Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

FIRST PERSON/OPINION

Via e-mail:

As others have pointed out, it wasn’t a great weekend at Mid-Ohio. AHRMA refuses to require belly pans on its machines (as virtually all other sanctioning bodies in the U.S. do), and we all paid dearly for it this weekend.

The oiling began early when Gary Nixon oiled damn near the whole track on a Mark McGrew’s Vintage Superbike, which shut things down for most of the morning. Not content with that, they took the bike back out after lunch — without re-teching it — and promptly oiled again, this time causing two riders to crash, and again shutting the track down. After that cleanup, three riders went down when James Swartout’s #882 machine blew its motor. Sadly, Jim was killed in the incident.

On Saturday was BOT F1. The second-wave F2 guys crashed in T1 and someone crashed and oiled in the Keyhole, so they red-flagged it. On the restart, Mark Hatten passed the bike in the row in front of him [I think he was gridded 10th] and dove into T1 tight inside. Someone came down on him and ran over him [I think it was an already crashed bike].Two riders were prone on the ground, one still on the track and having seizures. It wasn’t a pretty picture. They got him stabilized and he ended up OK with nothing broken. Hatten ended up limping on two tweaked ankles and a sore shoulder. His riding was a bit tough throughout the weekend…

SOT was the last race of the day on Sunday, and — what are the odds — the track got oiled down right before the race. From the end of the back straight all the way through the esses was solid oil-dry. It looked damn near as slick as the oil itself. The slightest lean angle, the slightest touch of the throttle seemed to put the riders sideways in an instant. Racing under those conditions was a joke. According to some racers the three turns after the back straight were like riding on ice, then you had to wick it back up and get back to speed. Kris August was willing to ride harder through the oil zone than most, so he got second place. At that point, it seemed that not throwing the bike down was really everyone’s only goal.

Beyond that, it was really a great weekend for racing. How about some belly-pans, AHRMA?

Peter A. Cline
Motorcycle Ohio
Site-Coordinator
Columbus, Ohio