AGV Backmarker: Tour de Various

Balancing risks…

A few weeks back, I chatted with a CHP officer and pointed out that most CHP motor officers rack up thousands of miles a year on freeways choked with traffic. They pack pistols and wear ballistic vests for the once-in-a-career situation when some perp pulls a gun on them. But all day, every day, they ride amongst distracted commuters yakking on cell phones, while wearing an official uniform of cotton twill trousers and short-sleeved shirts. The only concessions to protection are a pair of cavalry-style riding boots, an open-face lid, and Ray-Bans.

Although it’s certainly true that motorcycle cops’ net safety would improve if they traded ballistic vests for better road gear, maybe I shouldn’t have belittled the risk—however small—of encountering an armed felon during a routine stop. Last week in Oakland, two motorcycle cops were killed under just such conditions. The specific nature of those shootings meant that ballistic vests were moot. Still, it occurs to me that Aerostich should make a version of its famous Roadcrafter suit with ballistic panels in the chest and back. That would be the optimum solution for motorcycle cop duty.

Racers got the chance to try out rain tires at Auto Club Speedway. Riles/Nelson photo

Riding in the rain on Speedway ovals…

AMA Pro ran several wet sessions at Auto Club Speedway, a track that had been “dry only” until the new administration took over. In fact, the surface at Fontana is good in the wet, and everyone who tried it on wet tires came back pleasantly surprised. Still, I’m sure Colin Fraser breathed a sigh of relief when all of the actual racing took place on a dry track.

The issue with riding in the rain isn’t grip with rain tires. It’s the low coefficient of friction between a rider’s leathers—or motorcycle bodywork—and wet asphalt (or grass). I’d also like to clarify one point: there are lots of tracks—Loudon, for example—that are relatively safe for club racers in the wet, but which aren’t safe for pro racers. The reason isn’t that fast guys’ lives are more precious; it’s that they carry a lot more speed, a lot deeper into corners, than us mortals. As a result, they have different crash-impact zones, and they enter those zones at higher speeds. Would I ride Fontana in the rain? Sure. Do I think the AMA should race at Fontana in the rain? No. Even if AMA Pro now has enough Airfence to protect all the walls, there are too many places where a rider crashing at high speed can end up back on the racing line if he slides far enough.

Eslick, e“buell”ient…

Not to take anything away from Danny Eslick’s first-national-win-for-Buell at Fontana, but the inclusion of the 1125cc Buell—or, for that matter, Chaz Davies’ 1000cc Aprilia twin—in the mostly-600cc field has raised more than a few eyebrows.

I just wrote “not to take anything away” because the promising Eslick was going to score his first national road racing win sooner or later anyway. The kid’s another flat track refugee who’s applied for asylum in road racing; he’s fast, and he certainly out-rode the other large-displacement bikes that the AMA has homologated in the Daytona SportBike class.

It’s safe to say that the Buell has more performance potential than any of the 600s in the field, although it probably doesn’t have that much of an advantage just yet. That’s because the art and science of building a fast 600 is well-known. By contrast, the Buell is early in its development curve. But Eslick’s second win, on Sunday, turned muttered grumbling into open, bitter complaining.

I rode the Buell at its launch, and the motor is a monster. Anyone who can really get a handle on that bike will have a machine distinctly faster than any 600, especially on technical, torque-friendly tracks like Barber and Infineon, coming up in the schedule. When I discussed it with Erik Buell, he told me dreamed of racing the bike in World Superbike, so that’s evidently where he thought it belonged. That’s a far cry from Daytona SportBike.

Teams that put a significant development effort into that Buell may end up with a noticeable advantage, which could put an asterisk on good results. That would make the 600 teams angry. AMA Pro may have to do something to slow the Buell down, and that would make the Buell teams unhappy.

I’m a huge fan of Erik Buell, and I really want to see the 1125 succeed—in National Guard American Superbike, where, in fact, it was raced to a creditable 15th place by Shawn Higbee this past weekend. I guess now’s not the time to suggest that Harley-Davidson return to AMA Pro Superbike racing. The company’s caught in a brutal credit crunch, and it still shudders at the memory of the expensive and results-challenged VR1000. Still, I think that even a little backdoor support (to say nothing of the rumored return of Jeremy McWilliams) could put the 1125R in the top ten in that class, which would be a moral victory.

Last but not least, “Ta-ta, dahlings…”

I note that the Indian car company Tata Motors has finally released its entry-level Tata Nano. This is a small car (think, Smart car on a developing-world diet) that will sell for about $2,000.

I’ve already written about how in every market, motorcycles (including scooters, mopeds, and motor-rickshaws) predominate until they’re eventually supplanted by cars. America was the first country in which auto registrations exceeded motorcycle registrations, soon after Ford introduced the Model T in 1908. But in other markets, it took much longer: the standard vehicle for British working blokes was a motorcycle—with a sidecar after he got married and had kids—until after the Morris Minor arrived in the late ’20s; in Italy, the Fiat Topolino didn’t beat out the Vespa until well into the ’50s.

The Tata and cars like it will cause huge traffic problems and pollute even worse than low-tech two-stroke utility bikes. These cars will also have an impact on the motorcycle market—not the sexy sport bike market, which is virtually non-existent in the developing world; rather, these cars will hurt demand for the scooters, mopeds, and small motorbikes that currently clog streets from Senegal to Indonesia. Some of them are made by companies we’d recognize, like Honda and Yamaha; some are licensed copies. Most are made by companies whose names we don’t even recognize. But make no mistake: the Tata Nano’s sales figures will be a zero-sum game with the global motorcycle industry.

It’s just another example of they way, when we fight with cars, we lose.