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Personally..I could care less how 'close' the racing is. If a difficult track spreads the riders out...that is the way it is. My call...LESS 90s, more 180s. The existing 180s are fine to encourage good passing. Another issue is the number of jumps in combos. Over and over they add an extra jump to blow the advantage of changing up combos and getting aggressive. If you have 7 jumps...and the top guys can go 3-4 vs 3-2-2...that is an advantage. But when they add another jump, and make it 8..now you have 3-4-1 vs 3-2-2. Virtually no advantage. This happens over and over...and the only one you ever hear mention it is James during track walks...
Crush/Matthes 2
GuyB -1,234,546
Crush don't ever mention bring back 2 strokes to GuyB. You will likely get four stroke pump sprayed all over your face.
But two strokes. Ahhhhhhh how much more pleasant would it be to go to the races with the sweet sweet smell of premix and that crisp braaap instead of those annoying thunder chugging tractors.
I hear diesels are next. Supposedly that's what Dungey is running
Appreciate what others said about good racing but where has it been demonstrated the bowl turns make for better racing? It is way harder to go fast on a flat surface or off camber than railing a huge berm.
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Feld doesn't have tuff blocks, the scoring tower, the timing tower, and a finish line structure in every city.
It would VERY easy to have 12-16 of these stands and 4 heavy duty nets packed in with that crap.
And as for if berms or bowl turns make for better racing, how you think watching riders follow each other or tip toe around a flat turn when they could be block passing left and right is completely beyond me.
Yes, A off camber, or a flat sweeper is good. But for heavens sakes, supercross used to be filled with cool obstacles, lots of dirt and lots of passing opportunities.
Now almost every obstacle is 3 or 5 feet tall, save for the triple and finish... that includes the berms and jumps. Rhythm section 3 footer, 5 footer, 3 footer, small table blah blah blah.
Dirt and tracks is the biggest cost sure but it's also the thing that makes the sport cool. Right now the tracks in Aus are catching up or you guys are falling behind. And we run them in fairgrounds!
Liability.
They, the riders all sign a contract that says they can't do anything against the promoter... And regardless I'd rather hit a net and bounce into some foam or pads than launch onto concrete and dirt,...
And for spectators, you're adding a net and they don't sell the first few rows anyways...
If you show the attorneys that you have removed the first 10 rows of seats and also put up nets, they'll be happy with it. At that point a triple or rhythm lane would cause as much risk.
Either way, they're doing something, Prater and Weege had a conversation as per the Houston podcast wrap up...
In fact, they weren't even friendly, they were the crowd control fences you see erected at festivals, the outer limit ones, 2 m tall and nothing cushy!
To me block passing isn't the same type of racing as when someone has the corner skills to pass someone on the outside on a flat turn or can gain time through an off camber that you hate to have to go around because it is so tough.
Have you been watching the 2014 SX season? The tracks have included wall sections at many venues and I think are the best they've been.
Pit Row
Every place there is a flat turn there is basically no passing. I agree it's great to watch what you say but unless it's a big open sweeper it's rare the guys actually have any room to force a pass on the flat or that any cushion develops for them to get in and out of.
I like tech stuff too but between four strokes being so good, turns being flat, the tracks being faster and not as tech (Less mistakes), the passing has dwindled. Passing is good racing.
Padded concrete, sure, that won't bring back berms, and it will also be a problem for your concern about freight costs or whatever... That stuff will be space prohibitive.
On flat turns, the shorter distance traveled beats out the slightly faster cornering speed of a wider line. The solution is to add banking (ie...a berm in MX) to increase speed on the wider line enough to make up for the longer distance traveled. If the inside edge of the corner is not far enough from the berm, then the advantage actually goes to the outside line, and we again have no passing. The key is finding a balance so the inside line and the outside line are the same on elapsed time. I think that DW has the math down pretty good on the current 180s. Making them taller in and of itself will do nothing. That is the problem with Matthes' premise. He thinks that making berms bigger will some how make for more passing.
You can only make a berm so steep...irregardless of how tall it is. Look up angle of repose...something the DW guys and anyone who works in heavy construction and earth moving know. Since the max angle is pretty much fixed, making berms much bigger will actually push the wide line from the inside line too much, and the advantage could actually shift back to the inside line.
St. Louis 2009 berm
I disagree. Water and a blade and about every track that ever had them had berms plenty big or steep enough.
And in regards to your comment about inside or outside lines, you're still just talking about speed, or the fastest line. Which is what they have now. What they don't have is any space on the 3 foot berms to actually get under someone and still have something to turn with, it's about passing opportunities.
You need a good size berm, not necessarily a complete bowl, but a good size berm, with the inside tuff block drawn back a little so someone can block pass and the other can cut back and forth etc. It also helps if the obstacles in and out of the turn have some sort of option, instead of the exact same obstacle. If you HAVE to go wide to triple, then everyone just goes wide. Make the inside a quick roller and then double out and there is a reason to go inside.
Let us review this weekends GP where a bike going faster was quite easily stopped by a simple tiny net mounted to some wooden poles.
They have difficulty keeping Tuf-Blox on the top of berms, and they're often using long steel spikes on those. I'm not sure how they're going to keep a tall pole in there.
I'm saying a net as basic as this quite easily stopped the bike and rider.
A more substantial one with a buried base like i've drawn and others commented on above would EASILY catch the bike and rider.
I don't get why you or anyone else would be against it. Ridiculous.
And the gain in lap times just because of a bowl turn would be minimal in my opinion. They have alternatives to slow the track down by being creative in the track design.
As usual it's something that they never will do until some big accident happen and then they will realize they need to do something. Shame ...
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