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| Elder Statesman Cameron Not Heading South For Daytona
by dean adams Friday, February 26, 2010 For the first time in 40 years, Kevin Cameron is skipping Daytona. It's no secret that Kevin Cameron is not a fan of racing where technology is dumbed down for the sake of a contrived show. And he wasn't impressed by DMG's 'ram it down their throats' methodology as seen in 2009. Last July he sat in the audience at Laguna for the DMG press conference listening quietly as then DMG head Colin Fraser explained how they did little wrong with the infamous pace car in the Superbike race. In the middle of the press conference, Cameron, clearly offended by the reasoning offered by DMG for a situation which could have killed riders, closed his notebook and calmly walked out. His walking out of that press conference was an eyebrow-raising moment, as was his later walking away wordlessly when a DMG official appeared to tried to talk to him in the media center at Indianapolis. Asked for comment about his not attending Daytona, Cameron wrote in an e-mail message on March 1 2010: The thing is this--when I first went to Daytona in 1969 it was the really big deal in US bike racing, where speeds were high, factories were present, top riders - everything. And it got better as the US motorcycle revolution progressed. The AMA cooperated with this by first allowing full 750 four-strokes in 1970, and then two years later allowing 750s across the board. That brought in all the manufacturers, and they all knew that Daytona was a guaranteed way to put their brands in front of the buying public. When two-strokes became dominant, speeds became really fabulous, and you could hear the "woo-woo-woo" of wheelspin coupled to chassis weave as 750s accelerated toward T2, off the first turn. It was all hair-on-fire exciting. Tires advanced rapidly, as did chassis and suspensions soon thereafter. It was tremendously exciting to be even marginally involved, hands on the action. Superbikes took over, and they too developed rapidly, applying the tire, chassis, and suspension technologies that had been so desperately developed to implement two-stroke power in its day. Production motorcycles improved tremendously. Heady stuff. And then racing began to turn into just another business--how do we maximize profit, cut expense, eliminate unnecessary action? All classes suddenly looked and sounded the same, and businessmen drew the logical conclusion--that they should race the smallest machines that could carry the fairings that advertising coverage required. Everything would be taxed to become "a revenue stream" in this new and more rational kind of racing. Manufacturers and "technology creep" became enemies of the plan. After all, the public don't know or care--they'll come crowding in because we'll deliver "close racin' "We'll create the reality we want." None of it worked. The steam had left the boiler. For the first time in forty years, Kevin Cameron will not be attending Daytona this week, saying that there's little reason to attend. ENDS PRIVACY POLICY | HOME | RETURN TO TOP © 1997 - 2010 Hardscrabble Media LLC |
