Why so? And yeah I was trying to find out about the Q3’s for the little bikes too and can’t find anything
Draik rode one in Spain... they are pretty sweet. He also said he didn't notice any difference between the tires he got from mailed from RTS vs the ones he got at Barber from RTS...
It is probably a number of things. I don’t believe most have been there before and are/were just going for familiarization I’d guess. Plus it would appear all the kids are in the JR Cup to showcase themselves
I don't think any tire is going to like 45-50 degree temps like they had on day one. I rode the spec Dunlops at Roebling and they had a lot of grip Stiff carcass is quite different from the other brands.
The test was pretty good, cant complain about our results for sure. On the Jr. Cup stuff... MA will need to address the Ninja and the RC390R quickly if they want that class to be successful. When a bone stock 400 is rolling 9 mph faster through the traps than a Graves R3 there may be an issue. We kept a close eye on sector times and the R3's were as fast as anything on the track until a sector with a straight... then the 400 and 390 were gone. We had .8+ second leads disappear in half the straight. The R3's couldnt even hold the draft behind them. The 390R is one of those bikes that pisses me off. Its everything that class shouldnt be, its a $24,000 race bike with the SSP300 kit they were running. I called KTM and they have no idea when the kit will be available to the public in the US. MotoAmerica said they will follow FIM, their rulebook calls for a 16 kilo weight penalty on the 400. MA only shows 10. If they dont balance those 2 bikes it will turn into the Kawi cup by round 3.
You may want to go back and look at the 600 results from last year. Suzuki and Kawi were both on the box pretty much every weekend, Honda even managed a few podiums. I'm good with the Kawi 400 in the Jr. Cup if they let us big bore/stroke the R3 to match displacement.
Don't worry, just give it a year and yamaha will release an R4 that's gonna be like 420-450cc and then everyone will switch to those and the Kawasaki guys will complain. The cycle will continue, unless manufacturers stop the displacement pissing contest.
its seems like theres always an arms race on bikes that sell. its an ez way to keep them selling... until they get too expensive of course.
The biggest problem with performance indexing the 300 class is that there will be a lot of discrepancy between the skills of the racers as well as the motorcycles.
MA does not have the equipment or budget to properly test the bikes, so they will rely on what the FIM does and follow suit.
Well stated. The smaller classes are a lot tougher due to riders being at a lot different stages of development. Example. One bike could have say a 7mph difference on a straight But there are other factors there like corner exit speed, where they were at WOT, body position etc. Some advantages will be obvious while others may be more difficult to fully diagnose, especially with the variation in skills level. For the small bike stuff I’m a fan of spec bikes mainly due to this fact.