I am, by reputation and my own admission, a motorcycle racing tragic. If it’s got 2 wheels (or 3) and it races on tar (or grass, or dirt, or even ice), I’m interested. So the recent developments in American road racing have been interesting, to say the least.
After many years of administering road racing in the USA, the AMA (American Motorcycle Association) decided to face the commercial reality that they no longer had the money or the clout to do it properly. AMA’s reputation for amatuerism on the administrative side had seen it lose the confidence and support of competitors, sponsors and promoters, so the decision was made to pass administration over to a professional body. Tenders were called for and the process concluded with the winning bidder being the DMG (Daytona Motor Group). This is the body that is run by the France family, long-time promoters and owners of the Daytona Motor Speedway and close allies with NASCAR, America’s foremost form of motor sport.
Howls of protest immediately arose with the new administration almost immediately being referred to as “Nasbike” and all parties holding their collective breaths waiting to see what changes the new administration would institute.
Now it needs to be said that AMA Pro Racing, at the top level, is languishing, despite intense competition on the track. For many years the Superbike class has been the exclusive preserve of the “works” Suzuki team and Australia’s Mat Mladin. Together with new team-mate, Ben Spies, the two official Suzuki riders have won every championship and almost every race since anyone can remember. And even the “semi-works” Suzuki teams, like that owned by multi-millionaire ex-basketball legend, Michael Jordan, have complained that they still don’t get the best of the hot bits that the Yoshimura team uses.
The lesser classes, FX, Supersport, and Superstock are also fully subscribed as far as entries are concerned, but, together with the Superbikes, the whole series is almost invisible to the 250 million residents of the USA who, if they are interested in motorsports at all, know their NASCAR intimately and practically nothing else. Live TV coverage doesn’t exist and we get to see more of the AMA races here in “package” versions on cable TV than what the average American motorcycle enthusiast gets.
So there was a barely-concealed hope that the new administration would be the one that could lift the low profile of the sport in the USA, that breeding ground of past champions such as Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, Eddie Lawson, Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer. Sadly it needs to be noted that the above luminaries, as well as modern-day stars like Nicky Hayden, John Hopkins and Colin Edwards, all succeeded in Europe in spite of, and not because of, encouragement and standing from the AMA series. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that they would have succeeded anyway.
Sadly, the enthusiasts’ hope were dashed almost immediately, when DMG announced a complete overhaul of all the existing road racing classes, significantly axing altogether the factory Superbike class, the blue riband of the whole competition. While many could see the reasoning (a transparent attempt to neuter the Suzuki juggernaut and level the playing field) and many applauded the idea in principle, it soon became clear that DMG’s new classes would succeed only in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Instead of the factory Superbike arrangement, DMG proposed a “Daytona Superbike” class, made up of a mish-mash of 4’s (limited to 600cc) and “factory” twins, like BMW’s. Now the punters should have realised that this was one of the first things that DMG would do. After all, it was the Daytona Group who had, ostensibly on safety grounds, emascualted the Daytona 200 and made it a 600cc race some years before, a “home town’ decision if ever there was one. Under the new arrangement, then, the Superbike class would now be limited also to 600cc bikes. Several other classes were dropped or modified to leave the new arrangement looking very little like a true racing series and more like a vehicle for DMG to make money and a direct attack on the Japanese manufacturers, whose goodwill is vital to keeping the sport going in the USA.
To say that the excrement hit the fan is to put it mildly. Roger Edmondson, head honcho of the DMG and the public face of the new administration, is being widely pilloried on overseas forums and the state of play looks to be that the Japanese manufacturers have decided to boycott the AMA series altogether in 2009 and run their own “Factory” Superbike series in conjunction with the WERA (Western Eastern Roadrace Association – the promoters of amateur and club racing in the USA).
Compromise is not a word in the DMG’s vocabulary and, despite talks of conciliation and compromise, the best that DMG have been able to offer so far is a 1000cc Superbike series, under the existing Superstock rules, a compromise as silly as it is specious. The manufacturers are hanging tough, refusing to attend meetings convened by the DMG to try and solve the impasse and are now basically taking the line that now is the right time to align the USA Superbike rules with the rules in the rest of the world, and especially WSBK, and that, if the DMG won’t condone this, then they will run their own series, under the WERA banner, for WSBK-spec, factory Superbikes.
Should they choose to do so, the rest of the AMA-based competitors would have to follow suit and port their racing to the WERA also, or risk being seen as a “backwater” series, (despite all of DMG’s money and clout) to the “main game” where the “big boys” will be playing.
And DMG? Well, they look like being left as the promoters of a series in which there are no competitors. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people, in this writer’s opinion.