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Come to think of it it would be interesting to watch a race where the riders have an additional 3 or 4 HP nudge temporarily available from time to time but that is consumed quickly enough that the strategy of where and when to use it comes into play.... as well as taking into account how long it would take to build back up and whether to use lesser amounts of E assistance sooner or waiting until through the course of riding the system gets fully charged back up.
Don't succumb to their (apparent) desire to race in the 250 class. That would be perpetuating the same level of idiocy as the 2x and 1.75x capacity advantagegive to the 4ts 2 decades or more ago. Electric bikes have No problem with power - and it's up to the manufacturers to develop more long life, lighter and quicker charging batteries.
Yes, the study and the setting of hard, non tamperable rules / settings for smaller Power and Torque classes, does require a LOT of looking into. But, throw the Altas and others like bikes to come into the Highest power / capacity classes, where excess power and torque is not hard to have, and is pretty much a disadvantage.
That the "advisory board" back in 96 (but rules already allowed 540cc 4ts in the 250 class) couldn't see that Superbike Technology, and not XR / TT / DR / KL tech was going to be put to use in modern 4ts to come just shows the level of stupidity, and, perhaps, being in the 'pocket' of manufacturers that might have existed among the board.
And, as ever, the 2x and 1,75x handicap class racing, at most High Level racing, is still being allowed. Equivalency has not destroyed 4ts where allowed, so Why In Hell is it not being allowed in AMA Pro Nationals, and MXGP and MX2 in the GPs?
I have huge admiration for DC as a real steward of the sport, who genuinely loves our sport, far above the likes of Luongo, but the BS of him not bringing equivalency to AMA Pro (Outdoors) racing, smacks of him / MX Sports being subservient to a few Manufacturers.
As ever - I'm Not anti E Bike - I think my next purchase of a new bike will Likely be an E Bike, probably an Alta.
But, if they, Alta, want to 'play' in racing, let them do it in the 450 / Open class - they have No problem making a powerful enough bike to suit the class.
The Shop
Not being on the cutting edge of e-bike technology, but at least having a little knowledge in the area, I am pretty sure it isn’t that simple taking into consideration battery technology and bike weight issues. Why would any e-bike manufacturer want to be forced to compete in a class where the bike is at a distinct disadvantage?
It's Not going to be hard for Alta to ramp the MXR up to 450 levels, if it was deemed as being what is required.
And, in short 'time' racing such as SX, it would be up to Them to have enough batteries on hand to meet their requirements.
And, up to them to have / develop batteries to go the 30 +2 in Outdoors / GPs.
Weight - once again, it's up to them to bring it down. Hell, do we start to favour the Japanese 450s in rules over the Austrian ones because they are near to, or over 20lbs heavier than the KTMs/Huskies? Hell No we don't - it's up to the manufacturers to try to match up, if they want to match up.
Not forgetting, of course, they, Alta are going to have to try to have a rider of high enough quality to do well in the 450 racing. Once again, it's (well, make it all) up to Them.
As I've said repeatedly, I'm very much interested in E Bikes, I'm a prime candidate for purchasing one, in preference to an ICE bike, but make the Manufacturers jump in at the highest levels if they want to Race, and Not make the mistake of giving them a 'break', or an Advantage., like the idiocy given to 4ts.
Quite telling on the stalling now being seen and using that mistake as an excuse..to deny its place in National that has a correct class to run
Heats on and another mistake is being made.
I can ride the bike of my choice, say a KX500, a CR125 or a Maico 701 in the open or age bracketed classes. What should stop me from taking a electric bike & doing the same? At least at the amateur level at ANY event. It is an OPEN class for petes sake. Yes I can at Chicken Licks Raceway, so the powers to be tell me. But I cannot at the National Championships? Bullshit.
Tell me what the difference is? If I am fast enough on a 86 XT600 to qualify, I ought to be able to qualify on an Alta.
I get the "lets wait & see where this machine falls in with the displacement classes". I agree that the mistakes of the past need not to be repeated again. We are not talking about a displacement class here. It is a dammed open class. Run what you have class.
If I wasn't for an upcoming surgery, I would already have purchased an Alta. And just to rock the boat, try to qualify for Loretta's just to piss off the Left Wingers that seem to be stifling the competition.
Rant over.
And why is any of this relevant anyways in an open class? Was there a wait and see before allowing airforks into the national, and let the local test dummies sort it out first? What about FI? It was quite the game changer but there was no wait and see. Yamahas backward engine configuration, different than the norm, but never held back from competing.
Ultimately disallowing it at LL, and per the stated rule of, its up to each promoter to decide if eligible at their event or not, will create much controversy nationwide this year. When some Johnny Racer that has to have his $3 trophy goes to a promoter and starts whining, the first thing hes gonna use as his defense is, it wasnt allowed at LL, why should you allow it.
Pit Row
* 20 years ago we accidentally got it wrong and have never been able to correct the mistake.
* Trust us this time.
To destroy grassroots racing, and line your pockets.
The issue I was addressing is that increasing electric motor performance by 30%-40% in conjunction with batteries to power it while keeping heat, weight and expense down or at current levels probably isn’t all that simple. If it was, the bike most likely would have started out at that level.
For better or for worse, the AMA will comply with the protectionist Japanese OEMs in full. The Alta will never race until they are ok with it.
Most likely, this attitude will ultimately lead to a Formula E style competitor to AMA SX/MX. Which is a concept that has a massive upside.
I agree with you 100% though.
Back in 1995-‘96, there was thing known as the AMA Advisory Board, which included each of the existing OEMs, to suggest rules for AMA Motocross and Supercross. One of the OEMs came forward asking for a displacement ruling on a new four-stroke model they were coming out with, hoping that it would be competitive against lighter, state-of-the-art two-strokes of smaller displacement. After many discussions (but not a lot of actual data and no real testing—the bike only existed in theory, and previous four-stroke offerings like KTMs and Husabergs and ATKs lumbered along well behind 250s in most races), the arrived-at number became 450cc. The general feeling was that that displacement would eventually give the much heavier thumper a chance against two-stroke 250s, which is what the OEM knew they would be racing against if they wanted to compete in AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross. After a lot of debate and hand-wringing, the rule went into effect for the 1997 season. The bike was also given a one-year grace period as a prototype, which meant they did not have to meet homologation or production rules. Yet.
Months later, Team Yamaha’s Doug Henry showed up at the first outdoor national to race aboard his highly-anticipated Yamaha YZM400, a bike largely developed by Yamaha engineer Yoshiharu Nakayama using Superbike technology to solve the power disadvantage the bike had to the more nimble two-strokes of the day. It was at the Gainesville 250 National opener, and while the bike caused a real buzz, it finished about where everyone figured it would: 11-6 for eighth overall. The bike certainly had potential, I remember thinking at the time, but it took one of the fastest riders on the planet—Doug Henry—all he had just to crack the top ten.
But the second time the was raced—two months later at the Las Vegas Supercross—Doug Henry won. That should have been a real uh-oh moment for everyone, like maybe time to go back to the rule-making apparatus and reconfigure the displacement proportions, but the die was already cast. Yamaha was well on its way to mass production with the bike for 1998, and it was also understood that other OEMs were well into work on their own four-stroke MX models as well. So the industry seemed to settle in and just see how it all was going to play out, fingers crossed…
One year later, Doug Henry won the 1998 AMA 250cc National Motocross Championship on a production Yamaha YZ450F. The genie was out of the bottle. Within six years, two-stroke 250s would be winning their last AMA National; within eight, they would be practically obsolete compared to 450s. The disparity was even worse in the “125” class, which by 2005 was almost completely a 250F class. The last race a 125 would win in AMA Supercross/Motocross would come at Steel City ’04, a Kawasaki KX125 in the hands of James Stewart. By then there was a lot of people wishing the AMA (and FIM) had settled on maybe 350cc and 200cc for four-stroke limits, or even 300 and 150….
In the 20 years since the AMA Advisory Board made that controversial two-stroke/four-stroke displacement decision, people have argued, debated, conflated, and berated the move as being ill-advised and ill-informed for a variety of reasons ranging from how bikes became more expensive, riding areas were closed down due to four-strokes being so much louder, injuries going up because the bikes are too powerful, and our beloved two-strokes were rendered too slow to compete. Hindsight shows us that the AMA Advisory Board got it wrong back in 1996, but what they did have to go on? The existing four-strokes seemed like leftover dinosaurs, and no one truly knew what that brilliant engineer in Japan had on the drawing board.
I know all of this because I was on that AMA Advisory Board. I was in the many discussions about the concern for the future of two-stroke engines, given that they were under attack in California, where 25 percent of the bikes and ATVs were sold at the time, and that cleaner-burning four-stroke technology might just save the motorcycle industry from imminent doom at the hands of environmentalists. Mitch Payton was on that board, too. So was the late Phil Alderton of Yamaha of Troy. Then AMA Motocross manager Duke Finch was in there too, along with the team managers of every competing OEM. Once the debate was over and 450cc was the number, it went up to the AMA Board of Directors to make the final decision. To that point, NONE of us had ever ridden or even seen the Yamaha YZM400 that would win in its second AMA Pro race and the title in its first year as a YZ450F.
Which brings us to this new crossroads.
Every single person I know inside the MX Sports building is a fan of electric motorcycles. Every person I speak to at the AMA in Pickerington, Ohio, can’t wait for the (hopefully) coming wave of new bikes and riders and riding areas that they believe will result from electric motorcycles. Same goes with our friends at Feld Motor Sports, the FIM, Youthstream, GNCC, AMA Pro Racing….
Ever since I got wind of the Alta electric dirt bikes a few years back, I have been excited to get on one. I flew out to Red Bull Straight Rhythm a year and a half ago just to see it compete, and Josh Hill, a retired racer, blew a lot of minds in beating top-ten current 250F guys with it. Sure, it was one race, in a straight line of rhythm jumps, less than two minutes in time—perfect for where the Alta was at the time. And while It’s come a very long way since, the upside to what it might ultimately become is hard to even imagine, especially since the whole world seems to be headed to cleaner-burning energy and products.
Still, I had yet to ride one, and I would bet most of you reading this haven’t either. What I did know is that they are starting to show up at more and more parts of the country, and they will soon be on starting gates all over the world. But which class should they race? Where should they line up?
If you ask Alta, which I did, they prefer to line up in the 250SX class right now with their new Redshift MX. Former Honda team manager and longtime industry veteran Dave Arnold has been trying to help the brand get the bike onto the SX starting gate. I also just did a magazine feature with Alta’s co-founder Derek Dorrensteyn and got into a lot of detail about the bike, and the hopes of everyone at the brand.
The conundrum, of course, is that the rest of the bikes on the current starting gate are 250cc or 450cc four-stroke motorcycles with combustible engines. The Alta is an electric dirt bike with no cc displacement to compare. The horsepower may be similar, but it’s different—extremely different. It’s a different breed of dirt bike from the ones we are racing now, and it’s not a perfect fit.
We have some experience in evolving markets with the transition to four-strokes. When we were discussing the rules to allow four-strokes, never once was it intended that we introduce four-strokes as a means to kill off the two-stroke market. The plan was to develop market alternatives to two-strokes while balancing the performance characteristics between two-strokes and four-strokes. The facts are that we got the math wrong and it was quickly evident that the new four-strokes at the approved displacement were making two-strokes obsolete. And just changing the rule proved to be very hard because, again, the genie was out of the bottle.
Now, since electric bikes have no cc displacement, and the battery that powers them will surely evolve in power and endurance, while likely falling in weight, how much faster and efficient will electric bikes become than they are right now, and how soon?
“It’s a completely a tricky decision,” answered Alta’s Dorrensteyn when I asked him something similar earlier this month. “Racing promotes building faster, better bikes every year. It’s part of progress. It’s part of the market.”
This week I was able to borrow Chase Yentzer’s 2017 Alta Redshift MX and bring it back to Morgantown to do some riding (the High Point National track is 15 minutes away) and get my own feeling for where the bike is at and where it may be headed, because before anyone asks me my opinion, just like they did back in 1996, I will make damn sure that I have a better grasp of the bike in question. The moment I turned the throttle on the Alta I was smiling. It’s an amazing ride already. Sure, it’s an automatic without a clutch, and that takes some getting used to, but I can tell already that it’s going to be a huge hit with a lot of riders, both existing ones and hopefully a whole bunch of new ones. I know the AMA has had one for some time at their office in Ohio and spent some time on the Alta, in the hopes of figuring out where this new model fits in compared to existing technology for both four-strokes and two-strokes. The bike puts a smile on their faces too, but they also think they need more time and data and feedback before placing this bike into the existing class structure. If there were enough Altas and other electric bikes out there, there would be an eBike class, no problem, but there’s not. Alta wants to race now, but against what?
Right now, no one really knows for certain where electric bikes should match up with existing two-strokes and four-strokes, just as we really don’t know where four-strokes belonged in 1996. We will soon be seeing them raced more and more locally in open-displacement classes, like the age divisions. And in the near future, when there is a better grasp of just how good these bikes might be—and not just the Alta, but all of the ones that are almost certainly on the drawing boards of other OEMs—we should see them on the starting gates at the AMA Amateur National Motocross Championships at Loretta Lynn’s, as well as in 250SX or 450SX in Monster Energy AMA Supercross, and 250 or 450 in Lucas Oil Pro Motocross, and MX2 or MXGP in the Monster Energy FIM World Motocross Championship.
But not in 2018. Because no one at the AMA or FIM is ready to make that same definitive decision to say just where this new technology belongs, because it’s not a 450cc or 250cc four-stroke, just as that YZM400 Yamaha wasn’t a 250cc or 125cc two-stroke.
That was the purpose of the press release announcement of a supplemental rule that electric bikes will not be allowed at Loretta Lynn’s this summer. It is MX Sports’ intention to develop a plan to incorporate the new technology into our sport, and not intended to define some plan to keep eBikes out. However, it’s critical that we navigate this process with patience and with a plan that enhances our sport over the long-term, and doesn’t have the same unintended consequences that many point to that 1996 decision as the root of. Every OEM will be producing eBikes in the future, but let’s not make the existing motorcycles obsolete with a hasty decision now. We need to make informed decisions about today’s sport while we look to broadening tomorrow’s sport.
We recognize the cultural shift from “Loud and Dirty” (emissions) to “Quiet and Clean,” but this shift is far more complicated than what is being described on social media and Vital MX. That press release was deliberately brief, but the brevity shouldn’t be misconstrued to imply that we aren’t working on this matter in earnest. And no one should misinterpret our deliberateness and patience as being inaction or obstruction to the future. Just the opposite. We welcome the introduction of new products and new technology and when it is appropriate to incorporate that new technology in our sport’s premier programs, we will do so, but we will do so in a way that does not unreasonably favor new technology over current technology.
These are exciting times for our sport and our brief experience in testing one of the new eBike models tells us that these are very fun and entertaining products that will clearly play a role in our future. Motocross history has shown us that over the past half-century. We’ve watched the shift from four-strokes to two-strokes, and then back to four-strokes. We also know that our recent adoption of four-strokes came at a measurable cost to our industry. With that in mind we’re smart to be reminded of that old adage that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Having said that, I really don't know what difference it makes in an Open amateur class. That's kind of head scratching.
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