My thoughts on Spec Parts...

With AMA Dirt Track now having to run Sunoco Fuels and Dunlop tires, there are a few things that bother me about them. So on with my rant... However wrong it may be.

My first belief is that if it's a spec aftermarket part, that the supplier (Sunoco/Dunlop) should not just be offering contingency to the top 10. I think that's total horse shit and only the rich get richer. Meaning that Only the Top 10 are benefitting (they're the only ones receiving the contingency(they'd probably argue with me they're not benefitting)), AMA Pro Racing (They have to be getting some sort of financial reimbursement for this right?) and Sunoco/Dunlop (after all these guys now have no competition and a monopoly). In all my years of the Spec Dunlop tire (which in a way I do support) I only received a kickback from Goodyear once...

For it to really work and be beneficial for everyone, the suppliers of anything aftermark and spec, especially something that EVERYBODY has to use the same of, such as fuel and tires, that these suppliers need to be at every race, supplying product at a racer friendly cost. If I go to an AMA Road Race I can show up, pay Dunlop to mount and balance brand new spec tires, go to a pump and buy my Sunoco fuel for $7 a gallon...

Instead... I'm a dirttracker, I have to buy my own out of round, horrible quality control Dunlop tires from a distributor, where prices are now rumored to be $190/ea (I was paying $136 in 2008) then mount and balance them myself or pay to have a local shop to mount and balance them (as i'm sure many do). I then have to buy Sunoco from wherever I can find it for as CHEAP as $10/gal (killer deal right?). BUTT I have to make sure the can I put it in is flushed out, possibly waste a gallon washing that out, then another gallon washing out the fuel tank on each bike or bikes. Cool, so if I have 2 cans and 3 bikes I just wasted $50 and 5 gallons in gas to wash my cans out just so hopefully they don't contaminate the new gas. In 2009 with VP I had horrible luck with cans going bad in the weeks between races. Testing just off enough to be illegal and causing me to buy a new can of gas. Luckily then Randy Texter had taken it upon himself to transport VP Fuels to the track so they were available.

I don't understand who makes these plans, I hope to god they don't actually think they're doing something good for us. I understand we're a small market but we're getting taken advantage of bigger than shit on these... Until these manufacturers offer support at the race track for us, and their products, at a reasonable price. This spec shit is just that, shit.