Rennie Scaysbrook | February 23, 2022
Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
The Allure Of Daytona
The documentary One Man’s Dream is absolutely essential viewing for anyone with even a slight interest in motorcycling.
Telling the incredible tale of the Britten V1000, One Man’s Dream is a film that showcases what man is capable of when he puts his mind to it. If you haven’t seen it, block out the next hour and a half of your day and click HERE.
However, not only does the film detail just what went into making that halo of a motorcycle (one of the most sought-after and expensive two-wheeled machines in the world today), it also introduced a 14-year-old me to the 31° banking of The World Center of Racing, otherwise known as Daytona International Speedway.
Actually, that last part is only slightly correct, as Tom Cruise’s Days of Thunder was the first time I remember seeing racing of any kind on the famous banks.
Seeing the lanky Kiwi Andrew Stroud, feet cocked at 45° to the direction of travel as he held the blue and pink Britten absolutely wide open on the banking, was an image I’ll remember forever. We never had banked oval racing in Australia. Indeed, we only had one banked super-speedway-style track in Melbourne that occasionally held NASCAR races. The bikes used only the infield, so to see bikes right up near the wall at Daytona (albeit on a VHS cassette) with the gas pinned to the stop and riders hanging on for dear life, left an indelible mark on my teenage brain.
Daytona has an allure to it no other racetrack in this country possesses. It is steeped in grandeur and prestige, having seen some of the most spectacular racing ever staged in the U.S. As a bit of a motorcycle history buff, I’m absolutely thrilled to be heading to Florida in a couple of weeks to experience the event that was once considered one of the most important in world racing. And I’ll even get to have a go of the place myself as I’m riding for Roland Sands in the Super Hooligan race on the beautiful Indian Chief I raced last year.
The 2022 race sees the dawning of a new era in the history of the Daytona 200 with the AMA and MotoAmerica taking over the reins of running the event, which will hopefully help rebuild the diluted image the race has suffered over the past decade and a half.
The Daytona 200 holds a similar place in the pantheon of great motorcycle races to the Isle of Man TT or the sadly long gone Imola 200. Have a look at the names who’ve conquered the banking: Emde, Nixon, Rayborn, Mann, Saarinen, Agostini, Roberts, Crosby, Spencer, Rainey, Lawson, Russell, Duhamel, Hayden, Mladin, Herrin, Eslick, Beaubier, and 19-year-old Brandon Paasch in 2021. And for 2022, the 200 will have the most stacked field in years, headlined by none other than current MotoAmerica Superbike Champion, Jake Gagne.
Isle of Man TT legend, Michael Dunlop, holds the Kawasaki flat out on the banking in 2021. The Daytona 200 is getting a reboot in 2022, will it help restore the allure of this great race?
To find the last time the current AMA SBK champion fronted the grid for the Daytona 200, you’d have to go back to Mat Mladin in 2004, the last year the 200 was run with full-spec AMA Superbikes. In 2005, the 200 switched from Superbike to Formula Xtreme rules, with Miguel Duhamel taking the last of his five Daytona wins on a Honda CBR600RR. The 2004 AMA SBK champion, Mladin, was the first number-one plate holder in 2005 not to contest the 200 in the modern era, as his intense inter-team battle with Ben Spies on the Yoshimura Suzuki began to take center stage.
And so the 200 didn’t exactly fade from importance, but its stature as the race you had to win in North America began to fade. The switch to 600s (first in FX rules, then as Daytona Sportbikes and, finally, as Supersport regulations) didn’t help the so-called prestige of the race, but the truth was the gnarly 200-plus horsepower monster superbikes of the day combined with the banking were just too much for the tire technology to cope with.
To find the last time the current AMA SBK champion fronted the grid for the Daytona 200, you’d have to go back to Mat Mladin in 2004, the last year the 200 was run with full-spec AMA Superbikes.
The forces going through the tires on those big bikes were immense, and just like Barry Sheene in 1975, Ben Spies suffered a catastrophic tire failure in 2003 at 186 mph just as he crossed the start/finish line while testing his Suzuki GSX-R1000. It was miraculous Spies suffered (only) second- and third-degree burns on his left elbow, shoulder and hip thanks to sliding for what seemed like a week and then bouncing off the outer tri-oval wall.
I highly doubt you would find favor in the 200 returning to full-house superbikes if the notion was ever put to a vote. And besides, the pole lap from Eric Bostrom in that final Superbike-spec race of 2004 was a 1:48.775 on the Ducati 999R, and the pole lap of the 2021 by Sean Dylan-Kelly on the Suzuki GSX-R600 was a 1:48.896.
Naturally, if AMA-spec Superbikes were allowed back on the banking, I’m sure they would go a damn sight faster than what Kelly could do last year, but it shows that although the race bikes are smaller than 20 years ago, they are far from slower. And they come with the added bonus of being much safer on tires than those old beasts ever were.
I want to see the Daytona 200 get back to being the premier race in the United States. There’s no shortage of loot on offer, with $175,000 in prize money up for grabs ensuring whoever wins it will have earned a very handsome payday.
The industry needs the Daytona 200 name to mean what it used to, much like the Indianapolis 500 or indeed the Daytona 500 for NASCAR. The race provides a unique link to our shared past, to the heroes who came and conquered the banking before.
Racing needs the Daytona 200. And if you’re in Florida on March 12, get down to The World Center of Racing to support the riders and witness what will hopefully be the rebirth of this great race. CN
