Noyes on AMA. Again

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/amasuperbike/42239/

Lots of comparisons between AMA, SBK, BSB.

One thing that puzzles me is the dominance of the Yoshi-Suzuki team. Are
the riders, team and equipment so much better? Or are the other teams
basically just a bit useless? Every year I seem to read about how Honda,
Yamaha, Kawasaki, Ducati have only just got the new bikes, haven't done
much testing, have pulled out completely because the rules don't suit,
or whatever. In the other SBK series Suzuki are competitive but not
completely dominant while Honda, Yamaha, Ducati are right on the pace.

 

A pretty good article so far, especially the insight offered by the King..

"If a well-funded team canÕt get hold of competitive parts to make a
competitive bike then there is something wrong. If they are telling
Michael Jordan that he doesnÕt have enough money to get a competitive
bike, then AMA racing is all f*****d up and they need to get out of the
way and let somebody fix it.Ó

Truer words were never spoken!!

As far as Yosh goes, they are a very well-funded team that does have
access to the "unobtainium" stuff AND has the 2 best riders to boot...

 

I remember we had this out before and I still don't really buy it. Can
Jordan buy a competitive race bike from Suzuki USA? No. And I don't see
why that should be a requirement on them.

Does that mean it's impossible to build one, I don't know, but I don't
think so. If it is impossible then, yes, there is something wrong with
the rules. It's supposed to be a production based formula where inspired
tuners can create competitive bikes isn't it?

Yup, I'll buy the 2 best riders bit. But it's that factory unobtainium
which is the problem. Nobody is saying that competing with the factories
as a private team should be easy. But it should be possible. Now maybe
that's what KR-Sr meant.

This debate has been going round and round for decades. In every class
except Moto-GP, it's important that the factories are kept on a leash
and things are adjusted to give private teams a chance because otherwise
grids dwindle and the racing stops being entertaining. Because there's
always one factory that outspends the others or who kicks off a spending
war. And if it's not the hardware it's the tyres and some teams getting
the good ones and others given the bad ones.

 

I think a major source of this domination is the fact that AMA has
allowed the factories to have a way to choose which class they want to
be competitive in so as to avoid competition with one another. As it
is, each factory gets a good shot of putting their bike with the #1
plate in their ads from a class of their choosing. This way factory
teams' only competitors are underfunded other factories' teams and
privateers. So long as the factories don't compete with one another,
they are able to continuously feed inferior technology to the
privateers just enough to keep them on the grid, but well at arm's
length in terms of competitiveness of their equipment.

Would making the factories compete head to head make a difference?
Hard to say, but I'm inclined to believe that it would. Effectively,
what it would do is simply force the factories out of slumber and
begin real innovation. If the process of bike development speeds up,
as I think it would in this case, more parts would become available to
the privateers and while they wouldn't necessarily be instantly vying
for podium positions day in and day out, the factories' attention
would be more on each other and less on keeping the little guys off
the box.

 

Well, it's a production based series isn't it? And I'm pretty sure
producer's still like to produce, so, why not make it a requirement
that they produce enough for anyone who can afford it? And while I'm at
it and even though just the thought of HP caps make many/all my tuner
friends nauseous, maybe they're due too..

You answered your own question, I think..

Hmm, that sounds familiar, sorta' like, well, now..

It's always something, always...


Grand AM buys it and makes the King, well, the King! Yeah, that's the
ticket!!! (That is, as long as he doesn't try to make it a family
affair)

 

It's prolly more about control than anything else, the OEM's spend the
money and they want control and the AMA over the years have, if not
encouraged, surely allowed them to do just that. However, at some point
if motorcycle racing in this country is to grow, or more specifically,
go mainstream, that model needs "some tuning" and trust me on this, the
OEM's won't like it...

 

It's a balancing trick. If you force factories to produce a full
race-kit, you'll force some factories out of the series. I guess because
I'm closer to BS and WSB, my position is that the rules should make it
possible for a Ten Kate or Stobart team (or even a Rizla-Suzuki) to take
a bike off the show-room floor, a few race kit parts and more 3rd party
parts and build a competitive race bike. What I don't especially like is
the situation that private Ducatis got to where you had to buy a full
race bike from Ducati because you needed the frame, engine, engine
management from the factory because you couldn't get that anywhere else.

BSB has pulled the rules back so that BSB engines are in the same kind
of tune as WSS or AMA FX with stock crank, conrod, pistons. This is
another balancing trick. It's actually back to where it was a few years
ago until Suzuki started breaking cranks and rods and were allowed to
change them to get some reliability. The downside is that the well
funded (factory) teams will be selecting large numbers of balanced
matched sets and maybe changing them more often. But then this is what
happens in WSS now. It doesn't necessarily get cheaper but at least
there's a plentiful supply.

Heh!

I think the AMA SBK in the last couple of years is less a reflection on
Suzuki's brilliance and more a failure by the other teams. The Yosh team
is clearly right at the top of their game but Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki
seem to be only playing at it. And of course I don't want to see Hodgson
be totally disappointing, not because he can't ride but because American
Honda can't put together a competitive package.

 

Mark,

I think you misunderstood the point I was making, which is that the
factories have an almost guaranteed title given the class structure,
so they divvy up the classes and everyone comes home with a win. I'm
not concerned about making privateers competitive with the factories
-- that's impossible and unnecessary. But I am concerned with the
fact that if you're not putting all your muscle into SB, you still get
to come home with a good enough consolation prize and tell in your ads
that you have a champion on your bike. Even if everyone wants a SB
title, they can still use support classes as backup for their
marketing. So there's less pressure on the factories to be full on in
the premier class against one another. I think the following would be
helpful:

* no factory riders in support classes (might be too difficult to
enact without loopholes)
* stronger buy-out rules for support classes than in SB
* consolidate some of the support classes (do we need both SB and SS?)

 

There's little doubt Suz/Yosh has put more effort in AMA SB than anyone
else, especially so since MGP became , not only very popular, but
expensive too, though it doesn't lend much to the drama of the series
them winning everything. That said, it's hard to recall such a close
title run..

Let's look at what the King suggested;
Roberts believes the only way to level the playing field and to get a
half dozen or so riders sharing the wins on several brands of
motorcycles is to introduce strict limits on engines. Recently, between
the trucks in the Valencia paddock, Kenny explained to me his idea for
leveling the playing field in AMA Superbike, an idea that guarantees
relatively equal power by requiring the use of homologated engines from
each manufacturer built to a specific peak horsepower by the Ôengine
departmentÕ of each competing importer or manufacturer and leased with
guaranteed performance parameters to all teams. Client teams would have
the same engine as the factory team. For example, a homologated
CBR1000RR engine, built at American Honda, run on the test bed and
certified to produce an easily obtainable but satisfactory HP output,
like 190 at the crankshaft (and less for Daytona to avoid tire
problems), would be available to any eligible AMA team that could pay
the price. All four Japanese factories could produce a kitted bike of
comparable power. Roberts, however, would allow ample freedom to fit
aftermarket wheels, brakes (steel), plus swingarms, and links. Of
course there would be standard ECU with no traction control, wheelie
control, or launch control, and everyone would be on the same tires.

Roberts believes the art of racing is in the turning, the overtaking,
and the sliding on corner exits and that todayÕs production engines,
offering as much power as the old 500s but with a more docile delivery,
would give riders and teams more than enough oomph to thrill fans and
challenge riders and technicians, but without the burden of useless
costs for invisible -- and therefore unappreciated (by the crowd who,
at the end of the day, really pay for the show by being there or by
watching on television) technology.

The idea itself is original and Roberts believes in it and presents it
convincingly. It is a better formula for a national series than the
wide-open World Superbike model that is running expenses higher and
higher in WSBK, and it would be really easy to implement, but only
under a respected despot like ÔKingÕ Kenny.

Could something like that work? I dunno, but if they made the races
longer and thru in pit stops I'd damn sure go for it!!


And now Hardcard is trying to make a run..

http://superbikeplanet.com/2008/Jan/080109c.htm

 

I guess I don't agree that the Japanese factories aren't making
sufficient effort in the SB class, and at least the full facory teams
have almost no presence in the support classes today. The two Haydens
will run SS this year, but they are the only factory SB riders who
will, and none of the factory teams have any support-only riders.
Erion does that for Honda, Graves for Yamaha, Attack for Kawasaki, and
various teams get some dregree of Suzuki support, as always. I see
little problem with any of that, although I did have a problem with
Spies domninating in SStock last year.

I think it's VERY hard to make a rules distinction between a factory
and a non-factory rider, that's just asking for trouble. Probably the
best clear distinction that has been made in the past was the old FX
rule that banned any rider who was in the top ten in points in SB,
really no questioning that cutoff. And I don't know that having all
the support classes be without anything like factory-supported riders
is actually a good thing - were classes like 750SS, FX, 250GP, Pro
Thunder really all that great? They sure didn't have me glued to the
fences most of the time. And a purely non-factory class is much more
likely to end up single-brand, as those low-budget privateers are
likely to migrate to whatever machine is fastest or has the highest
contingencies in any given year. Look at SStock last year, which was
almost all Suzuki.

Ideally I'd like to see the factory teams just in SB (or, rather, all
in SB and FX), and then supporting various teams in SS. That creates
more paid ride opportunities, guarantees some level of professional
team participation in the support classes, also guarantees some level
of multi-brand involvement, and makes domination of a single superior
rider on a superior machine less likely. I have no problem with making
SSport some sort of beginner class, shifting the focus of the true
pros to FX. I'm not all that convinced that dumping SStock is a good
thing, but that seems to be a lost battle - my concern is mostly that
it will end up negatively impacting the SB grid. Not sure how one
manages to create that sort of structure, however, although we're now
closer than we have been, I think. A big part of it is having the
factories convinced that it's in their best interest, and not through
punative rules. I think that's what got Kawsaki and Yamaha back in SB.
Banning factory SB riders from SStock several years ago only meant
those teams abandoned SB, not at all what was desired.

When you say "buy-out rules" are you talking about claiming?

 

Yes.

 

Do you consider TenKate Honda, Alstare Suzuki, Yamaha Italia, Airwaves
(GSE) Ducati, Stobart Honda, Bike Animal Honda, Sterilgarda Ducati, Hawk
Kawasaki to be Factory teams or Private teams? Or how about pretty much
the whole field in WSS? Just so we know we're talking about the same
thing.

 

I thought we were talking about the AMA here, and none of those teams
was in the AMA last time I looked. Most of them are also the top
representatives of their various manufacturers in their series, which
makes the label "privateer" very dubious. I believe Alstare runs full
factory Suzukis just like Yosh, so what is the difference betwen them?
Who signs the riders' checks? If you consider the only factory teams
to have been the HRC-supported Honda team in BSB and Ducati Corse in
WSB, then your definition has no application at all to the AMA. In the
AMA I would consider the official teams of the import arms of the
manufacturers to be factory, their top support teams (meaning Erion,
Graves, Attack but probably excluding Jordan and EMGO/M4, who are
quite independent of Suzuki) to be in the gray area, shifting year to
year, and everyone else to be privateers. The line is much clearer in
the AMA than in BSB and WSB, because there are so few independently-
financed, big-budget top efforts and there are such clear OEM
connections. You're pretty much either in a factory transporter or
working out of a clapped-out box van. [That's an exaggeration, but not
by much]

 

There is another big distinction in the AMA, which I think is less
clear overseas: what is available to you. One of the reasons so many
privateers are on Suzukis is because they are about the only
manufacturer providing any kind of technical support to the little
guys in the form of parts and knowledge. This stands in stark
contrast to Honda for example. I recall reading a number of
testimonials from different disgruntled Honda privateers in RRW a year
or so ago. The gist was that Honda were making all sorts of promises
of parts and never delivered to anyone outside of a very small
circle. People were going to extreme lengths to get the parts, such
as ordering race kits through friends in Japan because Honda expressly
refused to sell them in the US. One may speculate as to the reasons
for this policy, but if you're on your own with a small budget, the
choice right now is fairly clear that you go with Suzuki unless you
have insider connections.

 

I assume you're talking about SB here? Because OEM parts availability
in the SS classes wouldn't seem to be an issue. I know SB race kits
have been an issue with most of the OEMs, but that's nothing all that
new. Regarding Ducati, as Julian said, you pretty much have to buy the
SP race bike, as modifying a street bike, to the extent you can, just
won't get you very far. Doesn't help the growth of competitive
privateers in SB, and perhaps part of machine hologation in SB (and
FX) ought to be some basic availability of a defined race kit at a
reasonable cost (which doesn't mean heavily subsidized). But, as
always, the devil is in the details.

Regarding the functunal line between privateer and factory teams, it
probably can be defined by the answers to a list of questions, like:

1) What percentage of the operational costs are covered by the OEM?
2) How is the base machine obtained and what is it, meaning is it just
the same streetbike anyone can buy or is it already modified and to
what degree, or is it a stripper that includes only specifically-
selected parts that are required to be stock on the racebike?
3) What degree of freedom does the team have in deciding who sponsors
it, what parts suppliers they work with, who they employ as mechanics,
etc.?
4) Who hires the riders, who pays the riders?
5) How much freedom does the team have in deciding what classes to
run?
6) Can they run events other than those in the AMA championship
without OEM approval?

At some point in the answers the line gets crossed. For instance, if
Graves gets basic Yamaha streetbikes with no special parts, does all
the modifying themselves (including replacement of some required stock
parts), fabricating and buying aftermarket parts, makes the decisions
on their riders (even with some sort of veto power by Yamaha) and pays
them (which Halverson claimed they do last year), at what point to
they become a factory team? They're probably covered by Yamaha's
arrangement with Dunlop, Yamaha probably tells them what classes to
run, Yamaha must pay Chuck a substantial amount to run the team, they
probably do a bit more on equipment. So are they a factory team? I
definitely would have said yes a couple years ago when all the factory
riders did SStock for Graves and SSport for Team Yamaha, but now I'm
not so sure.

 

Thinking back to the 2008-R6 launch, the factory race kit had alternate
gearboxes and race cams. For WSS, you absolutely need these. You can get
cams and gearbox parts from 3rd parties but the cost is huge. In SBK,
there's a set of parts like these that you have to source from somewhere
and if the factory won't supply them then life gets hard. But
conversely, Rizla Suzuki (BSB) bikes are built in the UK and while they
use some bits from the factory race kit, there's actually surprisingly
little.

I'm really just kvetching a bit at the attitude that there's a huge
un-crossable gulf between factory teams and private teams. The reality
seems to me to be much more shades of grey. I don't think the Honda,
Suzuki or whoever factory should be made to sell their race developed
parts to private teams. But I equally don't think it should be
impossible for private teams to source equivalent parts. When you get
down to Superstock and AMA SS600, there's so little tuning allowed that
it's hard to see what advantage a factory team would have apart from
money and experience.

And I think it's healthy to have high profile, highly funded,
competitive non-factory teams so the series (whether it's AMA, BSB, or
whatever) isn't at the mercy of Factory marketing budgets and whims. If
it hadn't been for those, WSB would have died completely when the
factories went off in a huff.

 

As I'm sure you knew, I was sorta' holdin' back waiting for your
particular vision of the future, not your daily critique of some
writer, that, by his own admission, doesn't know shit from shinola
about Proracing, or the AMA's "storied" history. So, let's cut to the
chase Mark, tell us who *YOU* would like to see pick-up the
gnarley-ball known as AMA Proracing and how they should run with it...

(Time to walk the walk my friend, or not, your choice ;-)

 

Not too shabby a response to a troll, (in RMR a troll is anyone who
disagrees with MN?) but be that as it may, I'm out the door on a
fishin' trip, though I will gladly take your "vision" to task, point,
by non-existing point, gimmee a day or so...

BUT first of all, do we agree that M/C racing IN THIS COUNTRY should
NOT be like MGP? That is, a prototype-like series where only very few
can shine? Or would you like it where anyone that has the talent can do
well?
Remember these, because they are fundamental to my "vision"...

 

Here's an idea.
- M/C racing can't support a top class national series without money
- That money only really comes from sponsorship. The days of factories
or importers funding everything are over.
- Major sponsorship is impossible to get without publicity and market
share of attention
- The only way to get publicity and attention is via TV
- TV coverage of M/C sport is poor in the USA and monopolised by a
single Satellite-Cable channel that is dominated by NASCAR.

So what the AMA does with the series in terms of rules or management
actually has little bearing on its success. What they should be doing is
breaking that TV monopoly and working to get more and better TV
coverage. If they can't do that then control of the series should be
split, with the AMA acting as a regulatory and authorisation body and
the actual series management handed to a promoter who does know how to
work the TV companies.

 

Track attendance fnumbers are *nowhere near* as attractive to
potential sponsors as TV audience figures. Not even close. The most
expensive billboards at any circuit are the ones that are in camera
shot for the longest, and sponsors follow the teams who get the most
tv exposure. In my experience they don't give a stuff about circuit
attendances.

No. You have to build interest for the tv audience. You do that by
building interest in the media, with tv comentators and by putting on
a tv friendly show. You can have the most devoted fans in motorsport
turning up at events in their tens of thousands, but if the racing
doesn't work on tv or if there is insufficient interest amongst the tv
audience, it won't get shown.

The Doha MotoGP race will only be attended by a handfull of expats,
but it'll command a huge tv audience. First race of the season, lots
of riders on new bikes, some on unknown tyres, etc, etc. If the racing
is close, that audience will carry on to the next race, and so on.

TV wants easy to understand rules and classes, some familiar faces for
each nation it's being shown in, close racing, action, drama,
spectacle, girls in lycra, etc, etc.

Big screens and clean toilets help improve gate money over a few
years, but they don't affect tv audiences.