Dainese and AGV officials introduced their 2011 riding gear lineup at the D-Store in Costa Mesa, California on Monday, and the company’s sponsored riders got a chance to meet the racing and motorcycling media and relate jaw-dropping tales of slides and saves at Daytona. On the road racing side, five AMA Pro race winners were on hand, including former MotoGP World Champion and AMA Pro Superbike Champion Nicky Hayden, former AMA Superbike Champion and Daytona 200 winner Ben Bostrom, Daytona 200 winner Steve Rapp, race winner Chris Ulrich and race winner Elena Myers, who will ride a 2011 M4 Suzuki GSX-R600 in the SuperSport class with sponsorship from the Suzukiscoopfans facebook page. Hayden, recently snagged from Alpinestars by Dainese, told reporters that for the upcoming MotoGP tests in Malaysia, his Ducati Desmosedici GP11 would be in race-spec, motor-wise, but the team would be sorting out chassis settings for the first race of the new year. “There’s really not a lot of time between now and the beginning of the season. It’s not like the bike is going to be changed radically,” Hayden said. “The engine’s pretty well set, we already tested all that stuff before Christmas, and once they seal those engines, they’re locked in for the season. So there’s electronics, and that’s always changing, week to week, but the main thing for this test is some chassis options and some aerodynamics packages.” On the domestic road racing front, AMA Pro Racing riders talked about the recent tests at Daytona, the newly-repaved track, and some heart-stopping moments on the high banking. “It was definitely pretty smooth. I think the front tire they (Dunlop) brought there was a little sketchy for us,” said Ulrich, who will be riding the M4 Suzuki GSX-R1000 Superbike. “I had some big front-end slides coming down the banking and also in the tri-oval. It was pretty good when you’re going, I don’t know how fast, I think about 187 in the tri-oval, and the front is tucking! It’s a lot easier to keep it pinned all the way through the banking. Tire life is a lot better than it used to be, but they’ve got a little work to do to kind of help get us more confidence. It’s kind of unnerving when the front end tucks when you’re going that fast.” Ben Bostrom, who will be riding the Michael Jordan Motorsports GSX-R1000 Superbike, said, “You’re pretty close to the wall at Daytona, especially coming out of NASCAR (Turn) 4, and it used to be in the past you actually had a sensation of speed because you were being slammed against the tank, the bike would spin violently, come back, whatnot. Now you just hold it flat. It feels like you’re on this couch ride, you know? You’re gonna need 300 horsepower to make it exciting again except for those front-end slides.” Myers, who won her first AMA Pro Racing event at Infineon Raceway last season, says her GSX-R600 was having problems with the tire on the other end of the bike. “The track was amazing. On a 600, you don’t have enough power to make the front end tuck. But I ended up chunking a couple of rear tires. Nothing crazy, none of them blew up or anything, but I think Dunlop’s got a little bit of work (to do) and I think they’ll come back with something good.” The reason for the gathering, of course, was the new stuff from Dainese and AGV. For AGV helmets, returning to the lineup this year is the T-2 model, with a fiberglass-Kevlar-carbon fiber shell in three sizes, with many of the features found in the top-of-the-line GP-Tech helmet. But if you want the company’s signature Valentino Rossi graphics, you’ll have to pop for the GP-Tech model or go for the street-oriented K-3 model. Suggested retail for the T-2 helmet starts at $449.95, compared to the GP-Tech model’s starting retail of $599.95. On the Dainese front, the Avro suit was at the forefront of the company’s new products. Featuring biaxial elastic inserts bonded to leather, the suit is described as Dainese’s most flexible, most comfortable set of one-piece racing leathers. The Avro offers hook-and-loop suit-boot fasteners and a zipper system at the bottom of the legs that allows the rider to select either boot-over-leathers or boot-inside-leathers configurations. Suggested retail for the Avro is $1599.