I found this thread to very interesting, and mostly positive. One thing I have learned over the years is that no matter how well the rules are made and updated, you'll always have a few people looking to exploit loopholes in wording to give themselves an unfair equipment advantage as opposed to following the "spirit and itent of the rules", which is to keep the hardware more evenly competive so the better rider can win. I can understand the difficulty the CRA faces in having to constantly close these loopholes and change the rules to cover all the new equipment changes every year, which always opens new ones. As a result, the once simple race rules become so complicated that you need a team of lawyers to determine if you and your bike is legal in a specific class. I can also empathize with guys like streaks383 who try to follow the spirit and intent of the rules, and end up getting stuck in one of those former loopholes that was probably not intended to be closed on guys like him.
I guess the one thing that I'm not getting in this thread is the genesis of this rule. It's been a lot of years since I raced on two wheels, but in the olden days, you could race anyting as long as it was UNDER the maximum cc's for the class. If you wanted to race your 125 in 125, 250, and Open class, you could do so. You were at an obvious disadvantage in the bigger classes, so noboby cared or protested unless the disadvantage was creating a safety issue on the track.
As I read through all this as an impartial observer, what I get from this whole situation is that some guys on 250s were talented enough to take not only their class, but the 450 class as well, and the 450 racers were more upset with the more talented racers "invading" their class than with any equipment "advantages" the 250s have over the 450s. The new rules seem to be more based on keeping those 250 guys "in their own class and out of ours" than addressing any unfair equipment advantages the smaller bikes could possibly have. Maybe somebody can enlighten me if I have this worng. I guess the question is, "would these 250 guys be winning the 450 class if they were riding 450s?" Maybe somebody can point out the advantanges the 250's have over the 450s in the 450 class, and then explain why they would even make a 450 if the 250 was at an advantage. If the only reason this rule is in place is because "he gets to race two classes with his bike, and I can't race my bigger bike in a smaller class", it was probably a mistake to create it to begin with. If somebody kicks my big bore butt on a smaller bike, it sounds like a rider skill level problem, and not an unfair equipment advantage to me.
Okay, last bike I raced had two rear shocks, and Im not very up to date with all the new bikes, but I'm open to being educated here. Why is my observation worng?
