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| The Paddock Welcome to the forums! Come in, introduce yourself. Talk about motorcycles and riding here! |
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04-01-2009, 02:51 PM
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| Grandpa Before My Time   Join Date: Jul 2005
Bike: 2008 Kawasaki KLR 650
Location: Dallas, Texas Directly above the center of the earth.
Posts: 11,240
|  AMA SportBike Let the Whining Begin  Well AMA’s new SportBike series is off to a wonderful start, after only the second race of the season the whining has already begun. Fans, Sponsors, and race team are all in an uproar. Why you ask? It all started because of the actions a relatively unknown rider. Riding a bike whose manufacturer has never won an AMA Road Racing event. Who was the rider/bike and what did he do? The rider was #9 Danny Eslick, the bike was a Buell 1125R. Danny’s first mistake came on Saturday, the first day of a two day event in Fontana, Ca. Eslick starting in second place pulled off a start to finish upset by winning with a 2.5 second lead. The lead would have been considerably larger if he hadn’t slowed to wheelie all the way down the front straight past the checkered flag. And if that wasn’t enough he had the gal to win again on Sunday. Before going any further here is AMAs quick look at SportBike rules from their site. Quote:
So now why all the fuss? Well everybody is crying foul!! The assumption is that the Buell has a huge advantage since the bike has the largest displacement in the class. Critics are also saying that AMA Pro Racing is giving Buell a huge advantage by allowing it in the series. After all how else could an unknown rider dominate the whole event? At first glance they have a point, at least until you dig deeper and ask some pertinent questions like; Was this the only Buell in the race? No it wasn’t there were five others. None of which managed to finish in the top ten. Could the argument be made that Danny’s bike was tuned better? Sure at least until you look at the lap times. Danny’s fastest lap was 1:27.832; Martian Cardenas who finished third on a Suzuki had a fast lap time of 1:27.861. Most of the other contenders had lap times in the low 1:28s. On Sunday’s race all of the contenders were in the low 1:28s. To me these seem to be pretty competitive times. In fact on Sunday his margin of victory was .101 of one second. So why didn’t the ruckus start in Daytona at the first race? Simple, Danny didn’t race in Daytona and the highest a Buell finished in that race was fifth. In fact Eslick only joined the Rossmeyer/RMR team three weeks before the start of the season. So everyone was blindsided no one had any idea of what he might be capable of on the Buell before his first race. So who is this unknown racer and how was he able to domminate in Fontanna? While Danny may seem to be new to the sport the fact is that he isn’t. Like many others Danny grew up racing Flat Track. Before Danny began his road racing career he actually raced in the AMA GNC Flat Track series. His career in Road Racing started back in 2004 racing in the SuperSport series. In 2006 he finished sixth in the series. In 2008 he raced I SuperSport and in Formula Xtreme placing tenth in the SuperSport series. As to why I believe he won, the answer is simple, it’s called talent. If the Buell had given Danny that much of an advantage then it seem to me that all of the Buells would be running up front. Not just one guy on one bike. Not only that it is only one friggin’ event! At least wait till he wins another one before you start the whinefest. |
