Completely Unfaired class

Mike Burrows has been thinking again about the class system...and I quote (his words and ideas not mine!):-

Proposals for a new class for completely unfaired bikes.

Premise:- That this should be an entry level/price point class.

*No fairings of any form
*No wheel disks, trispokes, very deep rims
*No "filling in" for aerodynamic gain whether structural or not (e.g. NoCom and Cobra not eligible) Forks/monoblades have good functional reasons to be thin (e.g. clearance of leg/chain) so OK
*For price point reasons no carbon or titanium except home builders (but not for the likes of Simon Sanderson!)

Current "unfaired" could then be "part-faired" and allow bodyline boots.

Edited by gNick

The premise is fine, but isn't fulfilling that just that premise what most of the recent - and not so recent - debate on the Sports class been to do with? 

Having yet another class, based on the rules above - which, I must say, sound more than a little UCI-esque to me - seems to be just the type of splitting our competitions into ever-smaller classes that I thought Mike was objecting to at the AGM.  (I'll give Mike the benefit of the doubt and assume that in the course of the extremely brief debate he didn't come to realise that the new "Unfaired Ladies" class would compare very well in terms of participation and competitiveness with the Sports and Multitrack classes, let alone Junior and Arm-powered.)

Mike doesn't have such a machine on the drawing-board, does he?

 

 

GeoffBird wrote: The only reason I can see for a totally unfaired class is to compare records with UCI bikes because stick-bike riders would consider a tail-fairing cheating. You would then be comparing the recumbent position directly with the 'monkey-on-a-stick' position. But as an additional BHPC racing class it's pointless.

But competing with the stick bikes is what the No-Com and NME(amongst others) are good at, surely ? No tailbox, low, quick, and unfaired. OK, so there's a little bit of shoulder fairing on the No-Com, and the wheeldisc could come off, but still ....

I agree with Geoff as the class being pretty pointless. For one thing, you couldn't buy/build/steal a cheap multipurpose bike (that would be the Sports class one  ), you would have to come up with something specific to these 'rules', and that seems silly to me. If I wanted something other than a sports class bike, then I would get an unfaired one. Oh, I have.

I can see an argument for unfaired/partially-faired/totally faired classes. This seems to mirror the US rules with stock and super stock classes. Now there is a good argument that tailboxes are a Good Thing and anyone not using them needs their head examined. So if you choose not to use a tailbox then you shouldn't complain. However, if we are to go for a unfaired (no tailbox) class (which I think is good idea) then there is no logical reason for excluding the NoCom or Cobra. After all these bikes were explicitly designed to race as unfaired bikes. As far as saying just because thay are carbon they are too expensive and hence bad this is poor. My NoCom cost less than a StreetMachine with all the goodies. So if the issue is cost then so be it put a cost limit on it - just don't arbitarily exclude a group of bikes just because of what they are built from. Also don't exclude bikes just because the home builder just happens to be extremely good at home building.

If we are going to have a partially-faired class then why not allow bikes with a nosecone and tailbox - they're nowhere near as fast as a fully-faired bike, they are probably no quicker than a good tail-faired low racer and they are practical road bikes. It would also mean that you could make your uncompetitive Kingcycle, Ross or Hurricane competitive by adding a nosecone (and make it a better road bike at the same time). Consequently we could dispense with the Sports Class!

Of course, the fact that I'm currently building a nose/tail faired bike and I sell (theoretically) nosecone mouldings has nothing to do with my proposing this idea...