The day American Superbike racing died

Dean Adams reported today in superbikeplanet.com, that the deadline imposed by Roger Edmondson and the DMG for the open RFC has come and gone with silence from the manufacturers. This means no Factory Superbike for the 2009 series.

I believe that this is the beginning of the end to factory supported motorcycle roadracing in America. On John Ulrich's site, Alan Wilson, a well regarded motorcycle racetrack designer and operator noted that without the manufacturers, there is no real money available for the series, and without money, it's hard to operate a series.

There's much more to this morass than I can get into here and now, and I'm glossing over some of the important details. But in short, I feel that Roger Edmondson, with the help of the pariahs of the outgoing AMA who handed him the series on a silver platter, have steered this ship aground. In an act of desperate, foolish pride, they set it ablaze and told everyone that it was too far gone to be saved.

When Roger E. came in, he didn't ask the OEMs for input on how the series should be run. He dictated his masterplan of a NASCAR-style marketing campaign where the riders came first, the sponsors, second and the manufacturers, third. No one cares that Tony Stewart drives a Toyota. He's still a crybaby. That doesn't work in motorcycle racing -- it can't work.

In motorcycle racing, none of the technology is lost on die-hard fans. Among my favorites was Honda's fabulous RVF750R RC45. It oozed with technology, and even though it enjoyed limited success on the racetrack compared to the equally fabulous VFR750R RC30 it replaced, what the bike stood for is what made it special to me. It's hard to argue with 190 hp out of a 750cc motor configured in a way that no one else (until the MotoGP machines came out) thought was worth the trouble.

I don't disagree that the AMA series needed to be changed in some fundamental ways. But it's now been changed in such a material way that I doubt if anyone will even care that it exists.

Roger Edmondson has proven once again that he ought to seek employ in another industry. Fifteen years ago he was at the heart of another sickening battle within the AMA. What made it worse is that his tiff with the AMA fleeced its members out of millions of dollars, proving that the AMA isn't good for much of anything -- riding, rights or racing.