What Happened To The Daytona 200

[burnes45]

I haven't keep up with racing for a while used to go to a couple of races a year. One being the Daytona 200It used to be THE race. Just watched in on an internet stream and it looked like a local track day with 600's no factory teams, no network TV. What happened??

[jhenley17]

They run 600s for cost and safety. There isn't much money in American road racing any more, factory support and sponsors are pretty slim. Honda hasn't had an American factory team in years.

[burnes45]

It was surprising only 2 Hondas in the field finished in 20TH and 40th top 9 were Yamaha

[Switchblade]

It was surprising only 2 Hondas in the field finished in 20TH and 40th top 9 were Yamaha

Really not ....

[burnes45]

Guess I'm living in the past when Honda was king of racing and horsepower.

[Switchblade]

Guess I'm living in the past when Honda was king of racing and horsepower.

The R6 HP parts are plentiful .

[jhenley17]

The R6 starts out a better race bike and stays that way all the way to the top.

[Switchblade]

The 2008 R6 is a good bike straight off the showroom floor, but these basic mods are a quick, easy and cost-effective way to make it an even better-performing and certainly better-looking sportbike.

Parts List:
Grave's Motosports: Full stainless and carbon-fiber exhaust ($1247), Power Commander III ($339), fender-eliminator kit ($59.99), flush-mount indicators ($59.99), frame sliders ($99.75), bar ends ($39.99) (WWW.GRAVESPORT.COM)

Yamaha GYT-R: Carbon-fiber rear fender ($202.50), dark windscreen ($99.85), swingarm spools ($23.95), axle adjusters ($49.95) www.yamaha-motor.com

Vortex Racing: Adjustable rearsets ($407.95), front sprocket ($30.95) www.vortexracing.com

AFAM: Rear sprocket ($68.95)
www.afam.com

Pazzo: adjustable levers ($199.98)
www.pazzoracing.com

And you are racing .

[DachshundUberAlles]

What happened? It became irrelevant because world stars stopped caring about participating and the public quit caring about which manufacturer won because it was more about survival than anything else. The only people I am acquainted with who still go do so for the dirt track events and the only event that has any loyal TV following is the S/X event. The roadrace devolved into an event to get through without hurting your chances at the championship. High risk at digging a deep point deficit with no real return for going "all out". The manufacturers don't crave that win anymore and the riders have long done it only grudgingly. The Suzuka 8 hour is held in equal "regard" by the top riders, only seen as worthwhile by the manufacturers.

[CornerCarver]

You guys have buried the headline.

When Rob Dingman stole the AMA from the members and sold the sanctioning body to NASCAR he ran the manufacturers out on a major scale.

Now fast forward through a decade of growing irrelevancy (even the 2011 video that Switch posted above was in the middle of that period) and Wayne Rainey launches MotoAmerica and takes back American road racing by adopting the same rules as WSBK, BSB all major production based road racing.

The NASCAR ownership after selling the series to MotoAmerica still thinks that Daytona by itself is worth more than the entire series as a whole so Rainey passed on the outrageous price they were asking.

The 2016 Daytona 200 is the result of a decade of mismanagement and manipulated results to try to attract and cultivate a WWE fan base.

Tune into a MotoAmerica race to see the manufacturers getting back into North American road racing and some good racing.

Maybe when some other entity owns the rights again Daytona can return to a must see/must participate even again but not in the foreseeable future.

[twitte]

Very similar to when Indianapolis motor speedway thought they were more import than all open wheel racing in the US. Racing suffered until they finally reunited 15 years later. Daytona is probably less significant in motorcycle racing terms.

[CornerCarver]

Very similar to when Indianapolis motor speedway thought they were more import than all open wheel racing in the US. Racing suffered until they finally reunited 15 years later. Daytona is probably less significant in motorcycle racing terms.

But in the 70s and early 80s riders from all over the planet came to compete. It was almost a run what you brung event and a must win for superstar riders.

Not that it in any way competes with Indy from a car racing/ historical standpoint

[gmtech94]

For a time in the late 70's and into the 80's everybody who was a racer made the trip to Daytona for the 200 ,teams and riders from all over the world met there to figure out the track and race against each other . It might have been the best time for this event but once they made it just another race without all manufacturers competing it went downhill quickly ,might have been cost but also lack of riders to fill grids and support classes .

[Cogswell]

Every March I looked forward to seeing it on television. Times sure have changed.

[BusyLittleShop]

Our incompetent AMA sold it to Boneheaded MashCar... read the whole DMG mess by Kevin Cameron...

The State of American Road Racing

The first year of MotoAmerica as America's premier motorcycle
roadracing series has ended, and participants and management alike
seem pleased. Even that master of grumbling and complaint, team owner/
publisher John Ulrich, said the new series is worlds better than what
it replaced. Even when making suggestions or, yes, while complaining,
he said: "I felt that we were both on the same side."

People are also pleased by the presence of three-time 5oocc GP
champion Wayne Rainey as one of the four directors. The others are:
Chuck Aksland, who after keeping Kenny Roberts' teams running was
operations director at the Circuit of The Americas [COTA]; Terry
Karges, executive director of the Petersen Automotive Museum; and
Richard Varner, who loves Velocettes and achieved success in coastwise
cargo operation by tug-and-barge combinations.

DMG [Daytona Motorsports Group], the previous series, took the old
view that goes something like this: "Superbike is an American
invention, and Europe adopted it. If we say superbikes will become
6oocc, by golly those Europeans will adopt that too. We are the
leaders." Enough little things were kept different about US Superbike
rules to make it difficult for US riders to compete abroad or vice
versa.

US racing shrank back to its club-race beginnings under DMG
management. The Daytona 200, once the worldwide Big Race that started
every season with a bang, dwindled into a clubman's Saturday 600
event, while European-style GP racing expanded to attract riders and
spectators alike.

What MotoAmerica has done is to reconnect US national racing to the
international scene with "globalized rules." The factories love this;
when a bike is homologated for World Superbike, it is automatically
homologated for MotoAmerica. No, you don't have to retune for some
special, USA-only throttle body or quirky cam rule. Race parts can be
sourced in larger numbers at volume prices. This helps everyone.

American riders are thinking internationally, so DMG's stated policy
of "keeping 'em home" never could have worked. Racing has become a
worldwide scene. The competition I saw at MotoAmerica's season finale
at New Tersey Motorsports Park was close and exciting, but the ideal
is to have what British Superbike and the Spanish CEV series have:
large numbers of riders pushing up through the ranks to form the
competing groups at the front who rapidly learn from each other to
become fast a.nd smart. Teams need to know what's going to happen and
that decisions will be made fairly. When I spoke with Aksland, he said
they weren't able to find an experienced race director in America,
only ex-team members with left-over dislikes and loyalties. They
brought in an English team who knows from experience the value of
decisive and correct action, not the "old way" of retreating to the
Goodyear Tower "for a meeting" while weather made all the decisions.
At COTA, the new management held the start until it could declare a
wet race. Memos are circulated to all, and they are signed (that is,
someone takes responsibility).

Richard Varner knows that factories and teams have been monitoring
MotoAmerica all year. America remains a major market, so BMW, Ducati,
Honda, and Kawasaki have all, in some sense, marked their dance cards.
Will they step onto the floor next year? Varner said, "Everybody wants
to go to a dance, but they want to be sure there'll be a band."

It's good to feel that US racing is back in competent, sympathetic
hands. It's good to talk with team managers and crewmen who are
optimistic. But in the world we now inhabit, beneficently renting
racetracks and importing experienced officials is only a beginning. To
succeed in the long term, motorcycle racing has to become a business
that pays its own way. This idea has a long history

AMA muddled through the opportunity-filled 1970s when US motorcycling
was huge. Each time racing people in the organization acted to manage
or further it, conservative trustees saw meddling by "city slickers."
Many an initiative was neutralized by 1930s thinking. A step forward
was taken in the 1980s by tapping into the experience and
professionalism of the newly powerful club-racing scene. Roger
Edmondson and his energetic Championship Cup staff improved and
standardized AMA race operations. Edmondson also imported his new
"Supersport" racing classes. these recognized that four-stroke
production bikes had become raceable with only the simplest of
modifications. Supersport was a revolution in racing because it armed
privateers with plentiful and affordable bikes. ·

This era ended in a lawsuit when AMA fired Edmondson but retained his
creation: the Supersport classes. Edmondson sued and won a substantial
judgment that the AMA could ill afford.

When gradual changes in the AMA Board of Trustees made it possible, a
separate, for-profit organization was created to manage racing:
Paradama Corp. At last it appeared that motorcycle racing in the US
could act in its own behalf, without interference.

Not so fast. AMA now decided Paradama had committed "improprieties."
They voided that corporation, took racing back in-house, and carried
out a widespread purge of persons with racing or Paradama connections.

Having lost membership and a large amount of money, AMA wanted out of
racing, an activity it had never understood. Members of the former
Paradama group and others sought to "buy or otherwise acquire" AMA Pro
Racing, but the transfer predictably went to Daytona Motorsports Group
(DMG), created under the umbrella of Daytona (International Speedway
Corp.). Many in the Daytona paddock that first year expressed the
certainty that, "NASCAR can't fail. This is going to work. These
people really know racing."

At essentially the same time, the US economy faltered in a big way.
DMG's aggressive policies-based on a fundamental misinterpretation of
how NASCAR's founder Bill France Sr. had operated-resulted in Honda
and Kawasaki leaving the series. What had been broken was not mended
by a following DMG reorganization and Edmondson's admission that, "I
underestimated the importance of the factories to racing." Racing
continued, but almost no one was happy. Honda and Kawasaki stayed
away. How long could this standoff continue? Yet, as some pointed out,
Jim France could, if he pleased, afford to keep AMA Pro Racing going
indefinitely. He is a genuine enthusiast, so the situation cannot have
pleased him. A fresh start was needed.

That fresh start is MotoAmerica, but competent race direction is only
a beginning. Television is the necessary key to US racing's future and
always has been. Teams need sponsors, but sponsors require exposure.
Can roadracing get on screen by sheer merit, competing with celebrity
mud wrestling? Can live Internet streaming give a leg up? Or must a
sport of limited size like ours buy its way onto the small screen?
This has been bike racing's big question ever since AMA's accidental
success in the early 1970s-we've never quite made it.

This is the classic predicament of the small corporation. To move
forward, it needs access to capital. We motorcyclists have always been
sure our sport could and must reach a wider audience, but that
question remains open. There is a lot of competition for viewers.

MotoAmerica's choice of classes draws in new talent at the bottom
through Supersport and the new, more accessible KTM RC 390 Cup class.
The press conference remarks of class winners at New Jersey showed
that these people are already international in both experience and
outlook. I listened to conversations in which young riders described
learning overseas circuits through online game simulations. Their
on-track education will soon supply what is presently lacking in
Superbike-depth of talent. British Superbike and the Spanish CEV
series show how effective this process is at creating the stuff of
future champions. US racing can draw on a much larger population of
potential riders than either Britain or Spain, so with continuing good
management we can hope to add some fresh names to the existing list of
American MotoGP and World Superbike champions:

[JZH]

All that, and tires.

Ciao,

[Switchblade]

Larry is on IT ......

I think he had pancakes this morning ...

[Kel]

Yes, there has been a real F up of governing bodies of the sport, but the REAL culprit is us. Not just Daytona, but every track saw a decline in attendance to the point where sponsors saw little return for their money input. It's why US tv won't show a GP race. American motorcyclists just don't care enough about racing to warrant the effort by organizers to keep a series going. For all the people who ride a motorcycle here, very few are sport oriented and even fewer would pack up a cooler and head to the local track to watch a race. It's our collective fault that Factory teams pull out, then sponsors, then the few remaining fans.

I use to drive to Daytona with some buddies all the way from NH...saw 7 races there from '91 to 2000. Went every year from '83 to 2001 to the Loudon Classic, the oldest continuous bike race in the US. Crowds were pretty big. I think the Millennials today would rather have their head buried in their phone than actually be outside watching motorcycles compete, even if they actually owned a bike.

So don't point fingers, the bad guy is us.

[DachshundUberAlles]

It's not motorcycle racing in general, it is roadracing in particular. Fans flock to Supercross, capacity crowds at every stadium. Kids come up on dirtbikes and that means their first connection to racing in M/X and S/X. Those bikes fly through the air, so it's quite easy to see why they don't embrace roadrace bikes. So yes, your assessment that "the bad guy is us" carries great truth.

[burnes45]

I was going to Daytona from about '75 to '86. Would go with my sister and some buddies,camp out in the infield or some place else. Usually on a lawn chair or in the car if it was raining. They would have motocross on Saturday in the afternoon after the 250cc races in the morning. Even had a complementary section in the stands for the MX races for the people with infield tickets. Then we would be there for the 200 on Sunday. The place would be packed with people cars motorcycles RV's. Don't know how many of you remember ABC's Wide World of Sports,They used to show at the beginning of their shows a motorcycle crashing into hay bails and catching on fire. That was at Daytona my sister was right there when it happened. I had gone to another corner to get some pictures. She still talks about that. Seeing Kenny Roberts race was all ways exciting guy was so fast. last race I saw was Freddy Spencer win don't remember if it was on an Interceptor or not. Have not keep up since getting married and raising children. The kids are grown now and I'm going back to my old ways. Thought I would get back into motorcycles got the VFR a couple years ago and had not realized how much Racing had changed in 30 years. Guess thats why they call them "The good old days".

[St. Stephen]

I completely agree with comments from CornerCarver, BusyLittleShop and Kel in this thread. While AMA road racing was never really well run, the sale to the NASCAR/France group just destroyed it.

Like Kel, I went to Loudon almost every year when it was an AMA national and got to see U.S. road racing stars that went on to win in motogp and WSBK. And Loudon and Daytona are actually very similar in that the race itself never mattered much to the vast majority of riders who showed up. The organizers know this, and when the AMA sanctioning went away they just found an amateur rr group to keep the race going so they could have an "event." Both races currently exist so that the HD's can continue to cruise through Laconia and Daytona Beach, fill the bars, and support the local economy. Just look at the stands during the races.

No dis to the folks that actually race, hey, have fun, but remember that these are two of most dangerous tracks in North America for bikes! (OK, and Topeka too...)

P.S. I am a huge motogp and WSBK fan, and I am trying really, really hard to like MotoAmerica. But it's not easy.

[gmtech94]

But the problem is no grass roots racing taking place now ,look at an amateur race weekend . Motorhome standard ,big trailer 4 or 5 bikes ,mechanic for most (paid ), computer suspension specialist . Cost is pretty well up there ,the old days we went in our van with maybe 3 guys with their bikes stuffed in slept at the track in a tent or the van ,raced about 4 or 5 classes and came home sunday night sometimes with a trophy and maybe a set of gloves . sponorship was your local dealer and helped with parts and tires . Gear ,helmets ,tires ,tire warmers ,generator ,etc have made racing a very expensive sport and seems to be a dying thing . For a giggle go to a vintage bike race to see what it was like a few years ago everyone while being competitive also has a good time off the track and thsi sport seems to be growing in leaps and bounds . In Canada we can't even get more than a few real superbikes to a weekend but before there were maybe 60 bikes competing for about 30 spots on Sunday . Also support races were full to help bring some of those talents along to race bigger bikes .

[indianagenius]

90's and early 2000's AMA racing was quite good (Nicky, Mladin, Spies, etc.), although Suzuki just dominated for awhile, then DMG came along followed by the recession and American road racing was on life support. That was a 1-2 punch very difficult to rebound from. MotoAmerica is on the right track. I saw the Barber round last year in person, and enjoyed it. Adopting WSBK rules is brilliant.

I remember when Daytona was run with 1,000 cc machines and that was a spectacle, although there were huge safety concerns.

[Kingmdm]

If you're name dropping, don't forget about Scott Russell, "Mr.Daytona". The sport needs giants again. All this is summed up below.

http://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2016-03-11/daytona-200-celebrates-75th-running-of-once-prestigious-race

[MaxSwell]

I'm just glad the AMA is still racing at Road America. I love that track. It is four miles long (longest in US), has many elevation changes so many views are nicely elevated. We camp in the infield and soak up MCs all weekend.

While the racers are eating lunch, the track puts on a Spectator Tour of the Track. Riders lineup following a pace car; nominal speed limit is 45 mph. But if one gets in line at the very back, and goes really slow on the straights, I one can have some fun in the corners.

Once the trailing pace car left the rear of the parade on the fourth (final) lap indicating the speed limit was raised for an extra lap. That was a fabulous lap for someone like me who has never done a track day.

Planning on attending June 3, 4, and 5 on the way home from T-Mac.