Stop Watch: AMA Superbike Series - A Day At The Races

First, the disappointing things: Compared with the last time I went to an AMA event at Auto Club Speedway-in 2008, pre-DMG-there looked to be far fewer competitors and spectators. The paddock was a relative ghost town, with empty garages and not many spectators wandering around; the ambience was more like being at a club race than a national. In the races we watched on Saturday, the American Superbike class had 22 riders grid for the stat; the Daytona Sportbike class had 25, and the Supersport class had 15 for a total of 62 entries. Compare this with the 2008 round, where 95 riders were spread across four classes. Granted, this year's three classes all run double-headers, whereas pre-DMG only the Superbike class had two races on a weekend and some riders ran multiple classes. Still, the trend is still clear. The AMA has addressed this with the addition of the Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson XR1200 spec series, and hopefully that will close some of the gap and help make the paddock a more bustling place.

I couldn't find fan attendance numbers for either this year or 2008, but it was painfully obvious in so many aspects that fewer people were there: Getting in and out of the track and parking were no problem. Finding a decent place to watch the races was easy (and there aren't many of those at Auto Club Speedway to begin with). The lineups for rider autographs were short. And even the media center was quiet. At this point it's hard to apportion blame for the reduced rider and fan attendance between the AMA/DMG troubles and the country's financial woes, but certainly both are at least partially responsible.

Now, for the positive things: The racing, in spite of the reduced number of riders present, was great. High winds had delayed the festivities most of the day, but the riders and fans seemed to cope with it well and the races went off without a hitch. In the American Superbike race, Larry Pegram, Jake Zemke, Aaron Yates and Josh Hayes put on a great show right to the end of the race, finishing in that order but with any one of the four looking like he could win. Likewise, the Daytona Sportbike race went down to the wire, with Martin Cardenas edging Danny Eslick and Dane Westby for the win. Again, any of a handful of riders could have won that race. The racing was great all last year as well, due to a number of factors: The new regulations for the American Superbike and Daytona Sportbike classes have closed the gap from the haves to the have-nots. Fewer classes mean more top riders in each class. And with Ben Spies now in Europe and Mat Mladin retired, we aren't seeing their dominating performances as we have in the past.

Financial problems, drama and seemingly catastrophic rules changes are part of any racing series, and people that have watched or been a part of motorcycle roadracing for a while will recognize the current situation as not overly unusual. Periods of prosperity alternate with times of difficulty; some of the good times are better than others, and some of the bad times worse than others. The cycle repeats every few years, based sometimes on global forces and sometimes on aspects associated only with a particular racing series. I've been to AMA races where there were a dozen riders in each class with some level of factory support. And I remember going to AMA races in the mid- and late-'80s and seeing just a couple of factory riders in the Superbike and Formula One classes; the rest of the grids were filled with privateers. More recently, it wasn't that long ago that neither Kawasaki nor Yamaha had factory Superbike teams, and yet that situation didn't last long.

I was looking through a back issue for something earlier this week, and I came across a column I wrote in 2002, right around the time World Superbike was going through a tough patch of its own and things weren't looking good for that series. The major manufacturers were threatening to abandon the series over regulations that seemingly changed every couple of weeks. The rules would eventually change, spec tires would be introduced, and most of the manufacturers would leave the series. Look at how that mess turned out: World Superbike is certainly doing well just a few years later.

Just as World Superbike rebounded from its difficulties and the AMA series has bounced back from troubled times in the past, our series will overcome its current problems and hopefully emerge better and stronger. After watching the races at Auto Club Speedway, I'm confident that we are headed in that direction.