I’ll ask it again: if the 1125 were too powerful for its class, why didn’t we see more of them on the podium?

Quoted from Roadracing World, November 2009, “Some said including the Buell 1125R V-Twin in the AMA Pro Racing Daytona SportBike Class along with 600cc Inline Fours was unfair and that the bike was too fast. When the season ended, Buell’s Danny Eslick had finished every race, winning six races and the title. The top riders on the four cylinder 600s won 14 races and all had multiple DNFs…

And what happens when the 1125 becomes too powerful? AMA/DMG forces the team to add weight and/or may move them up to the liter class. Which by the way, the 1125RR didn’t do too badly in that class. If I’m not mistaken, the 1125Rs had weight added to them at least once during the season.

Keith

On the issue of the whole controversy on allowing the Buell bike to race in the class with 600cc bikes, I’m not by any means any kind of authority on sport bike racing, but it seems to me that no one has had any complaints about Aprilia, Ducati and KTM (all running V-Twins) with Liter engines racing in this class. I am not here to argue the reasoning, logic or legitimacy behind AMA/DMG’s rules, but it seems to me that the reasons people are complaining about the Buells racing in this class is because they actually pose a real threat, and because they’re different. You never see an Aprilia on the podium in these races, why? Because the Aprilia bikes have the crappy power V-Twin engine and a standard common chassis design configuration that fails to offset the crappy engine. Buell has a very innovative frame that means his bike handles as if it were a lot lighter. This is the very same conclusion that Moto-USA came to in the video comparison I mentioned above.
Now… take all of this discussion and table it because none of it has anything to do with the validity of Buell as a motorcycle company. They have been producing some very good quality bikes and are truly the only company in the last 15 years that has done anything innovative or revolutionary. The bikes coming out of Japan and Europe are not Revolutionary. Evolutionary yes… but they are fundamentally the same designs they’ve been for 20 years. Minor tweaks to engine techs but really nothing new in the bike. Just because you’ve always done something one way does NOT mean that it’s NOT incredibly stupid. Erik’s designs address what he himself learned were crap in conventional bike designs. Watch the video interviews of him and you’ll see what I mean. The fundamental reason why Buell is dead as a company is because they were owned by a company that at best Tolerated their existance. They NEVER supported Buell. And because the industry has treated Buell like an outsider in a high school “Clique”. (Not Riders… Journalists). They saw the Buell designs as quirky weird and odd and never gave them a chance.

Most Buell riders are very loyal to Buell. If you need proof of this statement, go look at http://www.buellxb.com. There you will find hundreds of Buell owners that love their odd machines. They are praying for a Pegasus/Phoenix to rise out of the ashes of BMC and once again produce the bikes they love.

Not to stick up for other people but the claim is that it is unfair to race an undeveloped 1125 against fully developed 600s. What happens when the large engine begins making comparable HP/liter as the small engines? Will it be disqualified? Would it be fair if Kawasaki began racing a ZX-10R that was “tuned for torque”? It’s nice to have variation in racing but not a variation in capacity in classes that are based on capacity…

-todd