Weekend at the Races

The local indoor winter flat track season finished up last weekend at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem. Victors were crowned and people were all smiles as kids and grownups carried off armloads of trophies at the end of the night. Pro riders received envelopes full of cash. The 250cc and 500cc vintage classes are well subscribed at Salem Speedway. On any night there will be about ten entries in each class, enough to start two rows of riders on the fast, banked short track. On this night #161Q in the photos below won the 250V race and the season class championship. The rider told me that his bike was a former Michigan ice racer. When the last owner moved to Oregon he brought the bike with him, spiked tires and all, and sold it when he got here. New owner slapped on some ancient flat track tires and off he went. This is really fun and inexpensive racing. Maybe someday I'll be able to convince the organizers to run a minibike class.













 
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Steve, the racetrack is in the Forster Livestock Pavilion. It's a big, open-sided building. They bring in a bunch of soil and barriers late in the summer and arrange it into a banked racetrack. The building has a concrete floor, which is left exposed in the infield. Temporary bleachers are set up at each end. Two complete events are run each race day. Karts go in the late morning and afternoon. When they're done the bikes move in for the evening show. After the last race of the season it's all taken down again and they bring back cows and horses.

 

2SlickNick

Well-Known Member
Definitely looking forward to the American flat track season. Kolby Calile actually lives here in Az and practices/races at two of the tracks we do minibike flat track racing. Quite guy but, too cool to watch a national champ get on the track after we get off.
 
Definitely looking forward to the American flat track season. Kolby Calile actually lives here in Az and practices/races at two of the tracks we do minibike flat track racing. Quite guy but, too cool to watch a national champ get on the track after we get off.
Kolby Carlile is a good guy. I've known him for several years. How cool that you get to tear around the same track! Here are some shots of Kolby. First three are at last year's final race in Perris, Calif., where he clinched his championship. The last pic is at the Peoria TT. Will you go to the race at Turf Paradise on May 12? I'm not sure if I can make that one this year. Calistoga is the weekend prior and Sacramento is the weekend after. Gotta convince my wife that three weekends away from home is OK. :laugh:







 
Last weekend I traveled from Oregon to Georgia for my first away game of the season. It was nice to be back on the road again and to visit a track I hadn't seen before. The Atlanta Short Track was round two of the American Flat Track (formerly AMA Pro Racing) national championship series. I skipped the first round at Daytona Beach, Florida, this year. I'm only able to cover about half of the series. I've been to Daytona several times before and this year I want to visit more places that are new to me.

Dixie Speedway is a D-shaped, steeply banked 3/8 mile oval a few miles Northwest from Atlanta. It is surfaced with red Georgia clay. It's a car track, with lots of fences and walls that are typical of such places. These are generally safer tracks for motorcycles than the horse tracks the series sometimes visits, where there are numerous fence posts and similar structures that present severe impact zones.

These events typically play out in a single day, starting around 10 am with tech inspection and the last race ending at about 10 pm. Because of rainstorms moving through the area, everything stopped midway through the day on Saturday, and the event resumed on Sunday. The organizers were prepared for this and had a revised schedule in place. The clay track, which was soaking wet on Saturday afternoon, shed most of the water overnight and was in fine shape for racing by noon on Sunday. It wouldn't bother me if they ran this schedule every time. It's much easier for me to take photos in daylight than in darkness.

There are two classes. AFT Twins is the top class. The bikes have custom frames and modified twin cylinder street bike engines between 750cc and 1,000cc, depending on configuration. Homologation rules allow purpose built racing engines (e.g. H-D XR750 and Indian FTR750) if a certain minimum number are constructed for sale to the public. AFT Singles is the junior class. The bikes are all modified 450cc motocross machines. Lap times for both classes ranged from 18-20 seconds at Dixie Speedway.

Current and multi-time AFT Twins champion, Jared Mees, won the big bike main event on the factory Indian entry. It took the Pennsylvania racer awhile to get up to speed. He qualified thirteenth-fastest and finished third in his heat race. Things picked up when he won his semi-qualifier and he then went on to win the main event by a large margin and set fastest lap of the race.

"My team's my rock, they're so great for me," said Mees. "We struggled a little bit in qualifying and the heat race didn't go so well. That win came more from the team than from me. We battled back and got it done. The way we communicated was so good, and the Indian motorcycle just excels."

Brandon Price, a Maryland racer, won the AFT Singles main event. A big wreck in the AFT Singles class qualifying race happened when the leader fell in front of the pack at top speed. A few guys got run over, one more than once, and there were a couple of broken bones, but the outcome wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed it might be. Most of them got up and came back for more.

Some of these events will have a third class, the nature of which will vary. Sometimes it's Hooligans - big street bikes. Once or twice at small tracks they've had an 85cc class for really fast kids. At this race they had an invitational class for former national level riders, all on beautiful and nearly identical 360cc Bultaco Astro racers. Some big names from the past included flat trackers Dave Aldana, Davey Durelle, Garth Brow and Charlie Rogers, and road racing champion Jamie James. Durelle won the main event after early leader Rogers crashed.

Here are some photos from the event.

Jared Mees flashes across the finish line to win the main event.



This is how the track looked on Saturday afternoon. What a wet mess.



It was cold in Georgia, and racers were bundled up before putting on their leathers. Jake Johnson (L-R), Chad Cose, Briar Bauman, Jarod Vanderkooi, Morgen Mischler, and Bronson Bauman are very pleasant, very brave young men, every one.



Start / finish flagger Bubba Blackwell is a little bit of a character. When not flagging races he puts on shows, jumping his motorcycle over rows of parked cars and buses, etc.



AFT singles semi-qualifier crash.



Riders get to inspect the track during a walk-about before the races begin. The tall fellow in the orange shirt is Dan Bromley. He took second place in the Singles main event.

 
Was at the Waco TX flat track races today and saw this bike. After a closer look it was a sportster with stock frame but trick racing swingarm. rear shocks, racing front forks and wheels. Told the guy it would make a killer street bike and he said it was his daily rider to work when weather was nice. He showed me two holes in the number plate with two led headlights and under seat was taillight and stoplight as well as lisence plate. He took of front caliper to race it. He came in 1st place and it was fairly quiet and when he went into the turn you could see the brakelight flash!! 20180429_112518.jpg 20180429_112456.jpg 20180429_112531.jpg 20180429_112443.jpg
 
Was at the Waco TX flat track races today...
That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. :thumbsup: I couldn't make it to Texas this weekend. Sounds like it was a rough time at the AFT event at Texas Motor Speedway. A few people really got clobbered. One of the AFT 450 riders, Kevin Stollings Jr., was supposed to have his first twins ride on an Indian at Waco today. I wonder how that went? I'll be at AFT events the next three weekends, in Calistoga, Phoenix, and Sacramento.
 
Thanks for sharing. I watched the race live over the weekend. Nasty crash. I know the Bromley family very well. I was there mail man and have bought a few bikes from them.
 
There were two new Indians there #99 and #92. In the heat one was first other third with a xr750 in between. I was at Texas motor speedway Sat for the pate swap meet but did not see the races.
 
The racing season is starting to heat up. I've been busy traveling and haven't played with my minis in at least a month. Last weekend I went to California for the Calistoga Half-Mile. This weekend I'll be in Phoenix for the Arizona Mile, the first mile race of the season. The following weekend it's back to California for the Sacramento Mile.

Calistoga was fun. My wonderful wife tolerates me being gone all the time at the races, but she almost never comes along. This one was so close to home that we made a weeklong trip out of it together. We drove down the Oregon coast from our home near Portland. In California we saw giant redwood trees, the Point Reyes lighthouse, the Marin Headlands/Golden Gate and more. We spent two days in San Francisco. There, we walked miles, ate a lot, and visited a couple of art museums and toured the kitchens at a pair of bakeries. My wife is an accomplished amateur baker. We've made this trip many times, so we know how to get around, what we like to see again and how to find fun new things to see and do. I love California. I also love coming home from California.

I had my little Yamaha XT250 along in the back of my truck, and I pulled it out to ride Hwy 1 where it winds through the mountains and along the coast between Leggett and Mendocino. I found the memorial where the Hart family plunged off a cliff to their deaths a few weeks ago. Last Saturday, my wife took the truck to do some stuff on her own, and I rode the bike to the races.

Here is a link to the news of the Hart family cliff-plunge, and some photos from our trip.

What we know: Timeline of the Hart family tragedy | KATU











 
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Here are some photos from the Calistoga Half-Mile. This fun track is at the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga, which is at the north end of the Napa valley. Wine country and all... It's also the area where large deadly fires have burned many homes, businesses and lots of countryside. The area is healing, but there was still plenty of damage visible along the highway between Calistoga and our hotel in nearby Santa Rosa.

The big bike class had a close race for the win, between two Indian motorcycles. Indians are really the big deal right now. You can buy a brand new, race-ready bike for about $45,000 and they are very competitive. The small bike class was won by a young man on a Honda, but second place went to a woman riding a Husqvarna. Nice! Here are some race pics.





















 
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