Hooligan Dirt Dash

From our good friends at Biltwell

We're helping out with this race next month in Texas. Was wondering if you could give it a shout? The @hooligandirtdash is coming to Texas on June 4th, 2016. Hooligans from all over will be banging bars on the track built at @grueneharleydavidson . There's a Run what ya Brung class, too. 

Superhooligans, Austin, Texas

Roland Sands Designs and Indian Motorcycles are doing a great job of pushing hooligan racing over in the US (along with companies like Biltwell, Suicide Machine Co, Rusty Butcher, The Speed Merchant, See See Motorcycles, Harley-Davidson), to the point there is already a backlash from a very small minority of the flat track community. The dissenters are upset that this new amateur series is taking limelight away from the professional GNC racing scene. Firstly, if that's the truth AMA Pro Racing is in a whole heap of trouble.

The RSD-promoted hooligans raced at Daytona and Austin the same day the GNC were in town, and last year Harley-Davidson and The Speed Merchant promoted a race at the South Dakota Black Hills Half-Mile GNC race. From my perspective at least, the hooligans are bringing more people into racing, more sponsors, more spectator interest. The hooligans raced right in the city centre of Austin on a temporary track during MotoGP weekend. What an amazing advert for participation motorcycle sport.

Also, this is Indian's first toe in the flat track water, the advance party that will be followed, Indian promise, by a full factory team. That means there will be at least two more pro riders earning a living in a year or so's time. How is that a bad thing? Perhaps these critics just don't know how modern marketing works. It has to be more sophisticated than a pretty girl in a tight top, or a shout out to the local Chevy dealer between the races. Marketing is crucial to the success of any product - and pro racing is a product.

Flat track had been in decline for 25 years or more, before recent small shoots of recovery, yet anyone who tries something new is shouted down from some quarter. I guess that's human nature. One critic of the hooligans complained that it was disgusting that these 'clowns on street bikes' were taking the place in the GNC schedule that could be occupied by a vintage class. But how would that attract new sponsors? Old guys on vintage bikes? I'm all for vintage racing, I shouldn't even have to say that, and it's important to the history and the current amateur scene, but it's not bringing in more money or more interest to the pro side of the sport. Flat track needs new, loud voices - Roland Sands and his company has one.

Racing street bikes on dirt tracks is nothing new. There was a single outlaw heat race at the very first dirt track race I ever went to, the Skip van Leeuwen-promoted Del Mar Short Track (the weekend of the Wrenchhead Mile, back in 2000), but social media and marketing savvy people are helping this latest push make b-i-g waves.

Superprestigio, hooligans, X Games, Rossi's Ranch, Dirt Quake, Hell on Wheels, Slidetober, The One Pro, Flat Track Frida at Mama Tried - these are all great things for flat track. I regularly speak to racing promoters and amateur racers. I know many people that have competed in a motorcycle race for the very first time at Dirt Quake and have gone on to buy framers and DTX bikes, joined local clubs and gone racing, some have even started promoting their own races. These amateur races show what is possible in the formerly intimidating world of motorcycle racing.

On another point, I've been racing flat track since 2006. I don't have to explain to anyone what flat track is, like I used to back then. Everyone knows what the sport is now. The same cannot be said of, for instance, grasstrack or enduro. I don't believe new riders have a clue what those sports are.

If you don't know, the hooligan class is for 750cc and up street bikes with stock frames. Sportsters are relatively cheap in the US, so they've become the default bike, though Roland has built a fleet of slick 2016 Indian Scout 80s (that are featured in Sideburn 24).

Some guys in the USA are really going to town on their bikes, but many are sticking to the basics, 19in wheels and DT tyres, longer rear shocks, wide bars, mid-mount foot controls, new pipe and air filter, remove as much weight as possible. This is what I've been doing to a 1991 Sportster that I'm hoping to debut at the very first round of the Harley-Davidson-sponsored DTRA Hooligan series at the MCN Festival this weekend. Come along! Former World Superbike champion Colin Edwards is racing in the Transatlantic and so, I'm told, is AMA pro Mikey Martin.

Here is a serious comment - if you don't like hooligan racing, or what it's doing to AMA Pro Racing, suggest an alternative way for the sport to grow. I'd love to hear it. Start the discussion. G

 BMW RNineT built by Revival Cycles.

 Speed Merchant-equipped Sportster

Trying hard!

 Trying too hard.

 RSD Ameritracker Sportster

 The legendary David Aldana got in the act, racing an Indian Scout

Above and below: Dimitri Coste was invited to race and won, first time on the bike. That guy is quite a talent.

Yes, I said modern marketing had to be more sophisticated than a pretty girl in a tight top, but that doesn't mean they can't be part of the message, too. Women racers are a big part of the new racing scene, and we hope to see more women racing every year. G

Revival Cycles, Austin, Texas

Revival Cycles 'bricks and mortar' shop in Austin looks incredible. And now they stock Sideburn.
If your shop would like to sell Sideburn magazines and/or merch, get in touch. G

X Games Flat Track Main

Flat track (sponsored and facilitated by Harley-Davidson) was the opening sport of last week's X Games in Austin, Texas. If you don't know much about the X Games, it is  extreme sports Olympics, a made for TV spectacular and hugely popular.
Motorcycles are often featured, but normally supercross, freestyle and step-up (high jump for 450s). This is a first for flat track and is, I've heard, a four-year deal. I was in Sacramento at the GNC race a few days before the X Games and the whole of the sport was very excited about the opportunity.
The track was built for the event, as rough as a rhino's rump, and about 3/8 of a mile in length. Heavy rains the week before was blamed for the track's poor condition.
The start used an MX-style dropping metal gate, like the Superprestigio does. The heavy twins didn't seem to like it.
One of the most impressive things from a spectating amateur racer's point of view (mine) was how quickly fallen riders got off the track. It was as if a sniper was in the crowd and the TV producers told the riders that if they held up the banjo-string-tight TV schedule they'd get a dum-dum in the back of the head.

There was just one class of invited riders, 24 pros (including Daytona 200 winner, Danny Eslick), trying to qualify for a 12-rider main. This video the main and there are very few surprises in the line-up - this is the line-up, by the way, not the result.

Jared Mees             HD
Kenny Coolbeth     HD
Bryan Smith           Kaw
Mikey Martin         Tri
Johnny Lewis         Duc
Sammy Halbert      Kaw
Briar Bauman         Kaw
Brad Baker             HD
Jake Johnson          HD
Doug Lawrence      HD
Brandon Robinson  Tri
Mick Kirkness        HD

Enjoy the 20-lapper. Make sure you watch right to the flag... G

Flat Track at the X Games TONIGHT

Many of the top GNC riders, and a few crossover guests, like current road racer and two-time Daytona 200 winner Danny Eslick, will contest the first ever X Games flat track race in Austin, Texas tonight. 24 riders are aiming to qualify for a 12-rider main.

Riders will start from a motocross-style gate (like at the Superprestigio) on a track built at the Circuit of the Americas. We spoke to Sammy Halbert at the weekend and he said he had been told it's a 3/8-mile, and when he saw an overhead photo he thought it had very tight corners.

The whole of US dirt track is buzzing about this opportunity to put their sport and skills in front of a major TV audience. For those who don't know, X Games is the Olympic games of extreme sports and is run by the TV network ESPN. It is a made for TV sporting event and serves up some incredible moments.


But while this is a fantastic opportunity, it has given some people the opportunity to be negative about the AMA and what they're doing for the sport. I interview quite a lot of the pro racers and all of them want pro flat track to be on TV. That's obvious. who wouldn't? But some race fans are bashing the AMA for not having the sport on TV on a race-by-race basis. I was included in a reply to an email reminding people the X Games was on that said:

'Great for flat track. It just shows how far AMA has fallen down that they can't get decent TV exposure for anything but arenacross. So many good races are never seen anymore.'

It struck me as quite a blinkered view, so I wrote this reply and thought I'd share it here.

Every sport in the world thinks it deserves to be on TV, but it's not an easy deal to pull off. 
This doesn't prove the AMA has fallen down at all, in my opinion. The truth is flat track is a niche within the already minority sport of motorcycle racing. 

Try writing a pitch to a TV executive on how you'd sell dirt track to their TV company. It's not easy. It's not a world championship. It's contested by bikes that don't relate to street bikes. It has little manufacturer support (except Harley). It is slower than superbikes or GPs. It is less exciting, to a couch potato, than a flying 450 at a supercross event. To non-aficianados it doesn't have a lot going for it. 

The X Games deal is a lot easier, because
A: The sport hasn't been on TV for years, so it's a novelty.

B: Harley Davidson have thrown their weight behind it, to try sell bikes to a new audience. 

C: The X Games needs to reinvent itself every few years. They experimented with Supermoto a few years ago. It didn't save that sport. 

D: Street motorcycles are gaining popularity with the opinion-formers of the X Games generation (the hip crowd). Flat trackers can crossover with this crowd. 

E: The sport is blue collar and 'extreme' like the street sports X Games is built on. 

F: It's a one-off annual event, so no one has to wonder if an audience would follow a whole season of the sport. It'll be wild for one night, then the masses will move on. Hopefully a few people will fall in love with the sport and start following it on fanschoice.tv or at their local GNC race. 

I'm not saying the AMA are doing a good or bad job with regard to TV, but just because someone is putting the sport on TV for one night a year doesn't mean someone is doing a terrible job, because they don't have the whole season televised. 

American viewers can watch Harley-Davidson Flat Track Racing on ESPN's live coverage of the X Games on Thursday, June 4 at 8:30 p.m. ET (5:30 p.m. PT).

British viewers with ESPN or BT Sport packages can see it from, I think, 12.30 to 2.30am in the early hours of Friday morning. G