MX Simulator

Skin animation, you can make a skin in photoshop and save it as a .GIF file (different shadows or something) so it looks a bit better ingame and you dont need to animate the rider model.
Normall maps on decals, I think this would be great, you can see more details, etc etc....

This is only a suggestion, i dont know if this would work fine.

You can animate skins already by using the .seq file format

hmm.... this has me thinking. I think I have heard of someone using a seq normal to mimic the jersey ruffling in the wind. "maybe I was just drunk when I thought I read that" But, if we can indeed use a seq for the normals on a rider skin, then adding a wait "x" seconds command to the seq file should give it adequate time to start the animation so it starts after the gate drops. Someone has to try this out if it is possible.

You did indeed hear it, and it was me, although I used pretty crappy normals so it didn't come out so nice, was also on my old computer so lagged really badly :/