Fresh off a couple years of record attendance and wild popularity for flat track racing the AMA has decided to destroy the successful formula that has created all that positive buzz. Whenever a race series becomes popular the AMA cannot stop itself from diluting and dividing it into numerically more, yet overall weaker championships. They are doing just that in flat track with the new Supertwins class.
The historic, fabulous, drama-filled heat race format is no more. You’ll not see a lightly sponsored privateer like No. 23 Carver on an obsolete XR750 whip the asses of the best factory riders and teams like he did a few years ago. You’ll not see it because the AMA has limited entries to 18 pre-approved teams. No more heat races, no more last chance qualifiers, no more excitement.
The AMA hopes that we won’t notice that the game is rigged but flat track fans know a setup when we see one. To get in the Elite 18 it will take lots of money along with co-branding with the AMA and your chances of getting picked are much better if you have a really nice race transport semi-truck and branded pit barriers. Rider talent only comes into play after all the other barriers have been surmounted.
The chosen few will run two semis and if I know the AMA and the power of money I’m guessing the first nine places of each semi will make the main. It’s NASCAR thinking run amok. The AMA wants a more professional product to sell to television audiences. They want recognizable teams and popular riders spoon fed to an audience they feel are too stupid to appreciate a couple of privateers pitching a heated battle for 8th place. They want us to be like NASCAR fans cheering on personalities and products rather than effort. To achieve this end they are tossing out the very things that have made AMA flat track the premier motorcycle race series in America.
The AMA has it backwards. Fancy transporters and branded awnings don’t mean shit to flat track fans when the flag drops. AMA flat track is popular because of the unpredictable rough and tumble racing, not in spite of it. It’s popular because of the lone wolf in his van taking on the biggest motorcycle manufacturers in spite of the fact that it seems hopeless. It’s popular because no matter how out-gunned any expert rider on any night can ride his ass off and make the main event or even win the whole shebang. It has happened more than once.
You haven’t heard a crowd roar like the throat-rattling cheer flat track fans make when an underdog rider beats the big guns in a main event. It restores your faith in hard work, man. I hear you when you tell me the same guys win all the races anyway. That’s because they are the best riders on the best bikes. It’s always been that way in motorcycle racing, but flat track fans still hope to see the improbable and we don’t need to dumb down flat track to make our hopes impossible.
The legalese mumbo-jumbo in the document above is the rider’s path to the Main Event now. Replace grit, determination and talent with money and you have the new rules pretty well down. Teams will need to be partners with the AMA, it’s so not like it used to be and frustrating as hell. What utter and complete bullshit.
The list of eligible engines for Supertwins is longer than the number of eligible teams!
Ah well, it was an exciting, if short-lived resurgence in American Flat Track racing. At least we still have the singles class and an interesting, if sporadic, ATF Production Twins class (the true Class C Championship). The powers that be cannot leave well enough alone. Success is not enough for today’s bottom-line economy. Branding, sponsorship and tight control of the final product are paramount. It won’t be long before the AMA sells the racing rights to an engine manufacturer and Supertwins becomes a one-design spec class. I guess nothing ever stays the same and we all get sold out in the end. Welcome to AMA Flat track 2020.
Motorcycle road racing has taken quite a beating in America. The biggest stars are overseas and the entire series (whoever runs it) has become sort of a Triple A, minor league pastime. There are some really great riders in our pavement series but none of it seems to translate to The Bigs.
Would we see Mees on a factory Indian road race bike scoring a few pavement points to keep his dominant championship streak going? Would JD Beach win the #1 plate several times in a row, as he seems the most multi-talented? Would a dark horse, semi-privateer like Carver show a natural talent on the asphalt and go on to win at Moto GP? What if Shayna Texter turned out to be a beast on the twisting streets of COTA and showed a wheel to Marquez? This mixing of talent and styles gave the US years of GP dominance in the past and it will do it again.