Honda Road Racerhead #7

With apologies to residents of “the 909,” I almost never look forward to driving out to Fontana. Traffic along the route tends to be horrible, the Inland Empire (in which the city sits) was once declared the meth-lab capital of the world, and a 2008 study found that the city had the highest risk of cancer from air pollution of any Southern California city. More to the point, Auto Club Speedway has several sketchy, trackside walls; lacks elevation change; and is traditionally only lightly attended for its AMA Pro Road Racing round (the owners don’t even open the grandstands, instead sending all spectators to the infield). Throw in the tanking economy and the series problems over the past couple of years, and when I hopped in my car and headed east on Interstate 91 Tuesday morning for the pre-season test, I was prepared to be depressed. That had certainly been the case at this test last year.

The reality was somewhat different, and I found myself pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, the scene was extremely humble in its scale—just sixteen riders participating—but what’s weird is there were actually some pretty good vibes in the pits. For starters, no one there was taking anything for granted—we all appreciated having jobs in the industry and a place to go racing. But it goes beyond that: there’s a realization that this year could very well feature a convergence of talent in the American Superbike class, as ten of the riders on hand—including ’09 SportBike rider Jake Zemke and MotoGP/World Superbike rider John Hopkins, in addition to several of last year’s top class regulars, like Josh Hayes, Tommy Hayden, Larry Pegram, Blake Young, Ben Bostrom, and Taylor Knapp—were on big bikes. Whether it’s due to the recent personnel changes at AMA Pro or just the natural evolution of things, it looks like the first season of the new decade will feature 1000s (plus Pegram’s 1200) as the premier class.

The most common brands on the track were Suzuki and Yamaha (with seven each), which makes sense considering they’re the two manufacturers fielding the most support. In both cases, the companies had to get creative to find ways to go racing at a time when bike sales are falling through the floor. In Yamaha’s case, an October press release had caused alarm, announcing as it did that the company was farming out its racing efforts to Graves Motorsports. While the change did in fact presage the cutting of several employees’ jobs (including Bostrom), the various parties involved found a way to put three riders—Bostrom, Hayes, and Chris Clark—on superbikes that are not only very similar to one another in spec, but close to the bike that won the final four races of last season (though the Akrapovic exhaust has been swapped for a Graves unit).

Of that trio, only Hayes is actually racing for Graves (along with Daytona SportBike riders Josh Herrin and Tommy Aquino). The other two are with Pat Clark Motorsports as—in an example of that creativity I mentioned above, and with help from Fastrack Riders’ David Pyle—that Las Vegas-based satellite outfit has rounded up sponsorship from Palms Casino and Las Vegas Motor Speedway and will be receiving technical information from (and giving it to) the Graves squad. For Bostrom, it’s not unlike the 2001 season that saw him dropped from the Ducati Corse World SBK squad to the private L&M team, and it will be interesting to see if he blossoms like he did back then. At the very least, he’ll be putting to good use the mentoring skills that he displayed with Herrin at Graves, only this time with Chris Clark.

The team also employs some of those aforementioned ex-Yamaha employees (like Jefferson Burks and Tony Romo) as well as some refugees from Corona Racing (like Ron Heben and Bob Reichmann—both of whom had in turn been refugees from Honda last year). And both teams are also getting support from longtime Yamaha sponsors Yamalube and GYTR.

However, with Yamaha’s direct support being pulled and the Graves and Clark operations still fielding five riders between them, the teams faced a problem of getting all their staff and equipment to the tracks. Enter Perry Melneciuc, the former AMA 250cc GP racer who has in the past wrenched for Honda, Kawasaki, and Ducati Austin, and who last year worked with Bobby Fong and Barrett Long under the Paradigm Racing tent. Melneciuc was ready to field his own effort, which he’s doing this year with riders Dane Westby and Clinton Seller, bikes from Yamaha, and support from community-development group Project 1 Atlanta. As is the case with the Pat Clark team, bikes were built by Graves—which has had to sub-let a race shop from Erion Racing to house all the extra work—and are now being maintained in-house. Meanwhile, the Project 1 team solves Graves’ transportation problems by hauling some of that team’s equipment and staff to the events in their truck—which was picked up from Yamaha. As you can see, it took some scrapping for Yamaha to go racing this year, but they’ve managed. (Check out our Between the Races interview with Yamaha’s Tom Halverson.)

As Kevin Schwantz says to the OTT boys, “We’ve got to be excited to be going racing.”

As for Rockstar/Makita Suzuki, the team finds itself entering the post-Mat Mladin era without a single rider who has ever won a superbike race before, although neither Hayden nor Young can be considered anything approaching a pushover. The team was on last year’s bike as Fontana, as were the other Suzuki riders, including Jordan Suzuki’s Yates and new National Guard/Jordan Suzuki signee Zemke (one of several riders looking particularly svelte, with other dieters being a 20-pounds-lighter Chris Ulrich and—of all people—training-addicted Bostrom, who rather unconvincingly insisted he was sporting a beer gut several weeks ago).

So effective has Ulrich’s training been that he now weighs the same as Hopkins—which was handy at Auto Club Speedway since Hopper was riding CU’s bike (he said he’d barely changed anything on it and was quite impressed with Chris’ setup abilities). By the way, the Hopper’s Monster Energy sponsorship extends to the entire Team Hammer (i.e., Martin Cardenas as well), which is now called M4/Monster Suzuki; in addition, Chris’ RoadracingWorld.com team will also get Monster branding.
If 2010 is the year of the scrapper, then you just knew Pegram was going to be out on the track at Fontana, which he was on new Ducati 1198s wearing last year’s fairings. Larry has signed a new leathers-sponsorship deal with Cortech, which combines with his Shoei helmets and TCX boots deals to make him a Helmet House rider, head-to-toe.

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