13 bikes on the grid and only 9 finishing? https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-superbike-race-one-results-from-pittrace/ How long before this series finally dies?
Maybe they should go back to the combined races with the Stk1000 bikes? There were several races where those guys were competitive with SBK bikes.
It is sad. Very sad. But it can still come back. Remember when MotoGP grids were so pitiful they added the CRT teams out of desperation? BSB at one time added a class within the Superbike class with less complicated (cheaper) superbikes to attract more teams to the grid. It worked extremely well and those rules eventually morphed into what is now the Superbike class.
So the peak of Superbike racing was nearly twenty years ago... can you guys like maybe move on and focus on like building up / supporting the current stuff? I can think of a few years ago when it was a 4 dog fight, and everyone else was pretty much a Superstock bike. Things are the better now than they have been in maybe a decade. Ya’ll starting to sound like all those grey hairs on FB who comment on American Flat Track posts who are stuck in like 1976...
It's going to die. The financial requirements for running a top level Superbike team are simply just too expensive for most. Look at the classes racers are showing up for in numbers. The classes where you don't have to be Michael Jordan rich to be on the playing field. The electronics and personnel to go with them are cost prohibitive. As much as I like wizz bang bad ass equipment it needs to go away so the racing series can stay alive unless the manufacturers want to come back in and support it. Unless their sales start to increase I don't see that happening.
That was the EVO class and that was more to get a head start on spec electronics, not to fill the grids.
I’ve thought about that before. But if you think back to when they did that previously, I think there were like 5 superbikes on the grid and 4 of them were the factory bikes. I think the problem was for anyone not factory supported, they would finish in roughly the same spot overall regardless of whether they were on a superbike or superstock machine. So why run superbike at that point? You could run superstock for much cheaper, get the “superbike limelight” by being on track at the same time, and now have much better “results” since your class results factored out the superbikes. There’s just no incentive to run superbike at that point.
Partly. https://www.crash.net/bsb/news/152566/1/bsb-announces-new-evolution-class-for-2010 "The objective is that the BSB Evo class will compliment the current full FIM WSB specification bikes and provide our audiences with a full grid of the best teams and riders on as many different eligible makes of motorcycle as possible. "By radically grasping the issue of electronics we will eliminate a significant cost and regain some of the spectacle that fans and riders are clearly missing."
Yeah, okay. Judging by the hard on people have for Mladin and Spies on here still, even though these guys are at this point long retired, it's really no different than people who haven't moved past Roberts and Springsteen. They were all great, but time moves on, and if you aren't going to be part of the solution (ie: support what you have now), then don't bitch when it actually dies.
AMA/MotoAmerica needs to be in direct talks with the mfgs to get more factory sponsored teams, IMHO, maybe put some profit sharing on the table. There shouldn't be a reason all the mfgs shouldn't have some representation, this is the lifeblood of how they sell sportsbikes.
I imagine they have talked directly to the mfgs. As for profit sharing, what if there is currently no profits to share?