Honda Road Racerhead #21

For the second week in a row, I’m writing much of Road Racerhead late into Thursday night—last night because I was driving up to Infineon Raceway on Friday, and this time because I’ll be driving out to Glen Helen Raceway for the opening round of the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Racing Motocross Championship. There’s no MotoGP, World Superbike, or AMA Pro Road Racing this Memorial Day Weekend, but I’m not going to miss this opportunity to attend my home national motocross round today and tomorrow.

That’s right, the big race day is tomorrow, because the folks at MX Sports (the new promoters of national motocross and a branch of the small company that owns Road Racer X) have moved the show from Sunday to Saturday. It’s a change that has been popular with those in the paddock and that has helped line up a very solid television package that includes some live network coverage and is far superior to the delay-dominated AMA Pro Prime Time television solution put together for the national road racing championship.

There’s also a big dirt track race this weekend—the Springfield Mile—and although you didn’t hear it from me, you can expect to see a road racer make an appearance on a Ducati (no, not that Ducati racer, but still pretty cool).

Before I forget, let me give you a heads-up about Road Racer X’s new Facebook page, which our webmaster Keith Burgie put up yesterday. If you’re a fan of the magazine and website, why not make it official?

Infineon was a good time, despite the facts that the blazing sun torched my nose and the breezes blowing off the surrounding grassy hillsides did their usual number on my allergies. The racing was good, the crowd was enthusiastic, and the facility personnel did their usual solid job of promoting the race and making sure fans had a good time once they were there. That sort of roll-up-your-sleeves, old-school race promotion sounds simple, but it’s not practiced by enough tracks these days, and last weekend was evidence of why making the extra effort is worthwhile.

The Wall Street Journal and USA Today have both run recent prominent stories on NASCAR’s sponsorship and fan-attendance woes, and even stick and ball sports are having trouble selling out their arenas and stadiums. It’s obviously a daunting time during which to be trying to attract new sponsors and fans to a sport, but then again, American road racing is a bargain compared to four-wheel racing. Perhaps this is an opportunity to pick up some car-racing emigrants.

The American Superbike class of course saw the win streaks of Mat Mladin (five rounds and eight races, extending back to the last round of last season) and Rockstar/Makita Suzuki (an incredible fifty-three races and nearly three years, thanks to Mladin and Ben Spies) come to an end on Saturday. As Eric Trytko pointed out while interviewing me for yesterday’s www.rumblestripradio.com podcast, you couldn’t ask for a nicer rider than Josh Hayes to get the honors of this achievement, and Josh was justifiably over the moon on Saturday evening, having landed a long-overdo factory superbike ride, scored his first superbike win, and ended two important streaks, all in the same season—and it’s only May!

Twenty-four hours later, however, normal order had been restored, with Mladin coming out on top of a masterful race in which he had to hold off a determined Ben Bostrom and Tommy Hayden from start to finish, starting what may well be another win streak and making for eight wins in nine races this season.

Honestly, I was surprised at how chipper the Aussie was at weekend’s end when I sat down in his Suzuki semi for this week’s Tuesday Conversation, in which he was very complimentary of his competition and even AMA Pro Racing. He won’t have a perfect season, but he’s having to race hard, and that’s something he has always appreciated. As Mat pointed out, there’s a big difference in lap times between missing the setup and having a good day, so a perfect season may never happen in AMA road racing, as it has three times in AMA motocross. And although I didn’t include this part in the interview (because of word-count considerations), he also pointed out that Yoshimura Suzuki’s dominance over the past few years is something of an anomaly:

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