The Ben. Again.

lol fair

which is why basing it on HP is even better, because a hyper and a 959 panigale aren’t in the same class... yet they are

 

Nah, large nakeds are getting away from the affordability factor.

My idea is $10k bikes or less that way by the time you build it per the rules youre at $15k for a full professional naked racebike. Basically, suspension, exhaust, etc. No fancy electronics, no rider aids.

The major factor here is that racing has gotten tooooooo fucking expensive. Period. Racing Italian V4R naked superbikes is putting you right back at $25-$30k builds.

Hell, I entered the 600 fights with 3 Factory Daytona 675's and even with massive factory sponsorship, lots of product sponsorships, youre still at $30k for a bike.

That puts a lot of people out of contention when there are only so many sponsorship dollars to go around.

 

doesn’t that happen now anyway?

and if you feel someone is cheating you protest.

it’ll be quickly obvious if someone has something fishy going on if you’ve got a semi-spec naked bike class based on HP and one bike has what appears to be way more HP than the others.

i mean, hell, you can build an R6 to 150hp

but it STARTED equal to all the other R6’s

just like anything else in life, if you want to throw money at it, you’ll have an advantage.

have superstock and superbike rules with appropriate allowable mods

 

i’m not going to argue with that, but when my local race org has more panigales than ninja 400’s, imma say that cost for other people isn’t a factor.

cheap racing is there, if you want to spend money, show up with a streetfighter, if not, show up with an FZ07

 

Are your local Panigale riders going to also chase a national championship? Because its easy to afford to race locally. But when you gotta get your shit across the country, or even 10 hours away, the costs add up....

 

Yeap. But someone will bring up using a Dyno to enforce the HP rules but there's easy enough ways to cheat around that.

 

i guess i was talking about a HP number as a starting point, not a finishing point. like i said, people take R6’s and build the shit out of them, but they still started as a 600cc 4cyl

 

again, that’s why you use stock HP... what you do with the bike beyond that is the same as the current race rules... ie, people still build them and still cheat

 

I completely agree.

The XR1200 class was amazing racing. How about FTR1200’s, now?

I was at the local Indian dealer (Springfield, IL) when they got their initial inventory off the truck. Per the sales kid, they’ve only sold a few bikes and no FTR’s. That was a year ago. It seems with what Indian are spending on flattrack with little sales results, maybe try roadracing with them? Their pegs already feel like rearsets, to me. Come up with a spec 17” wheelset and cut them loose with the previous XR1200 rules. It could be awesome.

 

That Indian FTR handles terrible with the stock wheels and suspension setup. My fiend took his to Autobahn a couple weeks ago in Joliet. You would need 17's and some serious chassis setup changes.

 

Fun question (well for me at least)

What was the best year for the f1 class (that you can recall). Not necessarily the number of entries, but the year that saw a lot of diversity on the grid and teams that really put effort into building some crazy machines.

 

yeah but if everyone is on the same bike that matters less.

i mean, we’re about to watch 800lbs baggers launch themselves down the laguna corkscrew... can’t be any scarier than that

 

Maybe a LeMons-style rule where a competitor can choose to take your bike and race it could level the playing field. Of course that raises the question of that person being able to pay for what they wrecked.........

 

Probably should have clarified that it was MC specific. I remember some of the FUSA stuff, but I didn't start until 98.

 

I would have loved a class to race my brutale. Most fun I’ve had on a race track outside of an actual race.