Official 2019 MotoAmerica silly season thread.

Yall ever heard of Gridlife? Millenials still love motorsports.

But you have to promote it properly. Doing the same old thing is not gonna work.

 

These are the parents/kids to turn it around...

 

Drifting is a contest where the winner is decided by a panel of judges.

 

Fuckin A

 

Car dancing. Has zero to do with racing.

 

"Dancing With The Cars." Now on ABC!

 

Cost of flat track is a lot less than road racing.

 

It's not just drifting. They have time attack, car show, music, etc.

You know, a event young people actually wanna attend.

And if that were ever to happen. You guys would complain about that too.

 

Is that #4# millenial dude confirmed for the twins class next year?

 

Except there’s probably as many “big rigs” in the flat track pits as the road race.

Granted, they are mostly “show hauler” type rigs, but even singles riders are using them....

The big difference is you can spend $50k and literally have a bike that is capable of winning every single race....

Wanna win a singles championship? You spend $25k on a bike.

 

Had to stay overnight with the trailer at a track recently. That night they had a amateur drifting event. They had a local radio station blasting rap shit super loud, food, etc. Pretty decent size crowd. Mostly young Caucasian's believe it or not in South Florida. After a couple minutes of watching the drifting it got boring. Was totally surprised with the "type" of people there. They are into dumping shit loads of money into little jap cars. A lot of them wadded them up on the track. Waste of money in my opinion, but they were into it.

 

I don't know anything about it other than the Google search I did after you posted it and I saw the main attraction was drift cars. I'm trying really hard not to be the "get off my lawn" guy when it comes to roadracing but everything everyone keeps on pitching to save roadracing involves something that's not roadracing.

Why aren't kids just drawn to a good roadracing battle, but they want to watch cars do ice skating? Rhetorical, I know. But racing is different than a style competition.

 

Those stupid ass drift cars, you can see all the action from your seat. It's right there, right in front of you. Like a stupid assed video game where you can watch, shit in a bucket, get your mountain dew from a cooler next to your chair and not move for hours.

 

I would say the more the vehicle slides and wiggles on the edge of traction or control, and the easier it is for the fan to see that, the more exciting it is to watch. Or a huge swarm of racers jockeying for position. What you don’t want is a predictable outcome after the first few corners. And I’m talking all racing, not just motorbikes.

And don’t forget Austin Phillips was announced for Altus on their FZ7. They have been posting some build pics. Draik77 riding an AP FZ too. All twins all the time....

 

The biggest difference is you can see the entire track with your ticket....Just my opinion...

 

Formula E is only growing because every vehicle OEM within the next decade will have at least half their lineups be EV. That, unfortunately is the vehicle of automobiles.

 

good question.

what even is a "good roadracing battle"? we fanatics might see a tension filled raced with 1-3 passes for the lead towards the end of a race and call that a good battle or a good race. but non-fans probably just see motorcycles going fast around a track. "fast" is entertaining to newbs, but only for a little bit. the tension and the excitement that may come from it is learned. IMO, roadracing has a lot of "finer points" that fanatics find entertaining that casual fans don't even notice.

I've seen this in other sports too. u ever watch a rock climbing competition or even a youtube video? they make that shit look easy, so much so that all non-climbers I know go "big wup". without the big production of a full length film like Dawn Wall or Free Solo to explain the feat, a non-climber doesnt (or cant) appreciate the excitement. its kinda the same thing w/ motorcycle roadracing. regular ppl just don't know how amazing Cam's riding is unless he's out of shape, which only makes for good highlight reels, not exciting races.

compare that to drifting or SX or monster trucks. tire smoke, huge jumps, crushing cars, etc. do those ever get old? Ken Block says they don't. a casual fan doesnt need to know anything about the given sport to find those things exciting. in the case of SX and prob even drifting, im sure there are still finer points that fanatics can post to forums over. IMO, that difference - or rather that lack for roadracing - makes roadracing a tough sell compared to other sports.

 

what does that have to do with anything? u think anyone watches Formula E going "holy shit my Audi is also kinda electric"? I bet casual fans don't even know that the drivetrain isnt spec in that series.

ya, OEM money is likely helping to grow the series. but it wouldn't mean shit if the racing wasn't good and the format wasn't ingestible for today's casual motorsport fans. if their races resembled F1 with no passing, it wouldn't matter how many OEMs were helping with marketing. they'd be losing fans just like everyone else.

 

Anthony Gobert vs Nicky Hayden, 2001 at Sears Point. SO GOOD

 

as somebody involved in drift events since the beginning of its take off in America until about 2010, and i occasionally pay attention still sometimes, everyone in this thread commenting who's over 40 is godamn retarded. your exact answers are what he's talking about, and you don't even get it. i still go once or twice a year to the bigger 2 day events and don't even drive, cause its a giant party and a nice chance to catch up with out of state friends a few times a year. i barely even look at the track the entire time i'm there. drifting for me, for a decade, was an excuse to get nuts and party with my bros... and i liked cars, and was there, so like... might as well do some drifting while i was at it. i'd just as soon assume to just do it on the street and not care. structure is stupid, its fun cause its a giant fuck off with fast cars doing sideways burnouts and you don't have to be mr. serious about it. p.s. - its also cheap, at least for a long long while, and still mega fun. a $2500 car with a $800 diff, some $1000 coilovers, and maybe a few other odds and ends are all you need to go a long way. i used to get free used tires from my buddies car dealerships and that cost no money to burn those. and you can daily drive that car on the street and it'll be just fine. like everything else, you can get REAL serious and go way faster and do cooler stuff when you start building a serious ass race car, but you don't need to at all.

nobody under 35 is looking at a bunch of greybeards talking about Trump and listening to CCR as an inspiring fun time. i've consistently gone to WERA at Summit to watch over all the previous years since forever because its less than an hour away and i just love listening/seeing bikes rip. i'm a minority. and i'm not driving to VIR for 5 hours just to see some motorbikes. i'll drive 3 hours to central Jersey to party tho at the track cause its a great time.

like hoffman said... one of my mountain bikes costs as much as a Ninja250 or SV650 racer. nobody from age 20-35 cares about that comparison. there's tons of dudes at the mtb park every weekend and every evening after work. you can put a mountain bike in your apartment. having a place with a garage in any major city on either coast of this country means you probably make $200k+ a year, which is about 2% of the entire working population. without, where you keeping that stuff? i (for now) keep mine in my basement. we'll see once it starts stinking. these 2 mid-20's kids i just hired to work for me... they probably make $75k and neither even has a car. their rents are like $1200 with roommates or $1800 a month for the one living solo, and even that's a relative deal in DC. they take public transpo and ride bicycles around the city and pay for a car-rental service like once a month when they wanna go somewhere further for leisure. my one boy's single floor little beach house in Huntington Beach was $725k. my other buddy's 1bd apartment in SF was $3200 a month (for 2 examples). then start getting into having kids, or trying to build a business, or save for a down payment, and blah blah blah... and it just goes on from there. where's this extra money coming from? (i'll wait here expecting the "why not just move somewhere cheaper" to come along any time now).

the average price of a new car is $34k now. dudes are worrying about paying rent and eating and trying to have a little fun and you boomer dudes are talking about them like... why not just drop $20k on a race bike/gear/transpo/tires and come racing these losers? you guys are completely out in left field on this one and then at the same time baffled by it. its a weird flex, but whatever works for your brains...