Chris,

While we won't have bales out there we've changed the entry to T1 drastically to accomplish the following

1) The likely point of falling down is now fairly focused and will direct riders towards the area of the wall protected by airfence, where before there were multiple likely trajectories resulting from falling off in T1.

2) Pushing the braking for T1 back onto the straight a little ways promoting a slower T1 entry speed.

3) Making the turn in point for T1 considerably further from the wall than in the previous configuration.

Our old configuration was nearly identical to what the AMA used.

Given the data from last year at PPIR the "fast" laptime (57.9) there was over 1 second slower than the previous MRA record. The current record is held by an AMA rider who was riding an extremely well prepared motorcycle, so I believe that it's representative of what is possible at the track.

In 2004 DiSalvo was doing 55's on a supersport bike there....as a measure.