Anyone who watched the live TV telecast or was present at the Speedway for the 2011 edition of the Daytona 200 now knows that the race—once again—was beset with snafus, controversy, and for 2011, a major midrace delay. Despite the fact that the on-track action was some of the best ever seen at Daytona, it’s impossible to overlook the two-hour red flag delay caused by front tire issues that spec-tire supplier Dunlop wasn’t prepared for, or that the race only ran 143 miles instead of 200, and the last 52.65 miles (15 laps) were the only ones that really counted.
Making matters worse was that the 200 was being televised live, and the delay dragged on past Speed channel’s allotted time slot. The live programming ended with primetime viewers basically left hanging and confused (the restart of the race ended up being tape-delayed to 11 p.m. that evening—not exactly prime viewership hours for any TV network). For any casual viewers who decided to tune in to the live telecast, it’s a good probability that the frustrating experience turned many of them off motorcycle roadracing.
There was a definite confluence of factors that led to Dunlop being caught with its pants down. The main contributor was the repaving of the Daytona banking late last year, which caused front tire issues (although only with the superbike slicks; DOT tires on the 600s showed no issues) during the initial tire test in December due to the pavement’s increased grip. Then inclement weather basically washed out the follow-up test in January where Dunlop had brought in the new tires made from the data gleaned from the first test, with all the AMA teams only getting about an hour total of track time in two days. Dunlop conducted a five-hour test in February with test riders and a couple of local racers, but any hope of replicating race conditions was futile. So when track temperatures rose from 98 degrees Fahrenheit at the tests to 118 degrees Fahrenheit for the Daytona 200, it opened the door for more factors to come into play.
One is tire pressure. Although Dunlop strongly recommends that 36 psi be used for the front tire at Daytona, some racers and crews experiment with lower settings in order to try and find more grip. While that’s usually OK at other tracks, Daytona’s elevated speeds and banking put tremendous stress on the tires, and less air pressure usually translates to higher tire temperatures due to the added carcass movement. Nonetheless, all through practice and qualifying, there were no issues reported. But when Dunlop technicians noticed front tires coming apart during the first round of pit stops for the 200, they quickly asked AMA Pro Racing to stop the race.
The next problem occurred when Dunlop initially asked for a mandatory front tire change for the whole grid. Because many privateers were planning on running the whole race on one front tire—which, while obviously not ideal, had been done before the repaving—quite a few of the 38-rider field allegedly didn’t have spare front tires or even wheels (while I’m sympathetic to a privateer’s tight racing budget, I’d think that at least one set of spare wheels would be a must for any racer at the national level). During the lengthy process of equipping the entire field with new tires and giving them enough time to properly heat with tire warmers, Dunlop changed its mind and decided that a different backup-spec tire would need to be used; this caused an additional delay until the last front tire to be mounted was deemed to have enough time on tire warmers.
This then led to the next conundrum. Although the 200 was stopped on the 28th lap (leaving 30 laps remaining), because not all the competitors purportedly had a spare front wheel—thus precluding them from performing a mandatory front tire change at the next pit stop—AMA officials decided on safety grounds to reduce the restart to a 15-lap sprint race (and even that was reduced to 13 laps due to yet another crash-induced red flag).
Yes, that 13-lap sprint race produced some very exciting motorcycle racing. But the key word is sprint; for all intents and purposes, the 2011 Daytona 200 was a hollow shell of its former self. And that’s not even including all the other snafus and controversies that swirled around the race that day.