Seeping Matter

World Superbike USA weekend is nearly here and I can hardly wait.  (Since I can barely concentrate I figure I may as well blog about it.)  Derrick and I will be in attendance.  This year we’re sitting in the Paddock Grandstand at Miller Motorsports Park, which should be a very interesting and awesome change from where we have always been up to this year, down by the Tooele turn.

By the way, there is still time for you to get here, if you hurry.

Anyway, the last couple of years Derrick hasn’t been up for autograph hunting.  But since we’re going multiple days this year maybe I can talk him into it.  Here’s some of the autographs I’d like to collect:

• Sterilgarda Yamaha’s James Toseland, two-time World Superbike Champion
• Alitalia Aprilia’s Max Biaggi, former 250cc World Champion
• BMW Motorrad Motorsport’s Troy Corser, former Australian and AMA Superbike Champion
• Xerox Ducati’s Michel Fabrizio
• Alstare Suzuki’s Leon Haslam

As long as I’m dreaming, we might as well throw in Troy Bayliss (three-time World Superbike Champion), Nicky Hayden (former AMA Superbike and MotoGP Champion), and Ben Spies (three-time AMA Superbike and current World Superbike Champion).  Maybe they’ll be there, you know, to visit, and meet me and all that.

Forecast is for rain on Saturday, which should make practice a bit difficult, but it looks like Sunday and Monday will be great days.  Can’t think of anything more awesome to do on Memorial Day than watch World Superbike racing, and also think of my grandma who passed away a few years ago, and hates racing.

This week Yamaha announced a scale-back of their factory racing efforts in North America, specifically, for AMA Supercross, AMA Motocross, and AMA Road Racing.  Yamaha partners, or “satellite teams” in racing vernacular, will carry forward Yamaha’s racing efforts in these areas.

For AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross, L&M Racing will carry the Yamaha torch along with other satellite teams (think Mach3 or Yamaha of Troy or the like).  This makes sense; Yamaha’s factory team this year was a bust, whilst James Stewart for L&M won the 450 Supercross title.  Satellite teams with factory support have proven to be extremely competitive in these series and in fact have won quite their fair share of titles.

Not so in AMA Road Racing.  Satellite teams in AMA may have varying degrees of success, but the factory teams have historically pretty much ruled the roost in AMA Superbike, for example.

Last year, when it was announced by the AMA that the Daytona Motorsports Group was going to destroy AMA road racing once and for all, Honda followed with an announcement of their own, stating a new plan wherein Honda would no longer have a factory team, but instead would let the satellite team Corona Honda carry the Honda torch.

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like Yamaha’s announcement this week that Graves Yamaha will be the primary Yamaha road racing team in North America.  In fact, you could almost accomplish this press release with a little bit of simple find-and-replace word substitution (Honda->Yamaha, Corona->Graves).

Where does this lead?  Well, in Honda’s case, one year later they announced that they were pulling out of AMA Road Racing indefinitely, because the DMG has screwed up AMA Road Racing so badly.  Of course, this is my interpretation; here’s exactly what Honda said:  “Regrettably the current AMA/DMG racing environment does not align with our company goals.”

In other words, “NASBike is not really what we had in mind.”

It isn’t like Honda doesn’t know how to win in road racing.  It was just a few years ago that Nicky Hayden won the MotoGP title for Repsol Honda, and a handful of AMA titles before that.  Even more recently, James Toseland took the World Superbike title for Ten Kate Honda.  When they pulled out, Honda was very competitive in AMA Road Racing also.  This isn’t Kawasaki we’re talking about here.

The move to from full factory effort to pure satellite support was prompted by DMG’s promise to ruin AMA Road Racing.  After a one-year trial, that immediately led to them pulling out of AMA Road Racing altogether.  It is important to note that they are still fully involved in World Superbike and MotoGP.  It isn’t that they don’t believe in road racing; they don’t believe in NASBike.

Now it appears Yamaha is on a similar path.  Eerily similar, in fact.  Their AMA effort was beyond competitive — some might say “dominant” — toward the end of the season this year.  And of course, Yamaha took the World Superbike, World Supersport, and MotoGP titles this year.  Yet they are pulling back in almost the exact same way Honda did last year.

Fast forward one year, and I will be completely not surprised to hear that Yamaha, too, is pulling out of AMA Road Racing.  In fact, I’ll be surprised if it takes that long.

So, with Honda gone, Yamaha on their way out, who is left?  Not Buell, the American make that the whole messed up class structure was presumably created for, since Harley-Davidson has announced the discontinuation of that make.  Ducati, incredibly strong in both World Superbike and MotoGP, has hardly any presence in AMA Road Racing.  And now that Mat Mladin has retired, you have to wonder how much longer NASBike can last.

Will DMG finally realize their stupidity and repent of their grievous sin?  Or are they too proud to change, and instead they will continue to drive AMA Road Racing into oblivion?  Perhaps I should have more faith, but I’m a realist, not an optimist.  If I were you, I wouldn’t buy my tickets too far in advance, if you buy them at all.

Ooh, that title has a nice sound to it.

Ben Spies Tipping It In. Image Source: www.superstreetbike.com

Yesterday in Portimão, the last stop on the 2009 World Superbike tour, Yamaha’s Ben Spies came from ten points behind to clinch the 2009 World Superbike title from the clutches of Ducati’s Noriyuki Haga.  I had to skip recording the afternoon NFL game just so I could get the World Superbike broadcasts right away.  I had to skip the Sunday evening sports get-together with the neighborhood buddies in order to watch the races instead.  And I must admit I cheered, jumped right out of my chair and clapped vigorously when Haga low-sided in Race 1.

You could say that it pleases me that he won.

In his rookie season, Spies took a record 11 poles, including a record seven in a row, and 14 wins.  I was at Miller Motorsports Park last May when he broke the record for consecutive pole positions.  It was dang awesome to be there, at the only American stop in the World Superbike tour, cheering on the only American in World Superbike.

It’s something we miss here in America.  Sure, there’s some American things that are fine, like college football, and some that are just flat-out lame, like NASCAR.  Regardless, we get so wrapped up in our own little world here that we miss out on the really great things going on in the rest of the world.  It’s too bad we are so lame like that.

I have bittersweet feelings about Ben moving on to MotoGP.  I think he could be a dominant force in World Superbike for many seasons to come if he would stay.  At the same time, MotoGP is the pinnacle of motorcycle road racing, and he definitely deserves this opportunity to take a shot at the very best the world has to offer.  Tech3 Yamaha is not exactly a factory MotoGP team, but it is probably the best satellite team in MotoGP.  Hopefully this is just the beginning.

Once upon a time, there was a nice young man named AMA Superbike.  He really looked up to his big brother, named World.  In fact, AMA really wanted to grow up to be just like World.  So he tried to emulate his big brother in every way.

His big brother had some great friends, with names like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki.  AMA also made friends with these people.

World was really into motorcycle racing.  AMA was really into motorcycle racing too.

World Superbike worked with his friends Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki to create a racing series based on 600cc and 1000cc production sport bikes.  This helped his friends to produce more powerful, better handling, higher quality motorcycles for their customers.  And it helped World create a great racing series that racing fans not only loved but could identify with, because they knew they could go out and buy bikes almost just like those to ride themselves.  When AMA saw how great the World Superbike racing series was, AMA worked with those same friends to create a racing series too.  The AMA Superbike racing series was great also.

Everything was great.  World Superbike had a great racing series, and so did AMA Superbike.  World Superbike had millions of great fans, and so did AMA Superbike; in fact, they shared many of the same fans.  World Superbike had many great riders, and so did AMA Superbike; in fact, some riders used to move from one series to the other.

Then, one day on his way home from school, AMA met a very bad person named DMG.

At first, he tried not to be friends with DMG.  After all, he knew DMG’s reputation.  He knew that DMG was responsible for turning NASCAR stock car racing, which used to race cars that were actually based on stock cars, into such a pathetic form of racing that it was the laughing stock of the auto racing world.

But DMG was persistent and persuasive.  DMG kept telling AMA that it wouldn’t hurt to be friends.  DMG kept saying how many fans NASCAR had, and conveniently avoided the fact that most NASCAR fans are drunk redneck alcoholics that don’t even pay attention to the race.  DMG kept saying how many racers NASCAR had, and conveniently avoided the fact that none of them really had that much racing talent.

AMA knew he should not be friends with DMG.  But despite knowing better, he gave into temptation.  He started hanging out with DMG even though he knew he shouldn’t.

World said he should not do this.  ”Don’t be fooled by DMG,” said World.  ”He doesn’t know anything about racing — especially motorcycle racing.  He will ruin your life!”

Suddenly, AMA reacted in a way he never had before.  ”You are not the boss of me!” he shouted.  ”You can’t tell me what to do!  I can do whatever I want!”

AMA stormed out of the house.  With nowhere to go, he went over to DMG’s house.  ”Wow, World must not be that good of a friend to treat you that way,” said DMG sympathetically.  ”I would never treat you that way.”

“What should I do?” asked AMA.  ”I don’t understand why World doesn’t want us to be friends.”

DMG replied, “He just doesn’t appreciate you.  You’re better than him!  Trust me.  You don’t need that dumb old World Superbike!  I’ll show you how to make a really great racing series!”

Unfortunately, AMA listened to DMG.  He changed his entire racing series from a proven successful formula to something most of his former fans now refer to as NASBike.  He turned his back on his friends like Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Kawasaki.  In fact, once he moved away from World Superbike and started hanging out with DMG, Honda said that he could not be friends with AMA anymore.  AMA’s three-time champion left to race for World instead, and AMA’s former seven-time champion said he wouldn’t race anymore if AMA didn’t quit being friends with DMG.  A year later, he retired for good.

Despite all of this, AMA wouldn’t stay away from DMG.  Before, AMA looked up to World and wanted to be like him; now, for some reason AMA thought he was better than World, and felt for some reason like this was important.  So AMA wouldn’t race at the best tracks if World was also there at the same time.  AMA would sometimes wait a month or more to show television coverage of their races.  And the new race format was so confusing and ridiculous that nobody could understand it.

Before too long, everyone who used to be friends with AMA forgot about him.  Everyone except DMG.  Everyone else forgot about him, because he forgot about all of them.  They all just became friends with World instead, and forgot that AMA was even there anymore.

And that was how AMA went from being awesome to nothing in just one year.  And he lived miserably ever after.  The End.

Moral

The moral of this story is:  DMG bites.

Update:

I sent a link to this post to the AMA with the following message:

To Whom It May Concern:

Thought you might be interested to read my latest blog post on AMA Pro Road Racing (http://blog.mvryan.org/2009/10/the-sad-tale-of-ama-superbike-a-bedtime-fable/), which was written not so much as a bash session, but more as an interesting retrospective.
I learned one very interesting thing about myself writing it.  I’ve lived in Utah for over 9 years.  I’ve attended every single AMA Supercross in Salt Lake, as well as others nearby.  I’ve attended every AMA and World Superbike event at Miller Motorsports Park since the track opened.  I watch every AMA Supercross, AMA Motocross, World Superbike, MotoGP, and Formula One race on TV.  You could say I’m a racing fan.
I also used to watch every AMA road racing event on TV.  That is, up until this year.  I watched the first event, but when I couldn’t make any sense of the classes, had to wait for (sometimes several) weeks to watch the events on TV, and when you refused to come to Miller’s this year, I completely lost interest.
That’s what I found interesting:  Between you and DMG, you messed it up so much, in fact, that I, a true racing fan, completely forgot the series was even going on.  Note, I did not actively choose to boycott in protest of the changes.  The changes you made had the effect of causing me to lose interest.  I don’t care about the series anymore – it is as uninteresting to me as a club racing series in another part of the country.
So there’s some feedback for you.  If your intent was to gain fans, well, it seems what you did was exactly the opposite.

I’ll let you know if I hear from them.

What was the first car you ever rode in?  You know, the car that brought you home from the hospital after you were born? In my case, it was a 1970 Boss 302 Mustang that looked exactly like this one.

1970 Boss 302 Mustang = Awesome

This ruined me for life.

There wasn’t too much I could do about this while I was growing up.  I couldn’t afford my own car (or motorcycle) even after I was old enough to drive.  So mostly I would just ride my 20″ Redline around, in full aero tuck down big hills until that time I lost my balance, crashed, and broke my fall with my face.

Now as an grown-up, or at least an adult, silencing this addiction is much harder.  I’ve been to supercross races, motocross races, NASCAR races, ALMS races, World Superbike races, and AMA Superbike races before the Daytona Motorsports Group ruined it.  I watch every Formula One, World Superbike, and MotoGP race that gets televised.  This helps but doesn’t fully address the problem.

So about ten years ago, I bought myself a used 1988 Honda CRX Si with my annual bonus from IBM.  This car was not pretty at all.  But it was fun to drive, and pretty fast.  This really helped my addiction problem. Then the CRX died.  That was a sad, sad day.

I bought my 1998 Kawasaki KX-250 to feed the addiction.  And boy, it works.  My adrenaline rushes every time I throw my leg over and kick it started.  I shift into first, crack the throttle about 1/4 open, and release the clutch and that thing will climb through the gears just about as fast as I can shift.  What can compare to motorcycle acceleration? Nothing.  Well, a Ferrari, I guess, or a Corvette.  But I can’t afford a Ferrari – not yet, anyway. So yeah, my motorcycle will address this problem, except I never get to ride it.  It’s too hard to get enough free time all together to go ride.

So my addiction is not getting fed again. Which is why I test drove this.

2003 Nissan 350Z Track Model = Awesome

Boy, am I in trouble. My only hope is that someone buys it before I break down and get it myself.

P.S. I stole that picture from Innovative Motors, I hope they don’t mind too much.

Last Friday’s running of the Daytona 200 was our first glimpse at the new AMA Pro Racing as managed by the Daytona Motor Group.  Regular readers of my blog will recall my scepticism when the DMG originally announced their plans to “improve” the series.

This year’s revised Daytona 200 was a mixed bag at best.  Attempts to make that class (whatever it was called) more competitive only partially succeeded.  The Buells were surprisingly fast, well-mannered, and competitive compared to the Japanese bikes, much more so than in previous years in Formula Extreme.  However, the other makes, like Aprilia, Ducati, and Triumph, were merely aslo-rans.  Time will tell whether those race bikes can also be competitive – where “time” in this case could mean several seasons.

They also chose to run the race at night under lights.  This was done presumably to increase attendance, I guess, or for TV reasons; I can’t imagine why else they would do it, because it surely doesn’t make for a better racing experience.  Then, about halfway through the race, when Josh Hayes had a healthy six-second lead, that lead was erased when some lights in the upper part of the rear grandstand went out, presumably creating an “unsafe racing condition” and bringing out the yellow flag.

See, the DMG is all about avoiding “unsafe racing conditions.”

So while they were circling the track, under yellow for safety reasons due to an unsafe racing condition, one of the riders couldn’t see well and ran into a slower rider at a fairly high rate of speed, leaving that rider writhing in pain against the wall on the back straight.  So much for holding a caution period in order to make things safer.

Note, this all started because they decided to hold the race at night.

Actually, not true.  This all started when the DMG took over AMA Pro Racing.

The Daytona 500 took place this past weekend, at least most of it.  I generally watch the Daytona 500 each year, and maybe the Talladega 500.  That’s about all the NASCAR I can stand each year.  This is an odd thing for someone like me who is really into racing in general.

This is worth exploring.

NASCAR stands for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.  The key word in there is “stock.”  Originally, stock car racing was about cars that resembled something you could actually buy at a car dealership.  Manufacturers would presumably compete, in part to make their cars better, and in part to encourage sales (the old “what wins on Sunday sells on Monday” adage).

Consider, this same formula is used within other professional racing series, like AMA Motocross and Supercross, and World Superbike.  True, those bikes are modified forms of stock, but at least there is a resemblance to something I can buy.  Yamaha can’t run EFI on James Stewart’s YZ450F, and the only reason is because they don’t sell a fuel injected YZ450F.  And in series like AMA Superstock, the bikes are bone-stock.

Of course, there’s another way this can work.  You can ignore stock altogether and race pure racing prototypes.  This is the method used by Formula One and MotoGP, which is also awesome.

What is not awesome is what NASCAR does – pretend their cars are stock when they are not.  This started some 20 or 25 years ago.  I don’t know if it was the first one, but I remember wondering how Ford could race their Ford Taurus in NASCAR when it was a front-wheel-drive V6, but NASCAR races 350ci V8 engines driving the rear wheels.  Of course it started long before this, where teams were building their own cars in their own shops instead of starting off by acquiring a stock version and building from that.

Now, they are racing the Car of the Future, whatever that is.  So what you have out there are Fords, Chevys, Dodges, and Toyotas that all have the same body style.  Even the front grilles are the same on each car, the only thing different being the stickers that are made to look like front grilles.

Since they have run out of ways to mess up the car, they’ve started trying to mess up the program.  Last week’s race had at least one hour of preliminary garbage before the race actually began, including:

• Interviews with every single driver and crew chief
• A detailed explanation of the sport, the cars, the rules, etc.
• A country music concert
• Some famous person singing the national anthem
• A prayer, wherein an appeal was made so that all the participants would compete safely, despite the fact that they were participating of their own free will in a dangerous sport on a Sunday instead of going to church
• About twenty parade laps

Hey, I’m totally fine with the national anthem, and I’m a religious person so I guess I’m okay with the prayer also, although I think God has much bigger things to worry about than a NASCAR race.  But I think we could skip a lot of that stuff and just get to the race already.

But then I find out they are planning to have a “competition yellow” around lap 25, whatever that means.  It’s bad enough that they throw a caution flag anytime they have the slightest inkling that there might possibly be a hint of something unsafe on the track.  Now they are throwing yellow flags for no reason?  And then, they end the race early, because it rains?

What is going on here?  I mean, we’re treating these guys like NFL quarterbacks!

In Formula One, for example, they don’t have four hours to figure out how to win – they have somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes.  If it rains, they run anyway.  If there is oil on the track, they run anyway.  The best car wins – not the one that just so happens to be able to slingshot to the lead on the back straight on the last lap.  And the drivers need to know how to turn right as well as left.

And a fat slob like Tony Stewart in F1?  Please – he’d pass out from exhaustion after one lap.

Now the Daytona Motorsports Group is going to manage AMA Racing.  Considering what they’ve done with NASCAR, I can hardly wait to see how they ruin the AMA.

When the AMA selected the Daytona Motorsports Group to manage their professional racing series, it seemed like a reasonable thing. DMG would be in charge of racing and promotion, and the AMA could focus on the casual rider.

At least, it has seemed reasonable, until recently. Things changed when the DMG (motto: “We Make Cool Things Suck!”) decided to make wholesale changes to the AMA road racing class structure that seem utterly ridiculous. Roger Edmundson tried to defend their decisions but ended up showing that he really knows nothing about AMA road racing at all; just read the link above and notice some of the boneheaded things he says. Roger, have you ever even seen an AMA street race?

One big problem I see with this is that it will completely separate AMA riders from the world series, namely World Superbike and MotoGP. How can we expect North American riders to be picked up for 1000cc World Superbikes and 800cc MotoGP prototype bikes if the premier class becomes a dumbed-down restricted-ability 600cc class?

Hey Roger. I have another idea. While you’re at it, why not put restrictor plates on all of the motorcycle carburetors? We could drop the horsepower down to lower than what you can buy in the showroom, literally starving those engines for air and fuel! Lets weigh the riders with their bikes, so the fit riders don’t have any advantage over the fat ones who look like, say, Tony Stewart! Then, instead of having them run on all of these “dangerous” street circuits, lets have them ride around and around in circles on oval tracks! Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun to watch.

I’ve wondered for a while what the difference is between World Superbike bikes and AMA Superbike bikes. Are the World Superbike bikes faster, and by how much? Or is it mostly the riders?

Now that they’ve come to Miller Motorsports Park this year, I at least have some anecdotal evidence. AMA Superbike ran the entire course this year, instead of the outer course only, which the World Superbike guys ran. So I went back to last year’s AMA data for Miller Motorsports Park to get my data.

In 2007, the top AMA Superbike Qualifying time was by Ben Spies, at 1:49.405. This year, the top World Superbike Qualifying time was by Carlos Checa at 1:48:193, putting Checa just about 1.2 seconds faster than last year’s top qualifier.

Even more interesting is to take an average of the top 10. In last year’s AMA Superbike qualifying, the average time of the top 10 qualifiers was 1:50.271. This year, the average time of the top 10 World Superbike qualifiers was 1:49.007, again about 1.2 seconds faster.

Another interesting comparison was to look at the slowest qualifying times. This year in World Superbike, the slowest qualifier qualified 29th at 1:52.601. Last year’s 29th-place AMA Superbike qualifier logged a time of 1:58.232.

Until Ben Spies or Mat Mladin race World Superbike, we’ll never know for sure how they compare to the likes of Troy Bayliss, Troy Corser, Carlos Checa, Nori Haga, and the other World Superbike folk. Mat Mladin, being from Australia, surely could have gone on to race World Superbike by now if he wished – he’s won six AMA Superbike titles after all. Methinks he enjoys cherrypicking in AMA Superbike and so I won’t expect him to move up soon. The rumor is that Spies will be moving on to MotoGP next year, not World Superbike. Personally, I’d sure like to see at least one good US rider in World Superbike, so we can find out if the World Superbike riders are really that much better, or is it just that the bikes are that much quicker.

Personally, I think the bikes are probably about one second faster. I have a very high opinion of World Superbike rider abilities. This especially shows up in the slower riders, as there was not nearly so much dropoff in times toward the end, which supports my other hypothesis, which is that World Superbike riders are generally more evenly-matched across the board.

UPDATE:
Freddy Spencer explained a bit in the World Superbike broadcast that the differences between the bikes are subtle; the main thing he mentioned was that World Superbike bikes are allowed to run more aggressive camshafts and timings than AMA Superbike bikes. I suppose that could explain about a second per lap advantage on a 3 mile circuit. But I’m guessing that, overall, World Superbike riders are much better across the board than in the AMA.

Two big questions though. First, why is it that the factory Rockstar Makita Suzuki team so completely dominates AMA Superbike (I don’t think they’ve even lost a race in almost two years) but the bikes in World Superbike are much more evenly matched? And second, could Carlos Checa or Troy Bayliss win in AMA Superbike on a brand other than Suzuki?

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the AMA Superbike event at the brand-new Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah. AWESOME.

The new track at MMP is sweet. Rave reviews were given by pretty much everyone who was asked. The fast, wide track, extensive runoff areas, and amenities make it the new standard by which American road courses will be judged. Hey, don’t just take my word for it. I think it was Jake Zemke who said, “It is nice to finally have a world-class road racing facility in the United States.” Most comparisons I heard were not to other road courses in America, but to Formula One courses around the world, which represent the cream of the crop when it comes to racing venues.

Congratulations, Larry Miller, on creating an awesome racing venue. Hopefully you can get the support you deserve to keep the events coming.

As for the event itself, well, the AMA Superbike event was the first ever sanctioned race at the new MMP, and in one of the best races of the year, Ben Spies managed to pull out yet another victory over Mat Mladin and Ben Bostrom. It was SUH-WEET.

Of course, visiting the vendor area is part of the appeal of these events, and this one was no exception. I was surprised at how small the vendor area was, but I expect that it will be bigger next year.

Here’s some pictures:

Here’s a picture of me standing next to a sweet MV Agusta. Oh, yeah. Italian motorcycles.

Here’s a brand-new Triumph Daytona 675. Cycle World is raving about this bike, calling it the best middleweight sportbike available today. Oh, yeah. British motorcycles.

Here’s a picture of me standing behind Ben Bostrom’s racing Ducati, or at least a replica of it. Oh, yeah. Italian motorcycles again.

Finally – the start of the AMA Superbike race. Yes, these people really are insane. They are taking that corner at, oh, let’s say 90 mph.