What happened in the Daytona riders meeting?

they say real humor is based on truth.

 

Rick, you ain't human.

But ... I recall a very similar story. My parents were at the ROC at Daytona one year, and told me there was a shouting match between one of the riders and RE. The rider was complaining about closing speeds, and RE pretty much said tough luck. Then the rider screamed out that RE was only concerned about collecting entry fees so that he could pay off his wife's boob job.

 

Gotta keep the UPS guy happy.....

 

This incedent was discussed several times over the last weekend around the Daytona pits.

Richard Chambers told the best version. David Estok is the rider in question when discussing closing speeds when RE combined the little bikes and the big bikes practice sessions. I believe it happened in 1988?


Todd

 

Yes it was Dave Estok. They had 883s and 125GP bikes on track in the same practice session. Let's just say that didn't always work out very well.

Time frame was probably 95-96.

Laura

 

Lemans starts worked fine when everyone was bump starting. As seen in World Endurance they can work OK when everyone has a starter button.

Not so good when the lightweights were bumping and the middle and heayvweights were using a button.......:wow:

 

I'm not a radio guru, so pardon my ignorance. But if you give the frequency to the fans to tune in to their team of choice, what prevents that communication from being two-way?

 

And you can bet that if a fan started transmitting on a ncar team's freq. to interfere with their com they'd be hunted down and arrested... if they did it more than one event...

 

The hardcore fans at NASCAR get multi-channel scanners and program the entire field's frequecies into them. Good stuff! One broadcast I saw actually included these radio transmissions in the show. One such communication on live TV between Dale Jarret and his crew went something like this:

"Dale, how are you doing out there?"

"It's feeling pretty loose and it's not getting any better. I'm going to hold on and the next time in, give me a couple of turns to bring this motherf***er around!"

I don't think I heard them do that in subsequent broadcasts.

A Starter for LRRS got nailed by a ghost bike (Rider flicked off, bike continued down front straight.) We tried putting the Starter in the gate on the outer wall, above bike level, but it was a real PITA keeping three people at that doorway, so we went back to the old way. If I'm out there, I'm always watching and have an escape route in mind if something goes wrong.
I noticed that in addition to the lights around the oval, the light bars of the emergency vehicles around the infield part of the course were turned on during the full course cautions.

 

meeting?

Mongo?

Just curious.. did you attend any of the riders meetings?

 

Plus to transmit, you would need to know the TPL or DPL code.

 

You mean CTCSS or DCS/DPL. Only if they're using one and even so it's no harder to determine that than to determine their frequency. Any decent modern scanner has settings to display the squelch tone.

 

HA! I remember that. It was Todd Parrott asking him. I believe he had to issue a public apology. The announcers were just like "uh...uh...uh..." I haven't seen Alan Bestwick dance like that since.

 

I think you can listen to most of the nascar drivers communication on either XM or Sirius radio, one or the other.

 

Back to the original subject...............

The whole issue of flagging from trackside began with Duke Pennel (R.I.P.).

Duke was a long time, like forever, flat track starter so he started all his races from trackside. When Roger E. was the AMA roadrace boss many years ago he hired Duke as the road race starter. Duke didn't like starter towers or bridges, he was used to starting races trackside so that's how things were done.

After Duke retired, Bob Lemming became the AMA roadrace starter. Bob had been assistant to Duke for a very long time and copied Duke's style exactly. His flattery of style reached so far that he did not use his left arm during his flagging. Duke's left arm was paralyzed when he was hit by a flat tracker many, many years ago. Watch any video of Bobby and you'll see this.

I noticed Bobby was not in the starters stand at Daytona this year. I'm sure Bob said he would not flag from there. Apparently the daytona group has again thought they know better than a bunch of stupid racers and a starter with so many years of flagging.

I worked with Duke and Bobby sveral times and I didn't agree with their trackside flagging at all tracks. Some it worked for and some it didn't but Daytona was one place it always worked at.

I think part of the problem here is the Daytona folks are interfering with a sport they don't know enough about. NASCAR has been their thing for so many years and so successful they think they know it all. They need to step back and let motorcycle people run motorcycle races.

This years 200 was a disgrace, following right in the pattern of recent 200s. Where is the improvement? Where is the better show? I didn't see it.

 

Did anybody go to dirt track at Municipal Stadium this year? They had this Starter by the name of Kevin Clarke who was cracking me up! All sorts of moves, but the best was his frantic waving of the green flag while seemingly doing the limbo at the end of the first lap! He was so far out when he threw the checkers, I don't think the bikes had much room to get by him!
I took some movies of him. I just might incorporate some of his style into my flagging! :up:

 

Well, couldn't hurt. Beats the hell out of just throwing the flag out and on the ground!!!!




you know I'm only kiddin' Johnny B