Re: First Topic - New Jersey Motorsports Park 8/2-3 & 4, 201
Dances with Shrapnel said:
beng said:
The classes supposedly representing the popular racing of the 1950s and 1960s: Classic 60s, Premier 500 and 500Gp, had the usual 3-5 entrants in each of them, the same circle-jerk of millionaires that show up at about every AHRMA race to pat each other on the back for laying waste to history.
Sad, sad person, so far off the mark.
What is off the mark? Anyone can look at the very thin number of entries in those AHRMA classes and the results, and the $50K-$75K invested in each bike and see that it is a 100% accurate observation, nothing more.
Pick up any 50s or 60s motorcycle magazine and look at what racing bikes and racing looked like then, it is nowhere to be found now except in countries with real vintage racing organizations like New Zealand where they actually use(Gasp!) single leading shoe brakes....
AHRMA should simply change it's name to American Obsolete Motorcycle Track-Day Association if they want to hit the nail on the head.
I don't want to drive hundreds of miles to see a Honda, Yamaha or Buell twin running, I don't have to either. And I have already seen the same three real historical racing bikes running in AHRMA, the two old Manx Nortons of the McKeever's, and the only real Seeley in the USA, that of Larry Poons which has been running around here for the last 40 years, good job guys.
When Rob Ianucci and others had real vintage racing motorcycles out in force making up grids roughly like those that existed in the 60s, now that was really interesting. Remember when Roger Reiman dragged his KR750 out of mothballs and beat the ex-Al Gunter/team Obsolete G50 at Daytona? That was a show for sure, a historical show.
Now if you want to talk about sad:
From the thread on Seeley frames:
Dances with Shrapnel said:
And remember that we are making history as we go, so we are historically correct.
That is correct, and the history you are making is that of a handful of millionaires bolting together bikes that never existed in the 60s, racing each other and patting each other on the back for a job well done, thus the accurate use of the phrase "circle jerk".
Instead of AHRMA sticking to any historical racing rules it may have once had, year after year it watered them down so there is no more incentive for anyone to do anything historical. It has not been about history since Rob Ianucci got out of it with his large field of real vintage racing bikes. In AHRMA if someone cries that their bike does not fit the existing rules, they simply change the rules to fit the bike or just plain ignore the spec of the bike and let them race it anyway.
As for Cummings statement about "showing everyone how it is done", I think Larry Poons does this just fine. He runs the real Seeley G50 which he bought new around with the replica bikes, and has fun coming in about in last place every time. Although I am not a fan of the man himself, I respect that he and his bike are the only historical act out there and if someone has not had the chance to take a look at him over the last 40 years they should do so before he retires from tilting at windmills.
Someday if it suits my fancy and I have the extra cash to waste, I will be glad to follow his example and parade around on a real vintage bike in last place in some historical class or track day, and it will be for the sake of the fans of those bikes, not so I can coo at myself in a mirror while holding an AHRMA trophy I won against a field of three wet dreams.