Backed into a corner, Progressive American Flat track is making big moves to secure the future of the sport. In this three-part series, we’ll hear from key decision makers at AMA Pro Racing, Indian Motorcycle, Estenson Racing, Latus Motors, Vance & Hines and more, dig deeper into the sport’s history to better understand today, go inside the off-season rulebook test program, gauge the industry reaction to the ’22 and ’23 rulebook and class structure announcements, and take a peek even further into the future.
Leveling The Playing Field. Are restrictors the answer?
By Chris Martin | Photography by Dave Hoenig and Kristen Lassen
As covered in the first two parts of this series, Progressive American Flat Track is attempting to resolve the dissonance separating the on-track aspect of the vision it laid out as part of its 2017 rebrand and the reality that has taken shape since.
At the center of this divide is an exceptional machine, exceptional both in terms of its performance and rulebook status. The Indian FTR750 stands as the lone purpose-built race bike competing in an era that was, at one point, envisioned as a battleground for production-based equipment in a post-XR750 age.
As such, the FTR750 was smartly designed to leverage every possible design advantage, including its “moment of inertia” (MOI) potential by way of a massive crank and flywheel. This fact grants it more favorable characteristics in dirt-track-specific scenarios in a manner that is nearly impossible for street-derived platforms to match.
And as a result, the exception has come to rule. Rather than a premier-class field stacked with factory-backed riders representing several manufacturers all vying for the Grand National Championship, since its introduction, the FTR750 has run away with every Mission SuperTwins title and scooped up nearly 90 percent of the race wins along the way.
Equally disconcerting for Progressive AFT, the bike has increasingly overwhelmed the grid from front to back, expanding from just nine percent of entries in ’17 to a startling 74 percent in ’21.
There is, of course, one very simple solution—at least from a rulebook perspective—that would guarantee an end to the FTR’s dominance.
However, while banning the FTR750 outright would solve any number of headaches, in practice it would create even more—and put the immediate future of Progressive AFT in serious jeopardy.
It’s difficult to imagine the near-to-mid-term upside of engineering the exile of the series’ most heavily engaged manufacturer while informing the bulk of premier-class team owners that the extremely expensive race bikes they purchased in order to compete at the sport’s highest level are now worthless in that pursuit.
Despite the level of risk involved, the possibility of banning the FTR750 was apparently under serious consideration as late as the Sacramento Mile, the penultimate round of the ’21 season.
At the same time that the FTR was on the chopping block, AFT was in danger of losing yet another manufacturer, this time in the form of its factory-backed Yamahas.
Even following the implementation of some midseason rulebook adjustments to race-only machines that 1) increased their overall minimum weight 2) decreased the maximum weight of their rear-wheel assemblies and 3) eliminated their ability to modify base flywheels—changes made in hopes of reducing the FTR’s inherent inertia advantage—Estenson Racing and Yamaha USA had seen enough.
More than anything, these adjustments seemed to indicate that AFT was serious about leveling the playing field. But the message was dampened by a lack of impact on the track.
And if nothing further had been done, “The odds are that we would have been gone,” confirmed Estenson Racing Team Owner Tim Estenson. “From a financial standpoint, we believe wholeheartedly we can get better, but to commit millions more?
“Last year, they did make a change to the Indian. At least it was a Hail Mary that AFT was doing something, but it didn’t change the behavior of the bike at all. We expected more changes to come, and they didn’t. I was so frustrated going into the off-season. My attitude going into the end of the year was, ‘I can’t do this anymore. This is just irresponsible to try and continue against an incredible prototype motorcycle specifically built to do what we’re trying to do with an asphalt bike.’ ”
Team Manager Tommy Hayden added that while the end of Estenson Racing as a Progressive AFT concern was on the table, the end of Estenson Racing full stock was not. “If that had happened, Estenson Racing would have continued in a different discipline of motorcycle racing. It’s important to mention that we didn’t lose our enthusiasm for motorcycle racing; it just didn’t make sense to compete in a SuperTwins class with a rules package that wasn’t competitive for production-based motorcycles.”
That answer directly speaks to another complexity of the already multifaceted problem facing Progressive AFT. While Estenson Racing, like Hayden himself, has a winning Superbike résumé it could build upon, Indian Motorcycle and Harley-Davidson (and their extended dealer networks) can now also show their wares and battle head-to-head in MotoAmerica’s nascent “King of the Baggers.”
The Grand National Championship is no longer the only game in town, even for manufacturers primarily interested in selling big-bore twins.
To say AFT’s future hangs in the balance of this politically delicate situation would be putting it mildly. AMA Pro Racing has no interest in provoking a reenactment of the mid-’80s when the sanction body’s attempt to rein in Honda’s purpose-built RS750 ultimately led American Honda to kill its factory GNC effort.
Yet sitting back and doing nothing would most likely leave Indian as the sole manufacturer represented on the grid of America’s longest running motorcycle racing championship. That’s a future that looks bleak by any standard, as historically, lone manufacturers in a one-make championship have little incentive to continue investing in that series.
With that racing dystopia on the horizon, AMA Pro Racing decided to walk the political tightrope and restrict the FTR750 rather than ban it in an attempt to keep all of the players at the table.
Along with this decision comes the commitment to do whatever it may take to create a leveled playing field in which the FTR750 and production-based machinery have an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter how difficult.
As covered in Part One, immediately following the Sacramento Mile, AMA Pro Racing Chief Operating Officer Gene Crouch invited recently retired Grand National Champion Bryan Smith and master engineer Ricky Howerton to Daytona Beach for a three-day deep dive in order to identify the next steps in addressing its precarious problem.
The thinking is, if they get it right, Yamaha will not only stay in the game, it’ll come to view Progressive AFT as a suitable marketing platform for their MT-07 street platform deserving of substantially increased investment.
Get it right and KTM and Royal Enfield will have a platform to showcase their equipment on the sport’s biggest stage and deepen their involvement by way of factory Mission SuperTwins squads as early as ‘23.
Get it right and Harley-Davidson could even revive its factory effort and reinvigorate a dealer network that defined the sport for decades, while reigniting its century-old rivalry with Indian, providing both serious incentives to further entrench themselves in the sport.
Indian Motorcycle likely felt equal amounts of relief and annoyance with the understanding that, while it wasn’t going to be excluded, it was destined to be subjected to some painful restrictions, the extent of which were still undefined.
For its rivals, there was some amount of vindication in the pledge. This was an official acknowledgement from the series organizers that, despite all the millions of dollars and thousands of hours poured in, they hadn’t been outclassed because they had done a substandard job in developing and tuning their bikes or because their riders weren’t skilled enough.
Besides that official affirmation of their combined plight, Indian’s challengers were also relieved that the FTR750 wasn’t going to be unceremoniously excised from competition, even if to their direct benefit.
“I don’t want to get rid of them,” Hayden said. “In a perfect world, I think they should produce a production engine like everyone else, and we’d have one set of rules that everybody goes racing under. I know that’s a long shot, and it’s not that easy.
“But we need more manufacturers, not less. To run one away would be foolish. They’ve done a lot for the sport, and they’ve been a good partner for the sport. I have nothing negative to say against Indian. They did a magnificent job and built a fabulous bike. But at this point, it’s affecting the sport negatively and we need to react immediately to get things back on track.”
But in the challengers’ collective opinion, it was past time for AFT to play Charles Atlas and give the rulebook an overhaul for the bikes that got dirt kicked in their number plates for the past five seasons.
In fact, AMA Pro Racing has been striving to find balance for years. The difference now is it has finally accepted that the only way it’s actually going to happen is by slowing the Indian down rather than speeding the competition up.
AMA Pro Racing Technical Director Dave McGrath said, “For the last four years, we’ve done everything we could to not penalize the people who got it right. We did all these things that were requested from teams with production-based bikes in an effort to bring them up and not shoot at Indian.”
Among those attempts to boost the production-based bikes was allowing the use of redesigned cylinder heads, larger throttle bodies, “twingled” big-bang firing orders, and finally, advanced electronic aids.
Ultimately, it wasn’t enough, nor were the limitations placed on the Indian halfway through the ’21 season.
“They’ve done a lot for the sport, and they’ve been a good partner for the sport. I have nothing negative to say against Indian. They did a magnificent job and built a fabulous bike. But at this point, it’s affecting the sport negatively and we need to react immediately to get things back on track.” ~Tommy Hayden
With little additional margin for error, AMA Pro Racing set out to avoid a guessing game for the 2022 rule changes and to begin to identify the changes that would be needed in 2023. That required carefully controlled comparative testing to eliminate as many variables and collect as much data as possible.
The day after the ’21 season finale, the series invited some key equipment and personnel back out to Charlotte Motor Speedway’s half-mile dirt track. With a number of the sport’s most influential teams either participating or observing, Progressive AFT A-B tested two potential options for reining in the FTR and had the Estenson Yamaha MT-07 DT and Latus H-D XG750R on track alongside for direct comparison.
The recently retired Smith served as the series’ primary test rider extraordinaire, while Estenson ace JD Beach and Latus-linked Joe Kopp were on the scene to throw national championship-winning legs over the bikes as well.
A little more than a month later, AFT then rented the Red Mile to host an expanded field which also included existing SuperTwins and Production Twins from Harley-Davidson, Yamaha and Royal Enfield, along with the intriguing inclusion of a pair of KTM 790 Dukes.
This final test allowed the series to gauge how well any prospective balancing efforts would hold up on a wide-open race track where the impact of the intake restrictors being evaluated would be most evident.
Two weeks of data analysis, deliberation and negotiation later, the 2022 rules package was announced. It brought both race-only and production-based machines back level in weight at 320 pounds, while saddling race-only engines with 32mm intake restrictors and a 11,500 redline limit.
Additionally, the rules governing differing real wheel weights that was introduced midseason were fine-tuned to allow a slight increase for the production-based racers while correcting an unforeseen issue that had inadvertently impacted certain Indian-mounted riders who make use of the larger rear brakes, such as Mission Roof Systems’ Brandon Robinson.
At the same time, the future of the Mission Production Twins class was announced. While deserving its own section (if not entire part), in short, it was unveiled that the support class will merge with the premier class in ’23. For ’22, the support class will effectively serve as a test bed for the future ruleset of the combined Mission SuperTwins class, including repeated head-to-head comparisons with the premier class via the Mission Production Challenge, which grants the top four finishers in the Production Twins main event provisional starts in the Mission SuperTwins main.
Following additional input and analysis, AMA Pro Racing made slight adjustments and firmed up the rules for 2022. As part of those adjustments, the restrictors were upped to 34mm, although continued performance balancing could result in further changes as the season unfolds.
Gary Gray, Indian Motorcycle Vice President of Racing, Technology and Service, was vexed, even after the 2mm adjustment in their favor. “The engine wasn’t designed to run a 34mm throttle body. It was designed around 38s. Your velocity stacks, your airbox, your throttle body, obviously, your ports, your valves, your cam timing, your exhaust, even combustion chamber things are shaped around what your intake is. When you change that, you change all of that.”
Jerry Stinchfield, owner of the powerful Mission Roof Systems team that has won multiple races with customer FTR750s in recent seasons, said, “I’m not mad at AFT or any employee of AFT. They think what they’re doing is right even though I think what they’re doing is wrong. If it plays out like AFT thinks it will, it’ll be good for the sport. I get it. I really do.
“But as a team owner, and when you put millions of dollars into something and you get hit with this truckload of restrictions—it knocks you back. It’s irritating that you claw your way to the top and you feel like you’re automatically going to go backwards. That’s not in my DNA to go backwards. I don’t do my business that way, I don’t live that way, and I sure as hell don’t want to race that way.”
There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that, while we’ve devoted a great deal of space explaining the concept of moment of inertia, and why, as a race-only engine, the FTR750 enjoys a significant advantage over the production-based rivals due to its high-inertia engine internals, those particular differences went unaddressed in the 2022 rules set.
While AMA Pro Racing did take another step to counterbalance that integral advantage by allowing production bikes greater external MOI via the contrasting rear-wheel assembly weights, the Indians will almost certainly retain more rider-friendly characteristics in 2022.
“I was surprised I could still go pretty frickin’ fast with the restrictors in there,” Smith said. “The Indian doesn’t make the most horsepower, but it has the most grip and gets through the corner the fastest. The restrictor doesn’t necessarily hurt the bike in the corners, but it limits the speed on the straightaway and limits the acceleration.”
“But as a team owner, and when you put millions of dollars into something, and you get hit with this truckload of restrictions—it knocks you back. It’s irritating that you claw your way to the top and you feel like you’re automatically going to go backwards. That’s not in my DNA to go backwards.” ~Jerry Stinchfield
However, implementing the necessary changes to eliminate the FTR750’s internal MOI superiority on such short notice could have related safety and reliability issues, and prove cost prohibitive, particularly for the independent teams already deeply invested in the bike.
So rather than corner-by-corner parity, the series is aiming for lap-by-lap parity. And even if lap-time equality is achieved, we’ll have to wait to see where that actually puts things race-by-race.
Assuming a theoretical perfect match of ideal performance between brands, smart money is still on Indian in the season ahead, and not only because it still has the superstar rider/tuner pairings of Jared Mees and Kenny Tolbert, and Briar Bauman and Dave Zanotti in its corner.
In a pitched battle, the contrasting characteristics of race-only and production-based race bikes could allow the likes of Mees to think tactically while another extraordinary talent like JD Beach, for example, may be forced to concentrate on hitting his marks just to stay in the hunt.
“On the Indian, it’s dummy proof—it’s harder to screw up,” Smith said. “When the bike is right, you mess up and the error isn’t as big, and you can ride relaxed. When it’s not, you’re crossing your eyes and threading the needle at 100 mph trying to hit that one mark. You miss that and you lose a second. When you’re not on that ragged edge, you can actually think strategy rather than grasping at straws just to keep up.”
On the other hand, with the restrictors in place, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario on a fast, one-line track where production-based bikes may be in the position to overhaul the Indians on the straights and then corral them in the corners, tilting the advantage in the other direction.
While restrictors are an imperfect solution, their implementation at this point seems necessary, and a huge step in the right direction for a series in need of drastic correction.
Arriving upon a perfect balance straight out the gate may not be a realistic goal, but providing everyone with hope and an actual shot at success certainly is.
So now the question is, will it work?
Smith said, “I’m pretty confident about what’s been put in place. They went back and forth before they nailed it down. The 34mm restrictors is a significant change and should give the other guys hope without totally crippling the Indian. It will still keep the good guys up front, but it’ll level the playing field for sure.”
Terry Vance, the Vance & Hines co-founder and who oversaw Harley-Davidson’s works Mission SuperTwins effort said, “The problem is, you can talk about it for six months but until you get to the racetrack you don’t know. All I’m doing is waiting to see what happens, and then if the rules are favorable to get something out there besides an Indian, then we might have a real reason to get excited.”
Hayden said, “Personally, I would’ve liked to see a few more things implemented as an experiment toward the end of the ’21 season just to get a more accurate results of the pros and cons in a race environment. That is the measuring stick. But they did do a fair amount of testing, they gathered a lot of data, talked to a lot of people, and made some educated decisions. We can sit around and debate all day, but now we have to get to the season and see if it’s made a difference or not.”
Gray said, “To me the ultimate question is do we think we can get beat by a Honda, a Yamaha, a Harley-Davidson, and the answer is absolutely. There’s nothing honestly that magical about what we’re doing. I firmly believe that other brands can win.”
If Progressive AFT successfully performs its rulebook high-wire act, it’s primed for significant growth. The strong television presence it established with NBCSN alongside the sport’s 2017 rebrand looks even more impressive moving forward following the announcement of a new partnership with FOX Sports that will see every race this season air on FS1 in enviable timeslots.
Its streaming presence should be similarly enhanced as it goes global on Facebook, and the series has done well to attract significant investment from outside sponsors, most notably Mission Foods.
But in order to take full advantage of those positives, the actual product on track has to be worthy of increased attention and serve as the primary driver of success.
Looking beyond the 2022 season, there are a great many factors that will influence the future shape of Progressive AFT.
Originally teased to the public before the pandemic but never officially launched, there’s continued hope for the eventual production of the Harley-Davidson Streetfighter 975 that could serve as a strong race-base. That, combined with increased Mission SuperTwins contingencies from both H-D and Vance & Hines, are positive indicators that the fire still burns.
“I’m pretty confident about what’s been put in place. They went back and forth before they nailed it down. The 34mm restrictors is a significant change and should give the other guys hope without totally crippling the Indian. It will still keep the good guys up front, but it’ll level the playing field for sure.” ~Bryan Smith
KTM is dipping a toe into twin-cylinder racing by supporting Wally Brown Racing’s KTM 890 Duke-based Mission Production Twins program, and both KTM and Royal Enfield could conceivably step forward with official premier-class efforts when the classes merge in ’23.
Unsubstantiated rumors have even suggested that Indian might even have that long-promised roadgoing platform under development—a development that would pretty much single-handedly solve AFT’s intractable problem that we’ve spent so much space dissecting over these last three issues.
All the while the series continues to examine ways to more closely link its racing to the manufacturers’ products, perhaps by allowing production-based race bikes to vary from the historic street tracker look and take stronger visual cues from their stock counterparts.
More immediately on the horizon (and relevant to this piece) is the potential for further performance balancing for race-only engines in 2023 by way of rules that directly address the FTR750’s engine internals, its last remaining inherent design advantage.
If that has to happen, Indian Motorcycle says bring it on.
“We want one rulebook for everybody, and let all the manufacturers come in,” Gray said, “Ultimately for that to happen, the sport has got to grow. We’ve got to make this sport so interesting that the other manufacturers can’t stay away—they have to get engaged. To me, that’s the way to go about it. I’m optimistic that it can be done.
“If there’s some perceived advantage to our crankshaft, we’re fully open … let’s make the crankshaft diameter a constant across the field. I think Harley probably has the largest crankshaft of our competitors, so make the crankshaft diameter the same for everybody. We’d be fine with that.
“I think this is solvable. I think we’ve just got to go about it a little differently. The future of American Flat Track is there. It’s exciting. We’ve just got to get that in front of the fans.”
Progressive AFT COO Crouch said, “When we get this right, it will mean more OEM involvement across the board. With more brands promoting their achievements and bringing their customers to the racetrack, we’ll firmly establish an enthusiast fanbase that will be critical to our strategy for growing the sport.
“At the end of the day, it’s on us to lay the groundwork for this by finding the right balance. And ultimately, that balance is what’s best for the sport, the manufacturers, the teams, the riders and the fans.” CN
We delve deeper into the current state of American Flat Track.
As covered last week in the first of this three-part series, Progressive American Flat Track finds itself combating deeply reduced fields in its premier Mission SuperTwins class that is currently dominated by a fleet of nigh-unbeatable Indian FTR750s.
And as explained last week, getting purpose-built racers and production-based machines to play nicely together is a hugely challenging endeavor. Race-only engines can be designed to deliver more grip and greater rideability in dirt-track scenarios via increased “moment of inertia” by way of massive cranks and flywheels. Production-based racers, meanwhile, are unable to match race-only machines in this regard as the implementation of such engineering choices, while highly advantageous for use in flat track, is equally undesirable on the street.
Despite this hurdle, AMA Pro Racing is committed to striking that balance in hopes of attracting increased manufacturer participation and providing Indian with a full grid of worthy adversaries—even if it requires implementing controversial measures such as the addition of intake restrictors on the FTR to do so.
While Progressive AFT hopes to attract new players into the fold, the immediate task before it is securing the retention of—and expanded commitment from—the non-Indian teams it already has in the paddock. Fortunately for the series, Estenson Racing, Latus Motors and Vance & Hines all see the situation in a generally similar light.
Estenson Racing Team Manager Tommy Hayden said, “I truly want to see the sport grow. Yes, I have my own goals, but I know a one-brand series does not work in any form of racing. I think the key to it growing is multiple brands competing. I saw it firsthand in road racing—the difference between the ‘glory days of AMA Superbike’ and the lowest point for the series was how much manufacturer support there was and that was it. That was the only different ingredient.”
Vance & Hines co-founder Terry Vance, who oversaw Harley-Davidson’s now-defunct factory XG750R Mission SuperTwins program, said, “I think AFT should have done something more drastic sooner, but unfortunately they didn’t. And now Harley is out of the game, and we’re trying to figure out where we’re headed. Everyone is trying to sort it all out.
“I just want to have great racing at every race from today forward. How do we get there? Let’s figure it out and get it done. And if some of the Indian teams and riders feel that’s kind of crappy… I don’t argue with that. I agree with them. But the fact is, if you look at the bigger picture, you say, ‘What’s better for me and my program and my team?’ ”
Latus Motors owner George Latus kept the XG750R present on the Mission SuperTwins grid last season after Harley pulled the plug on its factory effort, but his team struggled to make much of an impression.
He said, “Obviously they needed to make some changes. The SuperTwins class has become essentially a spec class for riders who wanted to have a chance to earn a championship or some serious prize money. [The FTR is] the platform you’ve got to have. When Indian embarked upon that project with a clean sheet of paper, I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be quite that good. Meanwhile, the rest of us are taking street motorcycles and trying to make them do something they were never designed to do, and that’s a pretty big task.
“We, as the lone Harley-Davidson team, did not advocate for [rule changes]. We’re not crying. We just continue to try to make ourselves better, and I hate to see someone who’s done an exceptional job get penalized, which is what’s going to happen with the Indian. But for the good of the series, that’s going to have to happen, especially if you’re going to try to get other manufacturers interested in the SuperTwins class. We have to do something to make the series better.”
Estenson Racing owner Tim Estenson, whose team fields a pair of Yamaha MT-09-based machines in Mission SuperTwins, would gladly welcome additional direct involvement from Yamaha, but admits that’s a difficult ask at this point considering the results.
He explained, “It’s hard for Tommy and me to go back and set the stage for success on their motor when we’re running at the back of the field, despite having some of the best riders. When they watch the races and see all Indians and two Yamahas—and the two Yamahas are ninth and 10th—it’s pretty hard to sell them on why they should become more invested.”
“I saw it firsthand in road racing—the difference between the ‘glory days of AMA Superbike’ and the lowest point for the series was how much manufacturer support there was and that was it. That was the only different ingredient.” – Tommy Hayden
But doing whatever it takes to balance the FTR750 with production-based bikes is not universally accepted as a worthy crusade.
It’s not surprising that Indian Motorcycle and its customer teams aren’t exactly thrilled with additional measures designed specifically to slow them down. A segment of the fanbase, too, along with some high-profile series figures such as the iconic Chris Carr, don’t like it much either. They would all prefer that the competition step up to the challenge laid down by Indian as opposed to any attempts to drag Indian back to them.
Roof Systems of Dallas CEO Jerry Stinchfield, owner of the powerful Mission Roof Systems independent team, said, “’I’m all for fairness. I don’t hate any brand of motorcycle, and if they’re involved in American Flat Track, I love them to death. But my thing is this: the Indian Motorcycle Company built the greatest motorcycle ever invented for flat-track racing. And I think it’s up to the other brands to catch up with us.
“I look at the other brands, and I would say they are twice the size of the Indian Motorcycle Company. They have more money and more developmental resources. I just think they’re capable of making their bikes as good as an Indian. Indian built that motor in nine months. Yamaha could do that. Harley could do that. Kawasaki could do that. KTM could do that. Build your own.
“And I don’t think it’s always about the motor or the chassis. I think sometimes it’s the people that are working on them.”
Even those at AMA Pro Racing, such as Technical Director David McGrath, sympathize. He would greatly prefer speeding the competition up rather than increasingly penalize the gold standard.
And he argues, that’s exactly what’s been attempted for years without much tangible success. “The last several years, we’ve come off the rules in areas we never thought we would,” he said. “We’ve freed up production-based machine rules—displacement, sophisticated electronics—in an effort to not go after the people who did it right.”
Meanwhile, Indian Motorcycle is in agreement that the sport needs to grow, and that increased manufacturer support is a vital part of that. Where it differs is how it sees that actually getting done.
For starters, Gary Gray, Indian Motorcycle Vice President of Racing, Technology and Service, takes issue with the semantics related to what should qualify as “production-based.”
Gray argues that the existence of what are in essence production racers—such as the RS250R two-stroke Grand Prix bikes Honda offered to customer teams and privateers from the ’80-’00s and the modern-day Indian FTR750—directly addresses the concerns that make production-based racing preferable even when lacking any direct ties to a road-going street bike.
Gray said, “The reason production rules exist in AMA or FIM is to prevent somebody with a lot of funding from building an unobtainium bike that no one can touch. And what they do is put in rules that if your components are openly available to any participants, if there’s been limited numbers of runs, then you’re considered production.
“Indian Motorcycle has been racing since we’ve been around. We had a bike in the 1950s that won Grand National Championships—the Big Base Scout—and to qualify as a production bike, we had to build 50 units. Well, we’ve built over 100 Indian FTR750s—engines and complete chassis—and we sell the parts to everyone. If you want to buy a race piston out of our bike, for example, we’ll sell it to you.”
Gray also posits that the series can attract more manufacturers by building up the show, not the other way around.
He said, “What we want to do is grow the sport. We want American Flat Track to be one of the premiere race series in the world. I watch Formula 1, as well. Mercedes Benz has won the Constructors’ Championship for the last eight seasons in a row, yet it’s the most watched racing in the world and it’s growing. They put on an amazing show live, they put on an amazing show on TV, and they put on an amazing show online. That’s why everyone is there in Formula 1, and that’s why it’s growing.
“And we’re over here worrying about restrictor plates and everything else, instead of what I think is really important, which is growing the sport. And that is all on presentation, not on restrictor plates.
“We don’t want to race by ourselves. We’ve never been interested in a spec series where everyone races FTR1200s or something like that. We want to race against other manufacturers. And to me, that’s a really big part of racing. What does the manufacturer bring to the table?
“We don’t want that eliminated from flat track. We don’t want—because we brought something really great to the table—we don’t want us or anybody else [penalized] because they built a better vehicle. I don’t want Mercedes Benz restrictor-plated because they beat everyone for eight straight years. I would rather watch the sport knowing that Honda is going fairly against Ferrari and Ferrari is going fairly against Mercedes.
“And honestly, to me, more manufacturers would step up if this were on the level of Supercross or MotoGP or Formula 1. The manufacturers have to play because everybody is watching… We need to put on a better show—live, streaming and on TV—a show that makes us the fastest growing motorsport, in order to open the eyeballs at Yamaha, at Honda.”
“I just want to have great racing at every race from today forward. How do we get there? Let’s figure it out and get it done. And if some of the Indian teams and riders feel that’s kind of crappy… I don’t argue with that. I agree with them.” – Terry Vance
AMA Pro Racing Chief Operating Officer Gene Crouch sees it another way. He said, “Honestly, we don’t want anyone going out and building another purpose-built flat track prototype. The sport has been through cyclical repeats of this exact phenomenon. Ninety years ago, the sport went through the exact same thing.”
As Crouch noted, Progressive American Flat Track’s current dilemma isn’t exactly a new predicament. Nearly a century ago, America’s preeminent motorcycle racing series, “Class A” (prototype-based factory racing), was in existential crisis.
Following the high times of the Roaring Twenties, which boasted multiple massive factory teams employing as many as 10 riders each, Class A’s once impressive fields dwindled as budgets were slashed as a result of the Great Depression. Those problems were magnified when parts for the category’s exotic race bikes became increasingly scarce and expensive.
In response, the AMA introduced the more affordable, stock-based “Class C” in 1933. Class C’s immediate popularity saw it take over as the most important championship and establish itself as the primary battleground of the intense Harley-Davidson-Indian Motorcycle rivalry.
Incidentally, Class C would eventually evolve into what became the Grand National Championship in 1954, which continues to exist today as Progressive American Flat Track.
The rules as they’ve pertained to dedicated race bikes has evolved over that time, too, and, admittedly, the most successful machines in series’ history have been race-only machines that ruled over the championship for extended reigns.
Even allowing for that reality, it’s still impossible to not see the similarities that link today’s situation with the sport’s origins, particularly with the decline of motorcycle sales mirrored by thin fields and a lack of factory participation.
Consider that last season, there were just 12 full-time riders in Mission SuperTwins, nine of them aboard the purpose-built Indian FTR750.
2016 Grand National Champion Bryan Smith said, “The cost of the bike is the biggest thing to me. If it was amazing—like it is, and more reasonably price—you’d see an abundance of riders in the class, which you don’t see. How many new guys have signed up in the last couple of years? Not many. That’s a big part of it.”
And even if Progressive AFT secretly hoped other manufacturers would bring new race-only engines to the show, they’d likely be left waiting. Just three such machines (the Indian FTR750, H-D XR750, and Honda RS750) have been designed and produced over the past 50-plus years.
Moreover, history suggests that the already expensive FTR750 could become hugely more expensive and difficult to maintain should Indian ever decide the sport no longer delivers a worthwhile return on its investment and shut down the program.
“Meanwhile, the rest of us are taking street motorcycles and trying to make them do something they were never designed to do, and that’s a pretty big task.” – George Latus
If the current dilemma that resulted by the introduction of an all-new race-only machine just as everyone else committed to production-based equipment seems obvious in hindsight, the desire to welcome Indian back to the scene was such that AMA Pro Racing was more than willing to take on that risk.
It’s also worth noting that very few viewed the FTR750’s instantaneous dominance as a realistic possibility until it actually happened.
In fact, the FTR750 narrowly avoided a fate as a much more pedestrian race bike. The development team at Swissauto initially leaned on the lessons learned via its expansive Grand Prix racing history. The result was a quick-revving, twitchy monster with a light crank and low inertia.
Fortunately for Indian, it had hired multi-time Grand National Champion Jared Mees and legendary tuner Kenny Tolbert to test the bike in 2016. The engineers were confused when the two told them they had it all wrong. However, they wisely relied on the judgment of their subject-matter experts and tried it another way, even if it didn’t seem to line up with what they knew worked in high-performance motorcycles.
Despite that radical developmental audible, the FTR’s ultimate success or failure would still need to be proven on the track before anyone truly understood what Indian had on its hands.
Smith said, “I was one of the riders they hired and I had no clue—nobody did—that it was going to be anywhere near this successful. Me and Mees, first and second in the championship the year before, got hired by Indian. And we were sitting in Daytona the night before the first race in 2017, going, ‘Man, do you think we can run up front? I think we should be able to win at least one race this year…’
“Indian didn’t have any idea either. They didn’t expect to have to pay all those bonuses. I never thought I’d make that much money in my life as I did those two years!”
Here’s the twist: it might not have been entirely unforeseen by everyone. The rumored existence of an agreement between AMA Pro Racing and Indian Motorcycle dating back to the very start of the FTR’s development repeatedly surfaced in conversations for this three-part series.
As the rumor goes, Indian was allowed to compete with a race-only machine built to the rulebook as it existed for legacy XR750s even as the series was transitioning to a production-based future, but only for a limited timeframe consisting of three seasons—2017, 2018 and 2019. After that time, Indian would be expected to race a production-based machine like everyone else.
Despite the rumors, when the start of the 2020 season came around the grid was loaded up with a greater percentage of FTRs than ever before.
Estenson said, “I wanted to play a role in helping to bring the series back to prominence and help it grow. Part of the plan to do that was bringing Indian Motorcycle back and that sounded really good to me. I said, ‘Okay, I’m in. I’ll bring a semi and have a bigger footprint and put on a good show.’
“Indian built a purpose-built racer with the understanding that it was going to be available for a specific period of time. That motor was going to be allowed for three years and that gave Indian three years to build a production-based engine.
“Through my commitment to the series, things just didn’t happen. The date came and went. It wasn’t publicized—I never saw a document—it was all based on verbal conversations. And they just let the Indian engine continue.
“From my standpoint, I was pretty upset about that. I’ve invested millions and millions of dollars with the hope of a balanced field.”
Latus relays a similar memory. “My understanding is that when Indian came to them with a proposal to get it homologated, they only had a certain number of years until they had to produce a street bike, that has not happened.
“They signed on with that understanding, and they’ve had a turkey shoot, while AFT let them run quite a bit of time out on that. But at the same time, there’s some smaller teams out there that have invested a substantial amount of money in that product. If they ban it, what are they going to do? AFT is in a tough spot.”
“The cost of the bike is the biggest thing to me. If it was amazing—like it is, and more reasonably cost—you’d see an abundance of riders in the class, which you don’t see. How many new guys have signed up in the last couple of years? Not many. That’s a big part of it.” – Bryan Smith
When asked about the existence of such an agreement, Gray said that the persistent rumors are not entirely on the mark. “I’d say it’s partially true. Race engines have been allowed in flat track since the beginning—over 75 years. There’s never not been race engines in the series.
“It was pretty stable, yet, simultaneously to us talking to AFT, we were hearing discussions about the sport wanting to go to production engines. They wanted us to come in, and we’re like, ‘Well, look, we don’t have an engine, and if we were to design one and tool one up, you would have to let us use it for a minimum length of time before you would write it out of the rulebook just so we could get a return on our investment.’
“And at that time, it was three years, so ’17, ’18 and ’19, at minimum. That’s the difference. We’d be allowed to run it for at least three, and if they decided to go to “production-based” bikes after that, they could. So yeah, it’s partially true.”
Regardless if the proposed three-year limit was meant to protect AFT’s long-term production-based plans or Indian’s developmental investment, by 2020, the FTR750 was so ubiquitous and so successful that simply banning it at that time was untenable.
Such a draconian measure would have likely only succeeded in causing the premier Mission SuperTwins class to implode while chasing away the paddock’s most high-profile factory effort and instantly transforming the significant investments of numerous FTR owners into museum relics with limited resale value.
As Vance said, “If you’re in AFT shoes, it’s very hard to be successful when you fire your customers. So you’ve got to figure it out. The knock on AFT is they should have been figuring this out five years ago, not today, and not let it get where it is. But that’s water under the bridge, so now they’ve got to figure out what they want to do going forward.”
Coming next week in Part III: To ban or to balance? Progressive American Flat Track weighs its options to determine the future of the sport. CN
By some key metrics, Progressive American Flat Track should be basking in the glow of its current existence. Its semi-recent rebranding helped push the Grand National Championship back into the spotlight while providing a more coherent, TV- and fan-friendly product that laid the foundation to elevate it to ever greater heights.
And from a certain perspective, the happenings on track sync up with that optimism. The ‘21 season represented the latest dramatic chapter in the raging rivalry between all-time great Jared Mees and emerging superstar Briar Bauman, with their combined 1864 points over the past three seasons split right down the middle at 932 apiece.
And yet, the series finds itself at a critical juncture. Entangled in a complex web of circumstance, history, physics and perspective, series’ owner AMA Pro Racing has set down the difficult path of charting a future for a sport with no painless solutions at their disposal.
The rosy picture painted in the opening paragraphs is heavily contrasted by another reality that’s being screamed by other key metrics of measuring series’ health.
Since the introduction of Indian Motorcycle’s all-conquering FTR750 in 2017, that single motorcycle platform has become increasingly dominant—both in terms of success and overall grid ubiquity—even as the Mission SuperTwins field has grown increasingly sparse.
Consider the numbers: Since making its full-time series debut in ’17, the FTR has won 89 percent of the premier-class main events (97 percent when you eliminate the TTs from the equation) and owned 85 percent of the total podium positions (89 percent minus the TTs).
During that same span, Indian has not only won all available championships, no other brand has even mounted a semi-realistic title challenge.
Meanwhile, class entries have plummeted, both in terms of total numbers and brand representation. In its debut season, the Indian accounted for the fourth most entries among eight different manufacturers, sitting at nine percent of 602 total entries. By 2021, the FTR750 accounted for 74 percent of a field that had been cut by more than half, with just 261 total entries logged for the entire season.
Unsurprisingly, identifying and solving the underlying issues driving these disconcerting trends has been of utmost priority for the management staff and tech department at AMA Pro Racing for some time now.
Progressive AFT made some aggressive adjustments to the rulebook midway through last season in hopes of finding a better balance between the purpose-built FTR750 and its street bike-based competition.
Despite the midseason course correction, word around the paddock was the well-funded and high-profile Estenson Racing effort—with support from Yamaha Racing—had seen enough and was prepared to park its MT-07 DTs and go find another racing series to participate in for 2022.
That same weekend Bryan Smith ended his magnificent career in style. Smith, who won the final Grand National Championship of the pre-FTR era in 2016 on a Ricky Howerton-built Kawasaki Ninja 650, had followed an interesting career path ever since.
Along with Howerton, Smith helped usher in the new era of Indian dominance, hired by the brand to bring over his talents (and the number-one plate) as the marque returned to the flat track scene with its first factory effort since the 1950s. Over the next two seasons, Smith would guide the fledgling FTR750 to seven race victories and a championship runner-up.
He and Howerton spent the following three seasons in a difficult and largely unsuccessful bid to defeat that same beast as its ranks exploded in numbers—first back on a Kawasaki-powered machine, then on a factory Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson XG750R, and finally with an FTR750 mill slotted inside a Howerton-designed chassis.
Following those frustrations and hoping to end his career on a brighter note, Smith asked old friend-turned-bitter-rival-turned-old-friend-again Mees for a favor. That favor resulted in one final vintage performance from the “Mile Master” in Sacramento aboard Mees’ spare FTR750. Smith finished on the podium as runner-up while boosting Mees’ ultimately triumphant championship campaign in the process.
While Smith’s career was officially complete, he was still in possession of some extraordinarily relevant knowledge and experience. So, it only made sense when AMA Pro Racing Chief Operating Officer Gene Crouch invited Smith and Howerton to fly down to the series’ headquarters in Daytona Beach straight after the Sacramento Mile for a three-day download to help AFT’s management team better understand—and hopefully crack—the series’ intractable problem with a certain hyper-tractable race bike.
Despite the midseason course correction, word around the paddock was the well-funded and high-profile Estenson Racing effort—with support from Yamaha Racing—had seen enough and was prepared to park its MT-07 DTs and go find another racing series to participate in for 2022.
Smith was not just uniquely qualified to help, he was interested in doing so, too, having been working on that problem himself for some time. (In fact, Smith was keen enough that he was recently brought onboard by the series’ organizers in an official capacity in the newly created position of “Director of Industry Relations.”)
Smith said, “One of my strong points as a racer—and probably one of the things that hurt me the most as a racer—was being too technical and learning too much about the mechanics of a bike. There was a time I was building my own bikes. I think that’s why Ricky Howerton and I became such great friends. He’s really technical obviously—a super mechanical engineer who can fabricate a frickin’ spaceship out of a tubing rack.
“We not only progressed the sport with our Kawasaki and won a championship on it, we also screwed up a lot of stuff and learned what to do and what not to do. We’re both like, ‘Okay, cool that worked and we won, but why did it work? Why does the Kawasaki do this? Why does the Harley XG do that? Why does the FTR do this?’”
The information provided by Smith and Howerton proved to the AFT management team that they were on the right track, and they were able to back it up with years of data.
They argued the most defining component contributing to the Indian’s outstanding performance is a law of physics known as “moment of inertia” (MOI). This is not a physics textbook nor a Kevin Cameron column, so we’ll turn to Wikipedia for the quick and dirty summary: “The moment of inertia, otherwise known as the mass moment of inertia, angular mass, second moment of mass, or most accurately, rotational inertia, of a rigid body is a quantity that determines the torque needed for a desired angular acceleration about a rotational axis, akin to how mass determines the force needed for a desired acceleration. It depends on the body’s mass distribution and the axis chosen, with larger moments requiring more torque to change the body’s rate of rotation.”
Its equation (I = mr²) is extremely relevant in flat track because a bike with high MOI allows for more consistent torque delivery, better grip, and greater rideability across highly changeable dirt surfaces, which translates into more predictable mid-corner performance and superior launches off exit.
There are several ways to engineer more MOI into a motorcycle—such as the utilization of more massive, greater diameter cranks and flywheels in the engine and/or using heavier rear wheels.
And herein lies the complication. Engineering high MOI numbers into a performance motorcycle is something one would look to avoid in just about any application outside of one: flat track racing.
Related to that, the Mission SuperTwins rulebook is split into two parts. One covers “race-only” engines such as the FTR750 and the Harley-Davidson XR750 and Honda RS750 before it. The other covers “production-based” engines, which are derived from street motorcycles and therefore locked to their “low MOI” OEM crankcases as found on the showroom floor.
Estenson Racing Director of Operations Tommy Hayden explained, “With a production-based engine—there is almost no reason whatsoever you’d want a bunch of inertia on the street, going stoplight to stoplight. The only place it makes sense is in flat track. We’re limited on what we can do based on the crankcase size with our bike in particular. If I had a magic wand, that’s the first thing I would change about our motor. It’s great on the street. It’s great in road racing. It’s great for what it was designed for. But that is a huge limitation in flat track racing.”
Smith said, “There’s only really one thing that Indian has done that no other manufacturer has and that’s design an engine with a really big crankshaft and massive flywheel, which translates to this big inertia number that directly turns into traction on a dirt track. No manufacturer is going to build a modern-day street bike that’s lazy and really slow out of the hole. It would be the worst street bike, but that’s what you need for flat track.”
Smith and Howerton backed up the contrasting nature that separates the FTR from its competition by actually laying parts out on a table. Smith said, “You can tell people the inertia numbers all day, but until you see it with parts and pieces—looking at the Kawasaki’s crank, for example, and comparing that with the flywheel on the Indian… it’s pretty eye-opening to see the hard parts in front of you.”
The “2” in I = mr² is critical to understanding the advantage that a larger flywheel provides. The exponential impact of positioning mass farther away from the center of the flywheel means having an extra inch or more in the right places will deliver a monumental impact on its ability to put power to the ground.
As a result of the differing design philosophies, the FTR750’s engine generates considerably more MOI than its challengers. It’s not a huge leap to think that could directly translate into other big numbers, such as overwhelming win and podium percentages.
Smith said, “It’d be like having a MotoGP bike in AMA Superbike. That’s a pretty drastic difference, but that’s about like what it is. How long do you allow that one off bike to kick everybody’s ass before you do something?”
It’s important to note that the engine is far from the sole reason the FTR750 has been as phenomenally successful as it has. It also features a perfectly balanced chassis, and it has several the sport’s smartest tuners and most talented riders accumulating more and more data while continually pushing it to its limits. That said, the MOI difference that separates it from its rivals makes it nearly impossible to understand exactly how important those other factors have been in contributing to its stranglehold over the premier class.
“No manufacturer is going to build a modern-day street bike that’s lazy and really slow out of the hole. It would be the worst street bike, but that’s what you need for flat track.” ~Bryan Smith
This is not a new development. “Moment of inertia” has been a buzzy phrase in the AMA Pro Racing offices for some time and the aforementioned ‘21 midseason rule adjustments were made in part to address that difference, reducing the weight of the rear wheels on bikes with “race-only engines” (i.e. the FTR750) while also stripping them of the ability to add additional mass to their base flywheels.
However, at minimum a more thorough understanding of the concept provided AMA Pro Racing a better grasp of the very difficult task ahead.
Single-bike dominance is not a new development for the series either. Over a five-decade run, the Harley-Davidson XR750 racked up 37 Grand National Championships and 502 premier class main-event victories.
Towards the end of that reign, however, it had become notoriously expensive to maintain, with parts in short supply and engines needing a rebuild following every national.
Meanwhile, it’s been a long-standing initiative of the sport to make street bike-derived machinery viable options for competitors at the top of the sport.
The production-based big-bore “Supertrackers” were integrated into the Grand National Championship back in 2002, with a maiden victory for the format finally delivered when Joe Kopp earned a premier-class victory aboard a Ducati Hypermotard 1100EVO-powered machine in 2010.
Later that same season, Smith earned a pair of wins aboard a Ninja 650 built by the legendary Bill Werner, who had previously played an instrumental role in the development of the XR750, to help Kawasaki secure its first-ever AMA Pro Flat Track Grand National “Manufacturer of the Year” triumph.
And the summit of that particular 15-year climb was at last reached when Smith took a Howerton-built Kawasaki to the 2016 Grand National Championship.
At Indianapolis in 2015, AMA Pro Racing presented the manufacturers with a vision of a rejuvenated Grand National Championship. It was built around a restructure/rebranding/relaunch (ultimately “American Flat Track”) and, eventually, an all-production bike future as the remaining XRs naturally phased out of competition.
Simultaneously, Indian Motorcycle Company identified its historic stomping grounds as an ideal marketing opportunity, tapping directly into its proud lineage in the sport while also allowing it to showcase its engineering prowess by once again going head-to-head with old rival Harley-Davidson…just when the long-time dirt-track titan was starting to show signs of vulnerability.
At the time, the prospect of marrying the sport’s rebranding effort with an all-new factory effort that would refire the fabled all-American rivalry must have seemed like a match made in heaven. Indian and its purpose-built racebike were happily welcomed back into the sport when it rejoined full-time in 2017. The all-production future could wait.
Four years and many millions of dollars later, Harley-Davidson pulled the plug on its factory effort based around its production-derived (and ultimately winless) XG750R as Indian routed all comers.
The plan to take the sport to the next level hinged on increased manufacturer support, not less. With Harley-Davidson gone and the Yamaha-supported Estenson Racing effort teetering, things started to look a bit desperate near the end of the ‘21 season.
From AFT’s perspective, something had to be done to spark renewed manufacturer involvement. And the most direct way to do that was by somehow leveling the playing field so that street bike-derived racers from as many brands as possible could compete and win.
In fact, the old racing adage, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday,” was first borne out on two wheels with the introduction of the production-based Class C racing way back in 1933. Class C would not only save motorcycle racing in the United States from an eerily similar crisis in the wake of the Great Depression, it would also eventually evolve into what’s known as Progressive American Flat Track today.
“My job in this seat is to get as many eyeballs on the sport as I can,” said Crouch. “The way to develop a solid foundation for a fanbase is to start with the enthusiasts, so it all starts with the motorcycle manufacturers and their customers. The more brands we have on the racetrack, the more their customers are going to be interested in the sport. And then those core fans tell their friends and families, and they help you build your army. But the manufacturers have to believe that they have a realistic opportunity to win, otherwise they aren’t going to promote their brand’s involvement or bring their customers to the sport.”
And with increased manufacturer support, the expectation is that a trickledown effect will make the sport more rewarding for stakeholders of just about every type.
A more vibrant racing series packed with big rigs and unpredictable racing is obviously more attractive to fans, especially if their brand is represented. And that part is important. For (prime) example, Harley’s decades of championship triumphs introduced legions of the brand’s hardcore enthusiasts to the sport.
But that connection has nearly been severed, with only Latus Motors Harley-Davidson still around to fly the flag in the premier class and generally near the back of the pack. How many of those fans are true converts versus those who will slowly turn away if H-D is no longer a legitimate force for a prolonged stint of time?
Additionally, with an influx of greater manufacturer support, teams, riders and tuners have more potentially winning options to select from, and, one would expect, at a lower price point, too. As it stands today, any independent team that hopes to compete up front in Mission SuperTwins has no real option outside of making the very substantial investment of purchasing and maintaining FTR750s. Beyond that, any new factory efforts will need teams, riders, and tuners to represent them, providing more opportunities to snare a factory gig and possibly even benefit from a bidding war for their services.
And that development would not just be good for the bank accounts of the chosen, it’s an absolute requirement in order to properly test the rulebook. Powerful rider-tuner combos are the ultimate decider come race day in flat track racing. And no amount of data can tell you if, for example, Kenny Tolbert and Jared Mees could successfully defeat Indian aboard a Harley-Davidson or a Yamaha until someone manages to hire them to try.
You can even make a strong argument that the status quo doesn’t do all that much to benefit Indian Motorcycle at this point either. What good does it do to effectively beat themselves in the class, while paying out contingencies nearly guaranteed to max out when riders don’t need any additional incentive to select the FTR?
In fact, there’s a fear expressed by some that, unless something is done to attract real competition in ’23 and beyond (ideally Harley-Davidson), Indian might be tempted to pull out at a factory level while reducing its contingency pot substantially.
Even so, unless the rulebook changes now being implemented prove successful in their aims, the FTR750 could still expect to dominate even under that doomsday scenario—a scenario that has led some to call for the outright banning of Indian’s perfect predator.
However, Progressive American Flat Track’s target is to not just avoid the doomsday scenario but bring about genuine balance so that Indian, Harley-Davidson and Yamaha—and Royal Enfield, KTM, Kawasaki, Triumph, et al.—all have an equal chance to succeed at the pinnacle of the sport.
Estenson Racing Team Owner Tim Estenson said, “The only way the series can grow is by bringing all the manufacturers in who have motors that make sense to race in flat track. If we can make it look like the 450 (AFT Singles) class, where on any given night any one of five manufacturers will win, that will drive a successful series in my opinion.”
Progressive American Flat Track’s target is to not just avoid the doomsday scenario but bring about genuine balance so that Indian, Harley-Davidson and Yamaha—and Royal Enfield, KTM, Kawasaki, Triumph, et al.—all have an equal chance to succeed at the pinnacle of the sport.
If that means that reeling the Indian FTR750s back to the production-based competition is what’s needed for everyone’s best interests, including Indian’s, then so be it.
Crouch said, “Our goal, and we’ve been very clear about this, is to have a sustainable premier class with the broadest range of OEM involvement and support for the paddock as possible. And we’re committed to doing what it takes to achieve that.”
It’s hard to argue the moves Progressive American Flat Track are making to achieve this goal are anything but a gamble. The vision is enticing, but there’s no guarantee that vision can be attained. Undoubtedly, there are potential pitfalls on the road ahead. But it’s also hard to argue that standing by the status quo wouldn’t be an even bigger gamble as entries and interest wane.CN
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