How to Become a Motorcycle Roadracer FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions describing How to Become a Motorcycle Roadracer

Version 3.18

17 July 1997

Copyright 1997 (C) Robert Robillard

This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about becoming a Motorcycle Roadracer. It is maintained by Duke Robillard, duke@tpsinc.com (that's me!). Please send me any additions, corrections, clarfications, or suggestions. In particular, if you find a dead link, please let me know...it's hard to keep up with stuff as it moves 'round. Also, this FAQ is very USA-centric, (even Northeastern US-centric) because that's what I know. Please send me other stuff so I can add it.

A new version of this document usually appears monthly, sometime around the 17th. It was last modified on July 17, 1997, and its travels may have taken it far from its original home on Usenet. It may now be out-of-date, particularly if you are looking at a printed copy or one retrieved from a tertiary archive site or CD-ROM. You can always obtain the most up-to-date copy on the WWW at http://www.io.com/~duke/newrrfaq.htm. It is also available by anonymous ftp from sites ftp.eskimo.com, rtfm.mit.edu, or ftp.uu.net, or by sending the e-mail message "help" to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu. Lastly, a draft of the next version is usually on http://www.io.com/~duke/newfaq.htm. This is the "Beta" version...it's got stuff I'm working on and it could very well be broken at any given time. This article was produced for free redistribution. You should not need to pay anyone for a copy of it.

You may wonder why I think I'm an authority on this subject. Well, I've got a racing license, which is more than you! :-> Seriously, I'm no authority at all, but I did spend the last 2 years or so going through the process of getting started. I got a tremendous amount of help from people, both on-line and off, and I thought maybe I could do something to help pay back my karmic debt.

Thanks to everyone on the race list race list (race@micapeak.com, "subscribe race Your-Name" to listproc@micapeak.com). I stole a lot of this from your postings. You are the best resource a newbie racer ever had. Thanks in particular to Hardy Kornfeld, Billy Brownsberger, Paul George, Laura Hardy, Ed McFarland, Kevin Binsfield, Jon Fleming, Phil Calvin and the illustrious Gunn family.

Thanks to Dash Weeks and Doug Pinckney for the WWW-ization of this FAQ. Dash did the initial html conversion, and Doug provided the initial home. Doug and I are both prouds members of Bare Bones Racing.

Thanks also to Derek Noonburg, Ian Jackson and Steve Summit. I owe a lot of the meta-info (formatting, disclaimers, etc) to their PowerPC, Linux, and C FAQs. Lastly, thanks to Carl Paukstis for his Motorcycle Mailing List Roundup, which is a great thing, and also where I got some addresses.