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.