Image by Ysa Perez
By now many of you who follow some form the UK motorcycle community via social media will have started to hear about the rising sport of Flat Track racing. Run in the UK by The Dirt Track Riders Association (or DTRA for short) flat track is the sport that attracts all types of rider and experience levels - from chopper riders to off road enduro racers & pitches them against one another on purpose built flat track bikes (either DTX bikes, vintage classics, the inappropriate hooligan street bikes class or stock 100cc/ 125cc for the mini bike round) for a left turning, all out race on purpose built dirt oval tracks, horse trotting tracks, and speedway tracks across the UK.
But over in USA flat track racing is national sport with a long history renowned country wide and its racers are heroes of the story. None more so than trailblazer Shayna Texter. As one of only two women who compete at professional level in then USA Texter has had more wins than any other racer in the AFT single cylinder race class. Recently we came across this great article written by Hannah Elliot with some seriously amazing accompanying images by the talented Ysa Perez that anyone who wants to know about the sport of flat track needs to read instantly!
Just like her counterpart over this side of the pond , pro flat track racer Leah Tokelove, Shayna is first and foremost an extremely talented racer with the fact thats she's a woman coming in a distant second to her prowess as a leading motorsports athlete. She's up there competing at the highest level against other professional racers (mostly guys) and winning on a regular basis.
Although Shayna like many other women in sport doesn't want to be singled out as a poster girl due only to her being one of the only prominent women within the sport its impossible to put aside the fact that she represents the seeds of a shift within motorsport. Women like these have to come first to kick down the doors, blaze a trail & set a raising standard for the performance level & visibility of women within the motorsports world. This in turn is only helping to inspire more young girls to start out in motor sport at an early age & raise the bar even higher fr future generations. A true trailblazer in every way.
Read below for an excerpt from the article below And we've been lucky enough to get our hands on some unseen shots from the shoot from the lovely Ysa Perez.
A big thanks to Ysa Perez for throwing these incredibly inspiring images our way. Killin' it girl!
Image by Ysa Perez
The thing about flat-track racing is that you’ll eventually get hurt flat-track racing. In April at the Texas Motor Speedway outside Fort Worth, I watch five riders crash on the same unrelenting turn, tumbling over one another like dominoes into a heap of cracked femurs, collarbones, and ankles.
Blame the dirt—or, technically, the “Texas gumbo clay.” The sport’s greatest challenge is to successfully slide a 300-pound bike around a 180-degree turn at more than 100 mph. Adding to the difficulty is the short, half-mile oval track, which is pretty much flat: There’s no banked curve to help riders counter the centrifugal force that could send them flying into the air.
Image by Ysa Perez
To get ahead, the really good riders will find split-second openings between all those skidding, dirt-spitting machines and dart through them. Winning isn’t so much a question of speed, because the track is so small that most of the race is spent in the turns. It requires a combination of timing, balance, aggression, and the luck of a survivor.
YSA PEREZ
To read the full article by Hannah Elliot click HERE
To find out more about UK flat track get yourselves over to www.dirttrackriders.co.uk & institution of the flat track scene www.sideburnmagazine.com
