Why MotoAmerica Grinds My Sprocket

"flatisflat" (flatisflat) 10/12/2020 at 11:00 • Filed to: None

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I wish they televised THIS series!

For a professional national series, MotoAmerica sure does feel like it’s full of amateurs.

Disclaimer: I know that a number of these guys are really good. I know that Garrett Gerloff is now over in WorldSBK and holding his own. The below is strictly my junk opinion and generic recap of the 2020 season.

This hot take comes to you at the end of MotoAmerica’s race weekend at Indianapolis. It is the next-to-last weekend of their season, with nearly every class running two races per event. If I’m not mistaken, the championship has been decided in the Supersport class, the Junior Cup, Twins Cup, and the Superbike Class.

In the Junior and Twins Cup classes, domination has come in the form of Rocco Landers. Especially in the Junior Cup (300/400cc’s), Rocco’s standard protocol has been to take pole position, then immediately create a 5+ second lead from the get-go on his way to the win. If you also follow the Red Bull Rookies Cup, this name might be familiar as Rocco is in his inaugural season there for this year. But not because he’s getting a lot of coverage. His results from the two races at the Red Bull Ring in Austria were 16th (41 seconds off the lead) and 23rd (43 seconds off the lead). Having watched Rocco throughout the Junior and Twins Cups....he comes off like an overconfident child (would have loved to hear an interview of him after his RBRC finishes). And yes, I realize that he is still, in fact, a child. My slight against his personality stands.

For the Superbike Class, this has been the year of Cameron Beaubier. He was last year’s champion! , you say? Well, yes. But last year was an actual struggle back to the championship lead with a good long battle against Toni Elias on the Suzuki (Toni Elias the inaugural Moto2 Class World Champion and MotoGP race winner?!) . Correct, the same. He has been a challenger in MotoAmerica since 2016 and champion in 2017 after what was a wayward career in the World Championships since his Moto2 class win in 2010. He has more or less not featured this year. Cameron’s teammate from last year, Garrett Gerloff, moved over to WorldSBK for 2020; he recently punted Tom Sykes and Eugene Laverty off into the grass of Turn 1 at Magny-Cours.

For this weekend at Indianapolis, the Superbike class saw a return of a ‘factory’ effort from Ducati in the form of Lorenzo Zanetti. He podium’d in Race 1, won Race 2, and podium’d again in Race 3. He’s never been here before.

Not a video:

That guy in blue is pretty nonplussed at Zanetti’s Ducati crew celebrations.

Kyle Wyman supposedly is running some ‘WorldSBK spec’ Ducati V4R as well, if the trumpeting from the announcers can be believed. But it doesn’t matter, because Wyman hasn’t hardly featured above P6 in any race this year, and has on more than one occasion finished behind Cam Petersen. Why is that significant? Because Cam Petersen is running a Superstock 1000 bike in the Superbike races. Double campaigning because he gets more money that way.

For the Supersport class, Sean Dylan Kelly (SDK!! SDK40!!! Sean!Dylan!Kelly! SDK on the M4 Ecstar Suzuki!!!!!) has been religiously outclassed by Richie Escalante on a Kawasaki. But you wouldn’t really know it by listening to the race commentary...

Also for the Supersport class at Indianapolis, the grid saw the addition of Stefano Mesa. He focuses more in the Superstock 1000 class ...but supposedly he personally owned a 600-class legal bike that he decided to truck out to Indy and take part in the Supersport races. For their two races, he finished 2nd and 3rd.

And that brings me to my feelings about MotoAmerica: there appears to be such a disparity, or drought, of talent to spread across all the available classes that wildcards [even those running solo-support on a personal bike like this is a club race or trackday] have a high potential of featuring above most of the regular runners. That could seem appealing for the general-Joe that watches the races and thinks “I could run at the front of a MotoAmerica race!”, and sure there’s appeal there. But I’m not paying for a race video subscription to watch what general-Joe’s could be doing if they had a few more expendable dollars to wildcard a club race.

Then there’s the announcers. As alluded to above ( S!D!K! ), I’ve shook my head on multiple occasions throughout the season at what appears to be an inability to laud Richie Escalante appropriately for the amazing season he’s having. It’s hard for me to ignore the potential that since Escalante is from Mexico racing in this series, that there’s some pro-America stuff causing this dissonance (I mean, it’s in the series title, amirite!?!?! Chest bump!! SDK!). There   have even been ‘series status’ interlude videos that are totally edited in a way to lift up Kelly while just passively mentioning the fact that, oh yeah, Escalante is kinda wiping the floor with him. Otherwise, they just do too much recliner-racing and speculative rider ‘headspace’ conjectures — often disproved by that rider’s next actions on track.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

I get the sensation that if the top two riders from a few of the classes were all given a spec bike and told to race each other, we’d end up with a series worth watching. But the current state of MotoAmerica is as such that the relatively dry talent pool and disparate funding availability leaves us with this amalgam of chance occurrences where it’s the luck of the draw that you’ll end up with a season of worthwhile motorcycle racing.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > flatisflat 10/12/2020 at 11:17

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My knee hurts.

nermal > flatisflat 10/12/2020 at 12:40

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There are speed requirements to qualify for an MA race, you need to put down lap times under 107% of the fastest time. Looking at actual lap times, take Road Atlanta as an example - Fastest MA rider in the SBK class this year was 1:24.5. So, need to be under 1:30.4 to qualify. There was just a club race there, and only 5 of the 26 people in the 1000 class were fast enough, one of them a regular MA rider anyways .

It’s not an issue of speed. The riders in MA are ridiculously fast. Put a regular jagoff on the grid with an MA rider and they will lose site of them in 2 turns. The issue is money. Very few people can come up with the cash to develop themselves to be a competent enough rider, then pay to run a bike for the full season.

A side issue is competition at the club level. If you show up at a club race and obliterate everybody else on the grid by 3 seconds per lap, it’s a lot different experience than showing up to an MA race where you are fighting for a top 5 with the same lap times. Again, money is the biggest issue.

Exage03040 @ opposite-lock.com > flatisflat 10/12/2020 at 13:14

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I eavesdropped when my bike was getting the rear tire replaced that the shop owner had no training via race school and just made the jump, being a track nut. I thought it was a bit strange because he was racing a 1000cc in MotoAmerica a decade ago, which obviously you do  need some chops to do that. Perhaps it’s still a bit like this?

I’m not sure, I only really deal with GP.

flatisflat > nermal 10/12/2020 at 13:26

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I agree that money is a huge (if not arguably the biggest) issue. A big p art of my buying the video subscription at the start of the 2019 season was a way of trying to ‘support’ the series because I realized it’s generally not got the clout since motorcycle racing in this country just doesn’t have the bandwidth (existentially and financially). So I bought the subscription even though this was a series I hadn’t followed at all prior.

But, perhaps in support of part of my argument, if money is a known issue and there are fewer riders operating at this level (more on that in a sec.), then would it be beneficial to the series to ‘tighten the reins’ on how they operate? Such as f ewer classes so that there aren’t as many options for the well- funded teams to choose from, thus having more of the highest level riders racing against one another?

Along with that, I think the 107% rule is too lax. If I am 7 seconds slower than the leader per lap on a less-than-90 second course, I do not consider myself to be in their same league. Thus, being allowed to circulate with them on track is frivo lous . But allowing that range helps to fill grids when there aren’t enough riders / teams operating within 100-104% of one another and 5 classes or more available to choose from. So again to your point -- money is a huge problem.

flatisflat > Exage03040 @ opposite-lock.com 10/12/2020 at 13:38

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I have no gauge on the potential progression or advancement of the classes since 10 years ago (or even 5 for that matter), so I can’t really say. The Superstock 1000 class does experience a much wider range of talent than the Superbike class, so maybe he campaigned there as even just a backmarker (as just now checking the Superstock QP results for a particular weekend seems like riders within 112% were still allowed to run in the race, so perhaps that pace rule pointed out elsewhere in the comments doesn’t apply to this class).

nermal > flatisflat 10/12/2020 at 15:37

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In order to attract more money to roadracing in the US, it needs to come from corporate sponsors or manufacturers. Getting them to invest in the sport is getting them to make a business decision. The sport needs to either help sell more motorcycles or just sell other crap to people that watch them race.

The competition issue is driven by the number of riders. In order to get more money involved, and bigger and more competitive MA grids, there needs to be more sportbikes sold, more trackdays, more club races. Eventually the fastest (and most committed) riders will filter to the top.

I think 5 classes in MA are fine. 300/400s, twins, 600s, 1000 stock and 1000 sbk. That gives a young rider all that they need to progress through the ranks. It also helps the manufacturers to put a production bike in each class if they choose. If anything you could consolidate to a single 1000 class, provided that you could keep the manufacturers happy in doing so.