The 2010 AMA Pro Road Racing schedule is out, and currently the series has only 9 races scheduled, with a 10 race hopefully to be added to the schedule. Noticiably missing from the schedule are stops at both Laguna Seca and Miller Motorsports Park. The schedule also is missing a stop at Topeka, which was boycotted, due to safety concerns, by Mat Mladin and Jamie Hacking.
It’s hard to take the AMA/DMG seriously sometimes, and today is one of those days. This time it is the latest musing from the bastard-child of road-racing that has use fired up: spec classes for the Harley-Davidson XR1200 and Kawasaki Ninja 250R. While not necessarily bad ideas at first thought, the proposed two new series seem like a step in the wrong direction for AMA road-racing.
Superbike Planet is reporting a rumor that Honda is set to pull completely out of AMA/DMG road racing for 2010. If true, it’s hard to tell if this move is centered around an every decreasing budget for racing, or if Honda has finally given up dealing with AMA race organizer, Daytona Motorsports Group.
Mat Mladin has announced this weekend that he will retire from motorcycle racing at the end of this season. Originally thought to be only reitiring from the AMA, and presumably looking to World Superbike or MotoGP for his next-step, Mladin has confirmed that his absense from Superbike racing here in the US is in fact a complete departure from the sport.
We woke up this morning to see the forums, twitter, and blog comments ablaze on Al Ludington and Johnny Rock Page’s discourse from Mid-Ohio. Out of these comments we see a clear divide on where people stand on the issue of backmarkers, the rules of AMA Pro Superbike, the managing of AMA roadracing, and the comments made by our two protagonists.
So, we thought we’d post some of the more interesting, and to the point comments made by people from both sides. Read’m after the jump.
We don’t even know where to begin with this…The AMA Pro Racing has announced that it has indefinitely suspended Al Ludington for his interactions to during Race 1 of AMA’s stop at Mid-Ohio. Page was accused by Ludington for not abidding to a blue flag (over-taking rider approaching), as Aaron Yates looked to get around the slower Page. Pretty standard stuff in racing, especially in the AMA where there can be a wide gap in lap times of teams and riders.
The issue here though is the handling of the matter, as Ludington goes off his rocker, threatening and cursing Page, all while misquoting the rule book. During his rant, what becomes clear is Ludington’s lowly perception of privateer riders. He also sheds light on how the AMA perceives roadracing in America. It’s a sad state we live in folks.
Buell Racing is trying to go legit, and make a bid at the American Superbike class in the AMA. After already making a joke out of the Daytona Superbike class, Buell is going to offer a turn-key bike for AMA licensed racers who are looking to take on real superbikes like Honda CBR1000RR and Yamaha R1.
If you’re an AMA licensed privateer, looking to compete in the American Superbike class, with about $40,000 burning a hole in your pocket, Buell is hoping you’ll take up the cause and waive the American flag for them.
AMA Pro Road Racing officials dyno tested the 10 motorcycles that qualified for Friday’s Superpole session at Barber Motorsports Park, in an effort to maintain a more competitive balance among the hodgepodge of bikes competing in the series. In their study, they found that the bikes range in power-to-weight ratios from 2.65lbs/hp to 3.14lbs/hp, with a .28lbs/hp gap between first and second ranked bikes. What is interesting about the report from the AMA is that they never named which bikes were making how much horsepower, thus leaving it a mystery who had the supreme power-to-weight advantage. Never fear, math and common sense are here. We crunched the numbers to figure out what the likely results are in this report. Our conclusions may astound you, and/or confirm your suspcions about the series, and maybe AMA road racing as a whole.
Confusion in Daytona, Florida lead many race fans, and racers with some doubt as to who won, and whether not a full race had in fact occurred for this year’s Daytona 200. In a press release issued by the AMA, the sequence of events that led to the 6-lap sprint to the finish are as follows:
The lighting system that illuminated the chicane that leads into NASCAR turn 3 experienced a failure on or about lap 36, which brought out the “safety” (AKA pace) car. During this caution an unnamed rider collided with Graves Yamaha’s Tommy Aquino, causing Aquino to go down, which brought out the red flag, idling the field for nearly a half-hour. After a few warm-up laps behind the safety car, racing resumed only to to go back under caution when M4 Suzuki’s Kris Turner went down in the Horseshoe. Racing resumed in earnest on lap 49 and did not go back to yellow for the remainder of the race.
AMA race director Colin Fraser said that the discrepancy was a mistake and would not make excuses for the foul-up.
Lastly, Paradigm Racing’s Barrett Long, after a post-race protest, was given credit for a lap that was not counted during the red flag period which elevated him to 6th place ahead of Chaz Davies. Continue reading for the racing results.
AMA Superbike kicked off this weekend to substantially less fanfare than WSBK did last week. AMA Superbike has become the bastard-child of road-racing for a variety of reason. One, Mat Mladin has already been forecasted to win all the races this year now that Ben Spies has moved on to World Superbikes. Two, the bikes being raced aren’t really superbikes. Three, AMA Superbike has been boring for the past 5 years or so. While we do not attempt to make excuses, or even argue these valid criticisms of AMA Superbike, you’d be wrong if you thought the first race of the AMA season was boring. It’s true that Mladin took over on the 7th lap and won by over a second but the actual racing was a lot more entertaining than that.
Supermoto Online recently . This comes just as the 2009 season is set to start on, March 22nd.