FIRST PERSON/OPINION By John Ulrich Part Two: In Part One of this series examining the work of motorcycle industry moral beacon and SPRO Henny Ray Abrams, we looked at his curious relationship with Honda Racing and his recent argument that it was unfair of AMA Pro Racing to disqualify Josh Hayes and take away his 2008 Daytona 200 victory based on modifications made to the crankshaft in his Erion Honda CBR600RR while not also disqualifying Martin Cardenas out of fourth place based on modifications made to the crankshaft in his M4 EMGO Suzuki GSX-R600. In the same piece published in Cycle News (Issue #15, April 16 2008, page 88), Abrams tries to make the case that the AMA’s new, previously unknown policy of not announcing penalties that do not involve podium finishers or affect the finishing order was the result of some sort of conspiracy I was involved in. (It wasn’t. It is, in my opinion, stupid to have any policy other than, to borrow a phrase SPRO Abrams has used, Full Disclosure, only in this case, with the conventional, more widely accepted definition of the term as opposed to the somewhat restricted definition SPRO Abrams has used in the past. I had no idea that the AMA policy had been changed, no idea who ordered the change, and no idea why it was changed; although my inquiries have still not produced a clear answer, I suspect it was something that new AMA Pro public relations consultant Pete terHorst came up with on his own.) Hayes was disqualified at Daytona because AMA Tech officials said that illegal modifications made to the crankshaft in his Erion Honda CBR600RR affected the performance of the motorcycle. The week after the race, an AMA tech official contacted M4 EMGO Suzuki Crew Chief and General Manager Keith Perry and told him that the AMA was going to fine Martin Cardenas $2000 because the (confiscated at tech) crankshaft in his GSX-R600 had been modified, although the official freely admitted that the modification in question had no impact on performance. The immediate questions were, if a modification did not affect performance in any way, if the reasoning cited by AMA officials contradicted the rule itself, if the same modification had been previously used in motorcycles that had survived AMA tech inspections over a 10-year period through 2007, and if there had been no rule change announced, why even discuss it, let alone assess a $2000 fine? The answer is, politics, or more specifically, a battle over turf inside AMA Pro Racing. More on that later. In the meantime, SPRO Abrams was incensed because nobody had seen anything in Roadracing World & Motorcycle Technology magazine or on roadracingworld.com about the Cardenas crankshaft despite the fact that AMA Pro Racing had not announced the proposed penalty. SPRO Abrams’ argument is, that since I have an ownership interest in Roadracing World Publishing, Inc. and in Team Hammer, Inc., I had an obligation to personally announce that the AMA had made the startling and horrifying discovery that technicians at Falicon Crankshaft Components, Inc., after balancing the crankshaft used in Cardenas’ motorcycle and polishing the journals, had popped out the standard, non-reusable ball bearings used to plug the crankshaft oil galleys and had replaced them with threaded plugs, to facilitate cleaning of the oil galleys, or, crankshaft maintenance. Never mind that the crankshaft primary gear was untouched, that the flywheel surfaces were untouched. Never mind that the rule that some AMA Tech officials wanted to apply to the crankshaft in question specifically allows journal polishing and crankshaft balancing, both being processes that involve the removal of metal, contradicting their claim that the rule does not allow the removal of metal. Never mind that two of the four involved AMA Tech officials rejected the idea that the rule was violated by the removal of metal from the crankshaft in the process of cutting threads in the ends of the oil galleys, to allow the aforementioned plugs to be inserted; the two, including new Tech Inspector Jim Rashid, said it was a non-issue and that any proposed enforcement action was ridiculous. Never mind that the clear intention of the rule in question was to prevent the use of high-dollar power-producing crankshafts like a billet Supercrank or power-producing crankshaft modifications like knife-edging, lightening or polishing, and never mind that the total cost of the work done by Falicon (including the insertion of the threaded plugs) was less than $300. It is true that I own (half of) Roadracing World Publishing, Inc., which produces Roadracing World and runs roadracingworld.com out of offices in California, and it is true that I own (half of) Team Hammer, Inc., which races as Team M4 EMGO Suzuki out of Perry’s shop in Alabama. It is also true that I have been elected to the AMA Board of Directors three times and that I have spent about six years beating my head against the wall while trying to get AMA Pro Racing to function in a fair, logical manner. I pay my own expenses and volunteer my time. The only way I can deal with my various interests on a daily basis is to compartmentalize them and let my employees do their jobs, whether it’s Perry running my race team for the past 19 years or David Swarts reporting on races for Roadracing World and roadracingworld.com. In the case of AMA Pro Racing, it’s not my responsibility to publicize everything they’re doing at any given moment. The funny thing is, in the past SPRO Abrams has accused me of unfairly publishing information that hasn’t been officially released by the AMA; in this case, he’s complaining that I didn’t immediately publish information that hasn’t been officially released by the AMA. To be continued”¦