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MotoGP | 2019 | Round 3 | USA | April 12 -14

Discussion in 'General' started by BigBird, Apr 8, 2019.

  1. Phl218

    Phl218 .

    1. VIP seemed to be packed.

    2. those tank slappers on the back straight!!!
     
    TurboBlew likes this.
  2. Steeltoe

    Steeltoe What's my move?

  3. Ra.Ge. Raptor

    Ra.Ge. Raptor wanna_be_fast

  4. Dan Dubeau

    Dan Dubeau Well-Known Member

    Touch 'em all Toe, you'll never hit one bigger........
     
    Steeltoe likes this.
  5. racesbikes

    racesbikes WTB a Size 50/60 Race Suit

    Is that Fabio Quartararo?
     
  6. redtailracing

    redtailracing gone tuna fishin'

    Someone that knows more than me please feel free to correct me if it’s wrong, but I’ve always gotten the feeling that it’s just not financially viable to fix the track every time cars ripple it. F1, indycars, Le Mans cars, and anything else running a lot of downforce can rough up a track pretty good in just one weekend and it costs a boatload of money to repair. So doing it every year right before the gp wouldn’t really be sustainable. I seem to remember one of the tracks recently where they tried to repair ripples without repaving and actually made it worse (silverstone, maybe?). And then of course there’s the Phillip island incident from a couple years ago where the repave resulted in a mandatory pit stop during the race. Not sure that’s any better. Not saying it’s not time for some track maintenance at COTA. Too hard to tell from my couch. But this type of thing doesn’t strike me as unusual. Just one of the downsides of bikes sharing tracks with cars.
     
  7. redtailracing

    redtailracing gone tuna fishin'

    I wouldn’t worry too much about the Zooks. They’re definitely front runners for the championship but I suspect races like yesterday won’t be the norm. They both just happen to have a good day and a good strategy. But thats one race. The Yamahas are still very fast and JD and Scholtz could ruin their party on any given weekend. I still expect some great races these season.
     
  8. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    As always expensive to chase the series in the premier class. Tough for any grid filler types or Stock 1k machines to make this back to back with Road Atlanta and with the next round being VIR just simpler to leave everything on the East coast if you're not chasing points. Also not sure but I'd bet the expenses are pretty high for this round too.
     
  9. Dan Dubeau

    Dan Dubeau Well-Known Member

    These bump weren't "bus knuckle" types bumps in the braking zones. From what I understand they were more related to shifting foundation and base the track was laid on. Not exactly sure what they can do about it now other than rip it all up, and haul in an enormous amount of suitable material to build a new track on. That's not going to happen..... Everything else is essentially a bandaid solution with varying success rate. Pretty sad that the track surface at a "new" world class facility was in that bad of shape. But it was the same for everybody..... I wish they'd go back to Indy (it's closer to me and I want to go).
     
  10. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator


    :crackup: I explained all that to Evelyne including my thought that maybe he was reading about it here :D
     
  11. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    Yeah, my thought is he was saying whatever the longest spanish version of mother fucker is :D
     
  12. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator


    :crackup:

    My first thought/comment was oh shit, Josh is going to be in big trouble for grabbing a spectator with no helmet or even long pants until Evelyne told me who it is - at which point I changed to MA had better use that footage in any and every place they possibly can :D
     
    Hoffman900 likes this.
  13. pg_rider

    pg_rider Doesn't race anymore...

    All the talk about the poor track surface had people asking where else the US GP could be held. Call me crazy, and I've never actually been there, but could Miller in Utah be suitable for MotoGP?
     
  14. COOP 1

    COOP 1 Well-Known Member

    + 1234567890
     
    ShadowBoxer likes this.
  15. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    No. Too far from any viable metropolitan areas.

    Quite simple the best venue was/is Indy and I still don't understand why they aren't back there.
     
  16. pg_rider

    pg_rider Doesn't race anymore...

    Isn't SLC really close? SLC must be a similar scale city as Austin, with much prettier scenery. Just a thought.... I was wondering more about the actual track size, layout, and pit accomodations.
     
  17. turbulence

    turbulence Well-Known Member


    salt lake is close but the next city of any size is 500 miles away. we’re a mid sized city in the middle of no where.

    also, googles is telling me austin metro is about double the population of slc metro.
     
  18. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    SLC is close, and probably similar to Austin. However there is no DFW (2.5 hours) or Houston (2.5 hours), or San Antonio (1.25 hours), or OKC (5.5), or even New Orleans at 7.75.... WHat you have close to Miller is Denver at 8.5, even Vegas and Reno are both 7-7.5 hours away. There is just nothing close enough to Miller to get any driving spectators, they'd all have to fly and that adds more expense than it's worth. Same general reason we can't justify racing there at the full track rental cost.
     
  19. Mongo

    Mongo Administrator

    Overall the facility is probably viable but I'd expect the FIM to want some track changes as well as bring in a bunch of tents/buildings to house the entire GP paddock. They'd also have to totally change their setup in the paddock to somehow restrict people from wandering just anywhere, that end of things is a really really bad setup for racing with wide open access to anyone renting a garage or going to the kart track or the like. Yet another issue we always had there was losing a big chunk of income on gate fees.
     
  20. Razr

    Razr Well-Known Member

    I believe it's about the money. The first few races at Indy had a great crowd, the last few years had around 60k on race day, just not enough to show a profit. Now that Nicky is gone, it will be tougher to get MotoGP back there, he was a great ambassador for Indy. When COTA's contract runs out, Indy will have a better shot at hosting another race.
     

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