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Spanish Moto3 Upgraded to “Junior World Championship”

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The status of the Spanish championship has received yet another boost. After the Moto3 championship was run under the auspices of the FIM in 2014, from 2015, the category is to be renamed the “FIM CEV Repsol Moto3 Junior World Championship.”

The CEV Moto3 championship will be run over eight rounds, six of which will take place in Spain, with the championship kicking off in Portugal at Portimao, and the CEV Moto3 class appearing as a support class at the French MotoGP round at Le Mans.

The two classes comprising the Spanish championship, Superbike and Moto2, will also get a status upgrade. For 2015, the CEV Superbike and CEV Moto2 championships will also be part of the European Championship. Superbike and Moto2 will have only seven events, however, the two classes not travelling to France to join the CEV Moto3 class.

The stated intention of the changed status is to help prepare young riders of all nationalities to make their mark and enter Grand Prix racing. That has increasingly been the role of the CEV Moto3 championship, with the champions in the Spanish series moving up into the Moto3 World Championship paddock.

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News

Vito Ippolito Elected to Third Term as FIM President

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The ballots are in, and Vito Ippolito will continue as the President of the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), for the next four years. Ippolito was re-relected at the FIM General Assembly held in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. With 103 national motorcycle federations taking part in the voting, Ippolito defeated rival Jorge Viegas of Portugal with 62 votes to 41.

For those who don’t know the sixty-two-year-old Venezuelan-born Ippolito, he has an impressive career in motorcycling. He was the manager of Team Venemotos, during the period their rider Carlos Lavado won the 250GP World Championships in 1983 and 1986. He was also the President of the FMV (Venezuelan Federation) from 1992 to 2006, and has been involved with duties at the FIM since 1984.

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MotoGP

Indianapolis GP Named Best Grand Prix by MotoGP

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At the conclusion of each GP season, an awards ceremony is held to celebrate the year’s champions, crowning the top riders in each category, the top manufacturers, and even the top venue for the season.

This year, the honors of the latter went to familiar locale, as the Red Bull Indianapolis GP round was named the “Best Grand Prix” of the 2014 season, making it the first North American round to receive such an honor.

Selection criteria for the award included consideration of the venue, promotion, and overall facility operations. For the 2014 race, Indianapolis Motor Speedway once again repaved its infield section, making alterations to several turns in order to facilitate passing and adding to the track’s overall consistency. In response to those efforts, the new configuration was widely praised by the GP competitors.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Will Race in Austria, Starting in 2016?

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MotoGP looks set to head to Austria from 2016. Today, Red Bull co-founder Dieter Mateschitz and Dorna reached an agreement to host an Austrian round of the series at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. The agreement is merely preliminary, and subject to the track gaining FIM homologating the track and granting it a license to stage a MotoGP race.

The Red Bull Ring – previously known as the A1 Ring, before being bought by Mateschitz – has been upgraded and this year hosted both a round of Formula 1 and a round of the Red Bull Air Race. It was also the scene of the last Austrian Grand Prix, held back in 1997. The race was dropped after that year due to poor spectator attendance.

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WSBK

WSBK: Test Ban Lifted Ahead of 2015 Rule Changes

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With new technical regulations set to come into effect for the 2015 season in World Superbikes, the Superbike Commission has decided to lift its customary testing ban.

Instead of testing being prohibited for the months of December and January, the World Superbike and World Supersport teams will be allowed to continue testing, with only a short break over the holiday period. Testing will no be banned from December 21st, 2014 to January 4th, 2015.

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MotoGP

MotoAmerica Announces Its 2015 Class Structure

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MotoAmerica, the organization which replaces the DMG in running the US AMA series, has given their first peek into the future, by announcing the rules package. Though still not finalized, the package does give a very clear indication of MotoAmerica and KRAVE’s thinking, and the direction they wish to steer motorcycle racing in America in.

Four classes have been announced, with two more currently being weighed. The series will feature two superbike classes, Superbike and Superstock 1000, which will run concurrently. There will also be two middleweight classes, Supersport and Superstock 600, which replace Daytona Sportbike and the Supersport series.

For the moment, the four classes will be very similar to the classes they replace, with the exception of Superstock 1000, which will be run along the same lines as the FIM Superstock 1000.

However, MotoAmerica make it very clear in their press release that the eventual goal is to bring the Superbike, Supersport, and Superstock 600 rules used at the world championship level, with the aim of bringing more American talent to world championship racing.

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MotoGP

MotoGP: Grand Prix Commission Agrees to Lower Bike Weight & Freeze Software Development for Factory Option

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The Grand Prix Commission met at Misano to agree a couple of steps on the long road towards creating a single, unified MotoGP class from 2016.

The four parties to the GPC agreed that the minimum weight in the MotoGP class would be reduced from 160kg to 158kg, and agreed to freeze development of the software for all Factory Option class bikes from 30th June 2015.

From that point on, work will switch to the spec, or unified software, ready for the start of 2016.

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MotoGP

Is US Superbike Racing on the Verge of a Revival?

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Motorcycle road racing in the US looks set for a revival after its years in the wilderness. Today, the AMA announced that the rights to road racing in the US have been reacquired from the Daytona Motorsports Group, and handed to a consortium led by Wayne Rainey and Chuck Aksland. The KRAVE Group will run a new series of races in North America from 2015, under the joint auspices of the AMA and the FIM.

It has been a long and difficult few years for motorcycle road racing in the US. Since the DMG bought the rights to the AMA Superbike series, at the start of the 2008 season, the series has been in a steady decline.

Long-serving staff were replaced, circuits were dropped, classes were dropped, rejigged and renamed, and the manufacturers – or rather, the national distributors of the Japanese manufacturers – were either chased out of the series, or left over disagreements over the technical regulations.

The series reached a low point this year, when the AMA Pro Racing Superbike series held a grand total of just six races. Making things worse was the fact that just one of those rounds was in California, traditionally a very strong base for motorcycle racing in the US.

To alleviate the situation, Roadracing World’s John Ulrich stepped in to organize the Superbike Shootout, a three-race series held in California and Utah, to offer road racers something approaching a fuller season. However, DMG did not have a deal to televise the Superbike series, relying instead on live internet streaming of the events.

The decline of the series cannot be laid completely at the door of the DMG. They took over the AMA Superbike series at the start of 2008, a few months before the global financial crisis hit. That crisis had a massive impact on all forms of motorsports, and saw a great deal of sponsorship money evaporate.

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Racing

So Long DMG — New North American Road Racing Series Established by Wayne Rainey & Co.

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For months now, we have been talking about a North American road racing series that would compete against the ailing AMA Pro Road Racing championship that DMG runs. The series in question was rumored to be headed by Dorna and Wayne Rainey, and today’s news confirms at least half of that partnership, as the three-time World Champion is affiliated with the project

Called MotoAmerica, the North America series is run by KRAVE Group LLC. Rainey is a partner in the KRAVE Group, along with Chuck Aksland who was a 20-year manager of Team Roberts and recently the Vice President of Motor Sport Operations at the Circuit of the Americas race track. Terry Karges, a marketing executive from Roush Performance is a part of the team, as is Richard Varner, a motorcycle industry entrepreneur.

According to the AMA, MotoAmerica will promote and manage the series, which will be sanctioned by the AMA and FIM North America. This means that MotoAmerica will be able to award AMA and FIM North America #1 plates to series class champions, replacing the role of AMA Pro Road Racing as run by the Daytona Motorsports Group.

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WSBK

No Compensation for Lost World Superbike Rounds

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The loss of the South African round of World Superbikes, when the safety improvements to the Welkom circuit could not be completed in time for homologation, meant that the WSBK calendar had lost two rounds from its 2014 calendar, with both South Africa and the Moscow Raceway event having been scrapped.

Two rounds meant the loss of two World Supersport races and four World Superbike races, a total of 50 points for WSS and 100 points for WSBK.

The loss of those points left both championships much closer to being decided. Tom Sykes leads the World Superbike championship by 44 points with 150 points still at stake, while Michael van der Mark is even closer to the World Supersport championship, leading Jules Cluzel by 53 points with just 75 points left.

The teams, but most especially the riders, felt that they had had a chance to try to reopen the championship races taken away from them.

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