The Future of US Superbike Racing

The roar for the last week or so in US road racing has been the subject of the Daytona Motorsports Group's (the new owners of the AMA road racing) proposed changes to the series for 2009. There have been stories upon stories about different aspects of it in the various road racing news outlets and it was apparently the major topic of conversation in the pits at this weekend's Barber Motorsports Park round of the AMA Superbike series.

It all started with visits made to the Japanese "Big Four" manufacturers by DMG's president, Roger Edmundson, last week. The purpose of these visits was purportedly to open a dialog with the manufacturers about what they would like to see and what DMG's vision is for the series. I'm getting all this news second hand, but it seems as though the visits were actually more to tell the manufacturers what was going to happen and at least one of the manufacturers did not take the news well at all. Frankly, I can see why. If I was a manufacturer faced with today's sport motorcycle trends and had DMG's proposal dropped on my plate I think I'd be pretty pissed off too.

DMG's (myopic, in my opinion) "vision" dictates sweeping changes to the series, the class structure, and even the event weekends. The first thing that I as a fan am a bit unhappy about is that right off the bat I'm going to get less time with motorcycles actually on track on a typical race weekend. This is because DMG's plan is that there will only be practices on Friday afternoon of a race weekend instead of all day Friday as happens now. The first half of Friday will be devoted to media and promotional activities it seems.

Next, and probably most major, is the class structure. DMG's proposed, or possibly dictated since it's unclear how much of these changes are set in stone at the moment, headliner class for the US series will be something called "Daytona Superbike." From what I can discern from the information I've read this class sounds like a rehash of the current Formula Xtreme class. The cornerstone of the class as proposed would be 600cc inline fours. There will also be provisions for different engine configurations to allow variations of twin- and three-cylinder machines to compete as well, much like the current FX class. The differences will be that the class will be horsepower and/or power-to-weight-ratio limited, very much like the Moto-ST endurance series that DMG also runs. The class will also be a spec fuel, spec tire, and I think spec ECU class as well as being limited in terms of allowed modifications from what I can see.

In addition to the new premier class, DMG's current Moto-ST series will be merged with the AMA series. The Moto-ST class will apparently be run with all of it's current rules intact and will be one of the races run on Saturday, with 3-hour-maximum endurance race on Saturday afternoon of a typical race weekend.

Last, and probably least from DMG's viewpoint, is the "LiterBike" class that will, to all reports, adopt most of the rule structure that had been decided by the AMA and the major manufacturers for the 2009 Superbike class. I say probably least from DMG's viewpoint because the various things I've read gave me the impression that DMG only relented to having this class because of uproar by the manufacturers and probably race teams.

An astute and knowledgeable reader will probably notice that I mentioned nothing about Supersport and Superstock. That's because both of these classes will go the way of the Dodo under DMG's proposed structure. Superstock was going to be gone anyway, and probably rightly so as it was a point of confusion to have two classes (Superbike and Superstock) that were so similar, differing only in allowed changes and tires, but the deletion of the Supersport class amazes and concerns me.

Supersport is a class that the manufacturers are very fond of. The 600cc sportbikes are the hardest-fought and best selling class of sport motorcycles and from everything I've ever heard Supersport is a class the manufacturers were very keen to compete in and win due to the old "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" adage. Based on that alone it seems like all the manufacturers would be up in arms about the deletion of this class. They go from having a forum where their cutting edge new 600cc weapon can compete on it's own merits with all of the other manufacturer's competing models to having these bikes neutered with weight, tire, and fuel restrictions and then mixed in with other bikes that don't even compete in the same market segment (Buell and BMW, for example). Not to mention that Supersport has often been some of the closest, most exciting racing on the track.

That's only one of the problems I see with the new class structure. For example, one of the major complaints with AMA racing for several years was that the top factory riders were scattered among different classes. The argument was always that the premier class should have the top riders riding the fastest, most aggressive, must cutting-edge bikes. Is that going to be the case here? The Daytona Superbike class will be a class full of mostly middle-weight motorcycles and, to make it even worse, those bikes will be saddled with all kinds of artificial restrictions. Having said that, the proposed 2009 Superbike rules that the LiterBike class is supposedly adopting (although it sounds like DMG's going to add spec tire and fuel rules at the very least) is much more Superstock-like than they have been the last few years. That means the bikes are going to be less heavily modified and closer to stock motorcycles, but they're still going to be much faster and far more trick than the bikes in Daytona Superbike, the so-called premier class.

Another question that pops to mind is the reaction for the riders. It seems to me that many of the top riders might decide another series is the right place to race. After all, what's more of a challenge: riding a neutered 600 in Daytona Superbike or a hotrodded 1000 or 1200cc Superbike in the WSBK series? It's not quite as simple as that from the rider's perspective of course, but if I were a top-level rider I know what I'd be thinking. I'm not a top-level rider so this is all pure speculation on my part, but from the derision Mladin for one heaped upon the decision to run the Daytona 200 as an FX race (he persisted in referring to it as a "mini-bike race" for quite a while a couple of years ago) I suspect I'm correct in my assessment.

Frankly, I'm concerned about the future of the series. I thought at first the DMG takeover was going to be a good thing. Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps I'm just being a doomsday prophet. Perhaps I'm just old and crotchety enough at this point that I don't like change. I don't think so however. I realize the Superbike class in AMA roadracing has been a bit boring for a few years now due to Mladin's, and now Mladin's and Spies', dominance, but I don't think the correct way to address the problem is to dumb down the series or to introduce a bunch of artificial restrictions ala NASCAR. After all, it's quite apparent the Yoshimura domination is a result of the men controlling the throttles, not the bikes themselves. If it was the bikes wouldn't Tommy Hayden be doing much better than he is? I also don't think the proposed Daytona Superbike class has any business at all being billed as the premier class for the series. I'm really pretty indifferent to the inclusion of the Moto-ST class. I'm not sure how well endurance racing will go over to tell the truth, but I won't mind watching it. In fact I'm hoping to go to Virginia International Raceway next weekend to watch a Moto-ST. My only concern is that I don't think endurance racing will be as easy for a neophyte viewer to follow since the guy leading on the track might not necessarily be the guy leading the race. This type of confusion has long been the argument against aggregate time rules in the event of a weather-related interruption to racing, as used by World Superbike for example.

I see major clouds on the horizon but I suppose only time will tell. I'm also hoping that this all still at the proposal stage and that DMG and the manufacturers and race teams can come to some agreement that is better for everyone. I for one will be watching the news to see what the ongoing developments are, and hoping my current sense of trepidation proves to be unfounded.

A list of articles with more information:
Daytona Motorsports Group Debuts New Class Structure
Daytona Motorsports Group Announces 2009 Plans For AMA Pro Road Racing
Daytona MotorSports Group Visits California
Ducati CEO: Ducati Hopes To Re-Join AMA Superbike In '09, Buuuut ...
Interview: Suzuki's Mel Harris
Yamaha: Waiting For More Details