [from a 450 dirt tracker].
If I had to describe it, I’d have to say they’re like a NASCAR. They’re built to do one thing, and that’s go left and go left fast. You talk to anyone who has driven a NASCAR and they say they don’t even want to go straight down the track. The first time I got on the bike, I thought it was an alien. The first thing you notice is your left foot is way back and up high and your right foot is in a half-normal position. The bikes are big and just need a different way of riding.”
Dude's a stud: Troy Bayliss at Sacramento, hanging it out before his crash.
Bayliss showing an interest in racing in the States was enough to bring a whole team back from the brink of extinction. Lloyd Brothers has been plowing a lonely furrow, running Ducati twins in the GNC since 2009. They won a National race with Joe Kopp in 2010 and fielded multiple champ Jake Johnson in 2014 but had run out of steam and support and were sitting out the 2015 season until Bayliss came on board. Now they’re running a two-rider team, with national number 10 Johnny Lewis on the other bike. Sponsorship is coming from a wealthy Ducati fan and the Ducati importers, the latter because a GNC framer can be made to look like Ducati’s new Scrambler streetbike or at least as much as Jorge Lorenzo’s Mi looks like a 2015 YZF-Ri. Who’d have thunk dirt track would actually benefit from road bike marketing synergy? Me neither. Thank goodness for retros.
The buzz around Bayliss’ arrival is doing exactly what it should: turning on a whole different demographic. The Ducati fans are easy to spot inside Sacramento’s fairgrounds. And the Italian team looks at least as professional as any others.
What they can’t buy is time, and, again, it’s what Bayliss needs. Unlike Monza or Laguna Seca, a dirt track is ever changing and with it the lines riders must use to improve their lap times. Bayliss’s teammate Lewis instinctively sniffs out the traction and posts top-four qualifying times in a field of 30 riders while Bayliss is 25th. Then the Aussie drops to 27th. Lewis makes the cut in his heat race, transferring to the main. Bayliss doesn’t and faces an 11-rider semi that only three will escape from. And he’s on the back row.
Within two laps of his semi he’s on the deck, sliding toward the air fence, his ankle broken, the dream, if not over, on hold for a couple of months.
It’s not what anyone needs, least of all the 40-something Aussie, but if it teaches us anything, it is these two lessons: Dirt track is resilient. It’s been under a metaphorical rock for more than the lifetime of most of the current racers, yet, when it’s called upon, it can welcome a world champion and, a few days later, create a memorable race for X Games TV fans. And second, it shows the world just how quick those pro flat trackers are.
I hope Bayliss mends quickly and strongly, comes back, and makes a main. And if he does, it’ll be a hell of an achievement. EMU
"YOU CAN MAKE IT SOUND EASY. IT'S AN OVAL AND IT'S ONLY ONE MILE, BUT THERE'S A LOT MORE TO IT THAN THAT."
