FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: I will be joining Barrett Long and not riding at PBIR until serious changes are made. Tire walls, safe barriers and Airfence won’t help this place. Concrete needs to moved which is tough to do when it lines both insides and outsides of the track! Let me know when changes are completed. A good start would be removing a couple hundred feet of wall on the exit of Turn Two, don’t know what to do with Turn Three (this is the wall Isidro hit), Turn Four will work, Turn Five is very questionable, Six needs more run-off, Eight has pretty much no run-off, Nine is gonna be ugly one day if it continues (needs at least another 300 feet of run-off), 10 caught a rider and bike two months ago. Pit-in wall could use a trimming. Other then that the track is good to go. Steve Wenner Pompano Beach, Florida FIRST PERSON/OPINION Via e-mail: I live in Costa Rica, Central America. Since 1993 I started racing in the U.S., first as an Expert and then as an AMA Pro in 250cc Grand Prix. Nowadays I do once or twice a year a club race or USGPRU event. Back then I remember that I was amazed by how the races were promoted and organized. As I started climbing my way up, what caught my attention was the track condition/safety issue. There were a lot of tracks where we where riding that had a lot of problems with pavement, walls, fences, trees, paint stripes and no run-off areas.Like always we never did anything about it, just complained and that’s it, we all end up riding. I can remember Pomona in either ’95 or ’96 that we all the riders tried to boycott the race and at the end we all rode. Also Joliet in ’98 where everybody showed up and the place was a death trap and we did not rode. We can not dance like that; with the rhythm of the passion for racing we have to have a straight focus towards safety, which has always been an issue, no matter at what level, Amateur, Expert, Vintage, Pro. If you’re an Amateur or Expert and you show up to a club race and complain they will tell you something like “Pro rider So-and-so rode here and he goes faster then you and he does not complain.” Maybe that’s because he has not paid close attention to the safety issue and he rode there when he was not famous. If you’re a factory rider then if you complain it’s “Shut up or we’ll talk to your sponsors.” I was not there, but I remember that because of a wall my friend and travelling buddy Jamie Bowman got killed, he hit a misplaced concrete barrier positioned to protect the cameras with no Airfence in front of it. What’s the whole point? At the end without all of us clowns there is not a circus. So if there is no show the promoter or the racetrack owner does not make a dime. It’s about time we stop more evasions to the problem, let’s stand up and do a safety committee to ban or approve the tracks where we ride in America. It’s not fair that we have to pay to ride and the tracks are unsafe and not only that, the staff and cornerworkers at some of the tracks are not licensed or prepared for the work they are going to perform, but yes the sanctioning bodies decline our licenses or make us go through a school. It’s about time we start asking for something back towards all the money they charge us to race. For instance, if you’re a young kid like the ones you see at the USGPRU events, their parents spend a fortune till they climb the tree; if they live to tell the tale, then a few of them might become factory riders in the future. But the at the end of the line we all paid at some point or the other, so let’s get together as a group and stand up, of course the factory guys are the ones that they get listen to the most if they get to do something. This last October 2-4 I was riding at PBIR where I started 16 years ago and in the Sunday morning practice scrubbing a new tire and going really slow to save the soft tire for the race (because that was the only one that I had and knowing that I really needed a medium), a rod snapped on my TZ250 and I barely made it to the small tire wall but I made it. It was the same wall that Isidro Castillo hit later in the day, and he was killed. There are people out there going all over the country riding on unsafe tracks, doing what we love. And at the end of the day there is a promoter and a track owner making money without risking getting hurt or killed. I bet that if they can feel the pain in their wallets they will be more likely to do something about the walls, run-off areas, slippery paint stripes, trees and fences plus the pavement issues. Let’s make them feel where they like it I am another ridder that will no longer ride in PBIR till they fix the safety issue. It does not matter you status as a rider, your class or type of bike. We are all paying at some point or another. I encourage people to not ride at unsafe places and if you can not judge that ask for help there are tons of people out there with the knowledge. Leon Cortes San Jose, Costa Rica