Honda Road Racerhead #5

One month into the new year—and just over one month before the first AMA Pro Road Racing round of the season—the series is finally beginning to look like a legitimate national road race championship. Five days after Kawasaki announced their continued involvement in AMA racing through a combined factory/Attack effort (which we talked about here last week), Suzuki on Monday issued press release announcing that their factory team will campaign the American Superbike division with riders Mat Mladin, Tommy Hayden, and Blake Young.

Considering the recent success of Yoshimura Suzuki (every premier-class title since 2002, every premier-class win over the past two seasons), this is a major step for the new-look series. Will Rockstar/Makita Suzuki’s dominance continue in 2009? That will be interesting to see. Ben Spies—the reigning and three-time premier-class champion) has moved on to Yamaha and World Superbike, but with a record six of his own crowns in that division, Mladin has to be considered the current favorite in American Superbike. We’ll see how he adjusts to production fork externals and 17-inch wheels, but his teammate Hayden has proven to be very strong on production-based platforms.

I found it interesting that Suzuki’s press release contained the following sentence: “The manufacturer uses [the series] as much for testing and development as for sales and marketing.” When I talked to AMA Pro Racing CEO Roger Edmondson a few weeks ago, he specifically stated that providing a forum for OEMs to perform their testing wasn’t the job of AMA Pro Road Racing. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that a manufacturer can’t use it for that purpose, but they shouldn’t expect that the series will be designed specifically to enable it. If an OEM isn’t using the series for R&D, then that leaves marketing as the other major reason to participate, and this could often be achieved even by utilizing customer teams. More on that in a minute.

The news means that among the Japanese OEMs, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha currently have factory AMA efforts of some sort planned for ’09, with only Honda having pulled out entirely, due to the economic crisis. There were whispers of Big Red re-thinking its decision and racing after all with a Magic Johnson-funded effort, but Cycle News’ Henny Ray Abrams today broke the news that Neil Hodgson will race for the Corona Extra satellite team (but out of American Honda’s Torrance race shop and with an American Honda crew managed by Honda’s Ron Heben).

Throw in new entries from KWS Aprilia and the GEICO-sponsored Richie Morris Racing Buell team, and you’ve got the makings for a much more decent series than seemed possible just a few short months ago. For a while, it looked like Larry Pegram would be on a factory Ducati superbike, but that still hasn’t been confirmed.

Now, please don’t accuse me of writing while wearing rose-colored glasses. The series still faces some severe hurdles, one major example of which is that everything seems to happen far later than what should be considered an acceptable deadline. In addition, there’s the matter of talent dilution—something that marred the series for years and was hoped to be a thing of the past once DMG took over.

In the recent past, top riders had been spread out among four different classes, and while the situation is now better in that regard, with only two principal divisions to choose from (American Superbike and Daytona SportBike), neither of those has been declared a premier division. As a result, we’ve got Suzuki and Yamaha putting their top riders in the 1,000cc class, and Kawasaki going strictly with the middleweight division. Edmondson has said he intends to let the fans decide which is the main class (both will get doubleheaders on most weekends), so we’ll just have to see how things play out. Either way, I can understand the reasons behind the various players’ decisions: Yamaha has a new YZF-R1 that they want to push, Kawasaki has a new ZX-6R that they want to promote, and Suzuki has always been closely associated with liter-bike racing.

While we know who the riders will be at Yamaha and Suzuki, Kawasaki’s lineup is still officially incomplete, as reported by Laurel C. Allen: “Rumors continue to seep from the U.S. Kawasaki camp, which last week announced its intention to combined their factory effort with Richard Stanboli’s Attack Kawasaki satellite to form an ’09 AMA Daytona SportBike effort. Jamie Hacking’s name was conspicuously absent from the press release that listed Roger Hayden as ‘leading the charge,’ but it now seems likely that second seat will go to Hacking after all, though reportedly for a significant pay cut. If that’s the case, he’s still in a far better position than most of his former factory teammates, because while the factory sponsor and semi truck seem to be headed to the new Monster Energy Attack Kawasaki team, nearly the entire ’08 factory crew shared the fate of the thousands of other Americans who found themselves laid off last week. It’ll be good to see the green bikes on track come March, but our hearts go out to anyone looking for work these days. Good luck, guys.”

Well put, Laurel, and I agree completely.

Kawasaki insists that its ’09 team will be a legitimate factory effort, so we should expect a close partnership between Attack and the Irvine office. Still, one would assume that Stanboli’s operation will be handling the day-to-day running of the squad, and once again, I can understand Kawasaki’s decision. With allowed technical modifications being much more limited than they were before now, there’s simply less need for direct involvement by the mother company; farming out much of the work just makes practical (and economical) sense. Hopefully, when the economy improves, this will result in more support going to move teams and riders, which can only be good for the sport.

Another problem facing AMA Pro Road Racing is the recent cancellation of the Red Bull AMA U.S. Rookies Cup. Red Bull announced this week that in addition to Hayden Gillim and Benny Solis (both of whom, it was previously announced, would be headed to the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup following the demise of the U.S. version), Jake Gagne and Joshua Hook will compete overseas this year.

RRX Intern Jeff Feathers weighs in on the move: “These rookies might have a lot of pressure on themselves. In 2008, American JD Beach won the MotoGP Rookies championship, and American former MotoGP Rookie Cameron Beaubier is moving up to the factory Red Bull KTM 125cc Grand Prix team. The boys certainly are preparing for their new roles, with Hayden having visited Dr. Arthur Ting this week to remove a plate from his collarbone, and Solis winning races at the WERA West regional in Las Vegas.”

While he was out here in Cali to go under the knife, Hayden—along with Beach—stayed with Hardcard’s Andy and Dierdre Leisner in Pebble Beach. By the looks of Dierdre’s photos, the boys had a good time.

Last week’s edition of Honda Road Racerhead was written in Portimao, Portugal, where the World Superbike circus was in town for one of their last tests before that series kicks off the 2009 road racing season in Phillip Island at the end of next month. American Ben Spies ended up with the second-best time on what is a far-from-finalized R1, and if he and his Yamaha Motor Italia team can get the setup dialed, they should be a force to be reckoned with this season.

Laurel has some more dope on #19: “While Ben’s got plenty of stuff happening overseas, he’s got a pretty outrageous project happening in his garage at home, too. It started as a Toyota Supra, which Ben picked up with the intention of building a 500-600 horsepower street car, ‘but then I started getting these phone calls from Jamie [Hacking] saying, ‘Hey, I found these carbon-fiber doors, carbon fiber this, carbon fiber that.’ A year and a half later, barely anything’s left of Ben’s original car, and what is left is a six-speed street car that generates 1,050 horsepower at the rear wheels and is capable of an eight-second quarter-mile. ‘It’s pretty fun when you’re rolling 80 or 90 miles an hour and you can just paint 100-yard black marks down the road,’ says Ben.

“Spies admits it’s not exactly a savvy investment (‘I definitely hear from my mom and my CPA about how much of a jackass I am’) but says he doesn’t plan to sell the car any time soon. ‘It’s just one of those things where every time you walk by it or see it, you kind of grin,’ he says. ‘It’s a cool car, pretty much one of the faster street cars you can have, and I like to play stupid when people ask me about it, like I’m some little punk rich kid who doesn’t know anything about cars. People are like, ‘Is it nitrous or turbo?’ and I’ll just tell them it’s powered by [jet turbine manufacturers] Pratt & Whitney.’

“If you’re in the Dallas or Longview, Texas, areas you may have already caught a (brief) glimpse of Spies’ ride; the rest of us can likely expect to see it in a couple of car magazines in the future.”

Wow.

Meanwhile, over in the MotoGP world, cost-cutting changes appear to be heading down the pike. Earlier this month, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta held a meeting with the OEMs in Japan, and together, the group came up with some substantial changes that will likely be finalized at the Sepang test early next month. According to the always-informed Italian website www.gpone.com, these include the following for this season: Shorter practice and qualifying sessions on race weekends (45 minutes instead of 60); a shorter race-morning warm-up session (only 10 minutes); a limit of nine engines per season, per rider (so each one must last two races; although teams won’t be punished if a motor fails before its time); no more post-race tests; only eight days of winter testing (between the ’09 and ’10 seasons); a longer winter testing ban (starting after the Valencia post-season test in November rather than December 1, and ending, as usual, on January 20).

The possible changes planned for the 2010 season are reportedly even further-reaching: One less Grand Prix (17 instead of 18); one bike per rider (hopefully resulting in a larger grid); steel brake rotors instead of carbon; no Friday track action for the MotoGP class (reducing the rounds to just Saturday and Sunday, although the support classes would continue to circulate on Friday); each engine must last three consecutive Grand Prix rounds; reduced prices for motorcycle leasing; bike models must be used for two seasons (amortizing the leasing costs for private teams).

During the Wrooom Ducati Marlboro team launch earlier this month, Ducati Product Manager and Corse boss Claudio Domenicali was asked if making cost-cutting changes to the series might hurt the show for fans.

“Let’s say we’re considering the whole set of stakeholders, and fans are a very important one,” Domenicali answered. “So everything we’ll do will have that in consideration. Of course if you have to adapt the championship in a different economic condition, in one way or the other, something you have to change. So we’re considering reducing the length of the sessions, just by a small amount, but will remain the same number of events, so we have the Friday, the Saturday, and the Sunday. I think that because of what we have in front, some of us will have to give up a little bit. In this case, the guy who will be at the racetrack will have to give up just a little bit of laps, of the rider passing in front of him, but I don’t think this will be a big issue.”

This week, satellite-team principals met with Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta this week in Bologna, Italy, to discuss ways of introducing a model that’s more financially viable for their operations, and several interesting ideas were presented there as well. Compared to the glacial rate at which rule changes occurred until now, this creative burst is impressive, giving credence to the Samuel Johnson quote, “Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.”

Of course economics aren’t the only challenge facing the sport. There’s also the lack of close racing since the advent of the 800s, although at the aforementioned Wrooom event, Casey Stoner downplayed that as a real issue:

“Each year some people have a reason to blame a situation on something,” the 2007 world champ replied. “I watched all the 500 races from the old days from ’80s and ’90s, and they were exactly the same. There was still the occasional races like we had this year that went down to the wire, and then there were lot of times when riders like [Wayne] Rainey and [Kevin] Schwantz just pulled away at the front. I don’t think things are changing because of us; I think that people just forget and look back and say those days were the best . I’ve looked back at those days, and they were very similar to these days. When Mick Doohan was riding, how many races did he pull away at the front? Everyone looks back and says those days were great racing, and I look at the those races and I still see the same situation. I think people should be given credit for whoever does pull away; Dani [Pedrosa] and Valentino [Rossi] have been able to pull away in races, we’re all riding 100 percent. I think the riders who used to play games were very confident in what they had and what they had to do, and I think these days that everyone is that far on the limit and we have put everything into it; otherwise, one little mistake, and we’ve lost. Unless you can get a contract to get all the riders to agree to stay together until the last lap, you’re not going to find anything different.”

I agree Casey in a way, but while many people consider the 500cc era he’s talking about as the Golden Age, I think that MotoGP’s 990cc era was also pretty popular, and it was notable for its great battles. It’s certainly not the riders’ fault that the show has suffered, but that doesn’t mean the situation shouldn’t be addressed.

Since we were talking about Casey, now seems like a good time to give away the Nolan helmets mini duffle bag (big enough to hold two lids) that Laurel picked up on a recent visit to the Nolan factory in Bergamo, Italy. Here’s your trivia question:

Earlier in this column, I mentioned Suzuki’s dominance of the AMA Superbike class. In Grand Prix racing, what is the last season during which all premier-class wins went to one manufacturer, and what was that manufacturer?

If you know the answer, put it in an email and send it to letters@roadracerx.com. Be sure to put “GP Dominance” in the subject line, and to include your full name and address. We’ll pick one correct answer at random and send the winner Laurel’s Nolan swag.

On the subject of the economy, reader John Leach wrote in to let me know that a proud Seattle motorcycle dealership, University Honda Yamaha, shut its doors after fifty years in business. Leach has some photos of the farewell party right here, and there’s a story about the closing here.

Moto Public Relations’ Bryan Peckinpaugh wrote in to say that young racer Johnny Lewis has a new blog on the mainstream athlete-celebrity portal Prolebrity. Check it out at www.prolebrity.com; posting comments on the blog helps encourage future mainstream coverage.

Be sure to check out the MotoGP channel on www.yamaha-racing.com at 6 a.m. EST on Monday for the exclusive unveiling of the 2009 Fiat Yamaha Team YZR-M1 livery that will be raced by Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.

Thanks for reading, and have a great Super Bowl weekend.