The American Dave Waters, with his privateer Dirt Track KTM, is making sure that a V2 bike from Mattighofen is getting into the action in this spectacular discipline.
Dirt Track Racing is a typical American spectacle: colourful, fast, loud and spectacular. The bikes in the top league have V2 motors, broad handlebars and very big start numbers. Races always go around the oval shaped tracks to the left. The racing surface is either hard pack ground of loam, which mechanical rollers pack down to create a hard surface with plenty of grip and where it is possible to go into the corners at astonishing speed. The tracks are different in length (see info box). In the AMA Pro Racing Series, professional teams and riders from all over the country battle it out for the Grand National Championship, in short GNC.
The action is incredibly hard and absolutely breathtaking. This is a knife-edge battle for dominance at full speed and it’s contested by tightly packed groups of riders. Fights for the slipstream advantage on the straights and the wild drifts in the corners are daily bread and butter for this furious wheel-on-wheel and handlebar-on-handlebar, no holds barred gladiatorial contest.
DIRT TRACK
Dirt Track in the USA is held on hard pack natural oval tracks of varied lengths: a quarter of a mile (400 Meter), a half mile (800 Meter) or a whole mile (1.6 km). Every track is different and conditions also change from lap to lap. "Groove" is what the ideal line is called after a first free lap. This is the one that promises the best traction and therefore the fastest lap times.
There are also TT events as well as oval circuits. They are flat natural tracks with a number of left corners and at least one right corner in the tightest place. Most also have a jump hill. TT stands for the abreviation for Tourist Trophy.
Two-cylinder Dirt Trackers with about 100 hp let fly on the mile and half mile oval circuits. One step below these are the 50 to 60 hp single-cylinder bikes (they use only modified four-stroke motocross bikes). These mostly start on the quarter and sometimes also on the half mile oval circuits and the TT tracks.
Dirt Track has a very big tradition in the USA. Most of the racers are onboard “Made in the USA” V2 machines. Most, but not all. It is now commonplace to see more teams that are trying their luck with either European-made bikes or the Japanese brands. One such individualist rider is Steve Waters from Albion in the state of New York. The 47-year old owner of an auto body repair shop has been racing since he was a child, first in Dirt Racing then Motocross before he finally returned to his roots as a team boss. Waters got a chance to check out KTM’s V-two-cylinder when this motor was exhibited a couple of years ago at the Daytona Speedway. Light, compact and powerful – the concept, the technology and the construction details of this modern twin promised potential and represented a package
capable of luring the Dirt Track freak. He finally bought a
KTM 950 R Supermoto at the end of 2007 and from that
created a Dirt Track racer.
2008 was the first season for the “Project K Racing” lead by Dave and his wife Rhonda. The two of them chose Roger James “RJ” Overholt as their rider, a natural offroad talent, who- with their support - already had a number of successful seasons in Motocross and Dirt Track behind him. “RJ” has had his “National Number” since 2004 and this allows him to race in the top league of Dirt Track Racing.
The original aim was to leave the bike as near to a series machine as possible in order to achieve a certain brand loyalty. This was on the one hand because it was the first ever KTM in the Dirt Track racing circus and on the other, because naturally there was the hope that with longer term success, the Orange project would draw attention to the brand. The stated goal of the team is to one day have additional support from the importer or even directly from the KTM factory.
At first the bike remained astonishingly similar to a normal series machine. It had an original frame, a fork with pre-positioned axle clamps, a bigger tank, aluminium swing arms – everything stayed the way it was when it came out of the crate. What was changed were the handlebar, the wheels, the carburetor and suspension elements well as some other small details. Remarkable reliability and astonishing performance led to encouraging results. The ex-
perience of the first season convinced Dave Waters to continue
to believe in the potential of the V-twin from Austria.
It was decided to make some modifications for the 2008 season so that the KTM would be even more competitive. Because the unfolding of power and above all traction play a decisive role in Dirt Track handling, a shorter swing arm was made to measure by the company J&M. At the same time the mono shock absorber was differently positioned. The Penske unit is now at an angle on the right hand side, directly between the new swing arm and the upper part of the tubular frame. But apart from the new arrangement for the shock absorber, the frame continues to be the same as the original. The front however is somewhat modified. The front wheel has been fitted onto a tried and true Dirt Track fork with special triple clamps, which can to all intents and purposes be adjusted with a turn of the hand.
Instead of the original tank, the machine is now fitted with a specially made tank from the company Race Tech, which turns out to be smaller and less voluminous and helps to optimize the desired weight distribution for Dirt Track. The oil tank is also specially made from aluminium. A more attractive and significantly more open supertrapp exhaust has been fitted to the original silencer resulting in a real throaty roar.
Since 2009 there is a new regulation in Dirt Track for the fuel mix. The 41mm Keihin FCR flat side carburetor must be fitted with a 38mm restrictor. In order to compensate for these air restriction measures, the cylinder head has been specially adapted by RLJ Racing in Holley/New York. So with this there is a juicy 93 hp from that back wheel, which translates as 130 to 140 mph top speed (208 km to 225 km/h) on the oval shaped circuit.
The adaptations that have been made have already produced success. Indeed, everything went very well at the races in Dayton/Ohio. Rider RJ Overholt lost only a half a second on the world’s best dirt tracker in qualification and in the heat race he was third so he directly qualified for the final, a result that thrilled the team. RJ had a perfect start in the final and was in front going into turn one! After he was overtaken by the top riders Joe Kopp and Jared Mees, RJ completed his laps in third place before he hit a bump in one of the corners, which almost brought him down. In any case, his eventual seventh place was still a fantastic result for the team
“Project K Racing”.
The Orange drifter also went very respectably in Lima, Ohio - twentieth in training out of 54 competitors, only 0.5 seconds behind Harley factory racer Kenny Coolbeth, then sixth place in the heat race. This was followed by a superb fifth place after a fierce duel among the group at the front which included the best in the field and the kind of action that had the spectators in the stadium on their feet.
It’s therefore no wonder that Dave Waters continues to believe that there is a lot of potential for the future of his ambitious project and he intends to give it his best shot. And if one day he gets the support that he hopes for then it will be a great reward for what he’s achieved so far.
