Change in the Air in Daytona

Well, another Daytona 200 road race is in the books (almost-I'll explain in a moment) and all kinds of wild things happened this year that made it quite unique. We have a new winner in the young Attack Kawasaki pilot Chaz Davies, even though he finished over 30 seconds behind Erion Honda's Josh Hayes. What gives?

As of this writing, Josh's Formula Xtreme CBR600RR was disqualified due to what the AMA called an illegal crankshaft modification. Erion Honda is appealing the decision, and claims that it's basically the same crankshaft they used last year that was considered perfectly legal. However, there's a new Head Tech Inspector who's basically saying the crank is jacked up. So we have a new winner unless the appeal successfully overturns the ruling. For Josh Hayes, his huge dream of winning the 200 has turned into a nightmare. He rode a perfect race, and his team performed perfect pit stops, but it may well have all been for naught. As long as I've been following the 200 I have never seen such a thing happen before, and it's a sad situation.

This is made even tougher for Josh in that his victory would have marked the end of a very short era. A new sanctioning body has taken over AMA pro roadracing, and at a press conference the day before this year's 200 it was stated that Superbikes will once again be the machines that will contest this prestigious contest on the high banks, thus ending the reign of the Formula Xtreme 600s.

For me, I always thought the change that took the premier class out of the premier race in Daytona was silly. They claim it was done for safety reasons as the Superbikes were occasionally blowing up tires during testing, but there were things that could have been done to insure that wouldn't happen. Indeed, another chicane has already been incorporated into the road course to lower the duration of the top speed portion of the track, thus reducing the heat on the tires. There's also the option of introducing a mandatory pit stop policy to further help protect the riders from tire problems, although I think the tire makers have a lot of strategies as well to make sure the hoops can handle anything the high banks can throw at them.

Of course, a very astute veteran photographer pointed out to me that the new sanctioning body can say the 200 will run Superbikes, but then they can pretty much call anything a Superbike if they want to. When you have the power to completely rewrite the rulebook, there's no limit to the changes you could conceivably impose. Granted, it's more than likely that Superbikes will still stay the 1,000cc machines we're used to, but his point is well taken.

Another problem introduced when they went to the 600s for the Big Race was a lack of participation from the biggest factory teams (excepting Honda) and therefore some of the top riders. The race was moved from Sunday to Saturday, something to this day I never got used to. For some reason, this schedule alteration messed with my whole Bike Week clock and I hope the new keepers of the series move it back to Sunday as well. Again, they have the power to do just about anything they want, so we shall see.

You might be curious at this point as to who the heck the new sanctioning body is, and why I think there may be some sweeping changes afoot. It was quite appropriate that the announcement of the change was made in Daytona, for the new body in charge of AMA Pro Racing is the Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG). From the press release:

"Led by Roger Edmondson, the founder of the CCS motorcycle racing series and currently the President of the Grand American Road Race Series LLC, and Jim France, Vice Chairman/Executive Vice President of NASCAR, DMG will assume responsibility for the AMA Superbike Series, the AMA Motocross Series, the AMA Flat Track Series, the AMA Supermoto Series, the AMA Hillclimb Series and ATV Pro Racing. The agreement in principle does not include the AMA Supercross and AMA Arenacross Series, the rights to which are held by Live Nation. Daytona Motorsports Group will license the use of the AMA name and trademarks to promote their motorcycle racing activities."

So now you know. The same people running NASCAR will now be running AMA's road racing interest, spearheaded by Edmondson who won a substantial award from the AMA several years ago involving. . . racing. Long story. An aside: during the press conference AMA President and CEO Rob Dingman publicly apologized to Edmondson for the incident years ago. After animosity with Roger, now it's a freakin' love fest. Weird, actually.

The reaction to this new management arrangement, if I have the capability of taking the mood temperature of the room (questionable), varied from cautiously optimistic to troubled. In terms of accurately accessing my mood, something I am very capable of doing with uncanny accuracy, I sense concern. On the one hand, the NASCAR group has proved brilliant at making a fortune off of racing and turning the series into an amazing success. But in terms of actual racing, NASCAR no more resembles actual stock car racing than I resemble George Clooney. It's raised sponsorship saturation to new levels, and overall to me it now looks like miniature golf as opposed to the genuine article. This is all in the name of professionalism, they say, and it is truly a billion dollar corporate undertaking as opposed to a grass roots thing.

Will this happen to U.S. Superbike racing, for good or ill? Edmondson says his love of motorcycle racing drives his plans, and I have no reason to doubt him. And indeed, if they can make motorcycle racing more popular it will be good for riding, period, as it will help grow the non-racing popularity side as well. But I greatly fear the grass roots side of racing will take a major hit. Edmondson said the following:

"I think that it's important that we find a way to move to true professionalism here. I'll give you an example. I don't think that one rider, one bike, a guy getting in a van and going somewhere to race for prize money is professional racing. In other words, the old division used to be, if you made a little more money than you spent, or if you had the potential to make more money than you spent, that was professional racing. Professional racing is when you leave home and your bills are paid for by a sponsor, and you're representing a company. So our goal is to try to build this sport to the point where there are professional teams who are sponsored and who have an entity of their own, much like Richard Childress Racing is in NASCAR."

AMA Superbike: shall we continue with the series we know, or morph into two-wheeled NASCAR? We should know soon.