AMA Teams hauled sections of Air Fence from Loudon to Laguna Seca at the request of AMA officials who said they had a transportation problem, but the sections of Air Fence sat in the paddock, unused, as bikes circulated around the track Thursday morning.

According to a spokesman for Speedvision Productions, which promotes the combined World Superbike and AMA Superbike races at Laguna Seca, the company was told by AMA officials that they didn’t have anybody to drive a truck carrying Air Fence sections to Laguna Seca and that the Air Fence sections wouldn’t be there. So Speedvision Productions bought 23,000 haybales along with deploying the $50,000 worth of Air Fence Bike sections Speedvision Productions purchased expressly for use at Laguna Seca.

Reached by cell phone at Laguna Seca and asked why the AMA Air Fence had not been deployed instead of haybales, AMA Pro Racing Media Relations Consultant Larry Lawrence said that the AMA’s sections of Air Fence were not needed because the track had already been FIM homologated with haybales and Speedvision’s Air Fence Bike sections in place.

Lawrence said that AMA officials asked that an additional six sections of AMA Air Fence be positioned in the area where Jamie Bowman hit a concrete wall and was fatally injured last year, and that obtaining permission to deploy the additional Air Fence in that area involved a certain amount of FIM red tape. Lawrence said that the additional six sections of AMA Air Fence would be deployed during the lunch break Thursday.