Lost in all of the hoopla surrounding Ben Spies’ maiden MotoGP victory in front of a packed house at the Assen Circuit in Holland this past weekend is the fact that the factory Yamaha rider came dangerously close to starting the race from dead last.

Like many of his peers, Spies began Saturday’s pre-race sighting lap on rain tires and with a wet-weather chassis setup. Rather than take his place on the front row of the grid for the warm-up lap and eventual start of the race, Spies returned to pit lane and jumped on his back-up YZR-M1, which had been hastily converted by his crew to a dry setup and fitted with soft-compound Bridgestone slicks to compensate for the quickly changing track conditions.

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Photo by Mark Wernham

This Mark Wernham photograph of Nicky Hayden braking at Silverstone is dramatic but also counterproductive. What’s important is what BMW factory rider Leon Haslam told me at Miller Motorsports Park this past May during the World Superbike race weekend: “If rear braking is lost, the rear will rise and overall braking will suffer.”

We can find out the brake torque required to lift the rear wheel by measuring the wheelbase and multiplying it times the weight on the rear tire. The rear tire lifts when braking force, multiplied times the overall center-of-gravity height, equals rear-wheel load multiplied times wheelbase.

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Photo by Gordon Keown

29 May 2011, 1700 hrs local, Mildenhall, Suffolk, England: Stationed as I was at RAF Mildenhall from May, 1969, to July, 1972, it came naturally to me to think in military terms as I gazed out over the crowd at the Mildenhall Speedway Stadium, even though the stadium has nothing to do with the base. Going to military bases does that to me, among other things. (Automatic, unstoppable thoughts: “Uniform squared away? Haircut okay? Going TDY today?”) But now, almost four decades after I left the Air Force base a few miles from this bustling speedway track, there is no sign of military anything, apart from a few spectators who look like Air Force types, even in mufti.

I’m here in England to do research for my next novel, and watching this speedway match between the Mildenhall Fen Tigers and the Isle of Wight Islanders has nothing to do with the research. But I can never resist the allure of a dirt-track motorcycle race anywhere I might be. And speedway tops my list of favorite dirt-track events when it involves team racing, as British speedway has almost since its advent in 1928 (or 1927, depending on whose version of the history you believe). The Aussies brought speedway to Britain that year, and everybody agrees that speedway as we know it was an Australian creation of the early 1920s.

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Photo by Tim White, TSWPhoto

Former national champion Jake Zemke is the latest in a long line of top riders to leave the AMA Pro Road Racing series. Third overall in American SuperBike in 2010 with Jordan Suzuki and polesitter for this year’s Daytona 200 on a Project 1 Atlanta Yamaha YZF-R6, Zemke has inked a deal to race a WFR Honda CBR1000RR in the Pirelli-spec British Superbike Championship in the Evo class—equivalent to now-defunct AMA Superstock—beginning with the fifth round of the series, June 17-19, at the 1.3-mile-long Knockhill Racing Circuit in Scotland.

A highly competitive seat on one of the three WFR machines became available when current Evo-class points-leader Alex Lowes replaced injured Stuart Easton on the MSS Colchester Kawasaki Superbike squad. Former AMA, MotoGP and World Superbike racer John Hopkins is competing in the series on a Samsung Crescent Racing Suzuki GSX-R1000. Hopkins has won one race and is currently second overall in points behind former SBK pilot Shane Byrne.

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Photo by DMT Imaging

On the RSV4: “The Aprilia is quite fast, especially in top gear. Engineers like to see numbers—power, power, power. But if you don’t have a nice curve, it is more difficult to ride.

On power delivery: “Compared with other machines [in World Superbike], our engine is more peaky. That’s where the rider makes the difference. Some cannot ride a peaky engine. Ducati has the most-easy power.

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Six so far, more to come? Blake Young is tied with his Rockstar Makita Suzuki teammate Tommy Hayden in career AMA Pro American SuperBike victories. Photo by DMT Imaging

I bought JD Beach a big, juicy steak at a nice restaurant in Salt Lake City on Monday night. I figured he could use some cheering up after crashing out of fourth place with just three laps remaining in the AMA Pro American SuperBike race at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah.

Between bites, the 19-year-old Team Cycle World Attack Performance Kawasaki rider thought back on the day’s events. “I wish I would have finished the race,” he lamented, staring blindly at the chunk of meat sizzling on his plate.

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