Description
This article is from the How to Become a
Motorcycle Roadracer FAQ, by Duke Robillard duke@io.com with
numerous contributions by others.
2.3 What Class Should I Race In?
Most organizations have different racing classes divided up by engine
displacement, 2-stroke vs 4-stroke, number of cylinders, and how much
magic has been performed on the bike. Take CCS, for instance (see
3.2). It has a couple of "Lightweight" classes for production-based
street bikes. These classes allow 4 stroke bikes with 4 cylinders up
to 400cc or 4 stroke twins up to 650cc. "Lightweight Supersport" is
for mildly altered bikes (new pipes, jetting and suspensions) and
"Lightweight Superbike" is for bikes with titanium con-rods and such.
(The details of what's legal and what's not are more complicated, but
that's the general idea.) The grids for these classes are filled with
the three bikes mentioned in 2.1
You're usually allowed to "race up a class," which means you can ride
a 600cc bike in the 750cc class. On some tight, twisty tracks, you
might not even be at much of a disadvantage. At the AMA national at
Loudon, for instance, there's usually a 600 in the top ten of the 750
Supersport races. And in the beginner classes, slow bikes with fast
riders beat fast bikes with slow riders all the time.
It's a good idea to start in relatively slow, lightweight classes. If
you take your CBR900RR to the track to learn on, odds are you're going
to get lapped an awful lot, fall down all the time, and might even be
a danger to the more experienced racers. In fact, some organizations
don't let novices on anything bigger than a 750. My race school
instructor explained this decision: "It was just getting too bloody."
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