MotoAmerica / Road America

This surfaces every year. It's like Slash receiving free guitars from Gibson then expecting them to pay for the tour.

 

Yes they did and they still do.

 

PJ has never run MotoAmerica Superbike. Josh is a former champion in SSTK and has finished Top 5 in SBK points. Jake Lewis has floated around Top 5, I believe (have to look).

Not defending MA, or the rules, but I don't know you can compare the two... technically speaking (not based on talent potential). So yes, using my logic, Rossi could even come over and run SSTK.

 

Really?


IIRC, PJ has won a BSB SBK race and he was a runner up in a World Championship. I mean that's a pretty stout resume.

 

You know there is a MotoGP Race winner running SBK right now right?

 

No kidding. Josh pointed that out to Mesa. I took it as "it's not all the bike, dude" type response.

That said, he he was considered a rookie last year. Nigel Mansell was rookie in Indy Car in 1994, despite being the defending F1 World Champion...

Toni was considered a rookie in his first year of MA competition, despite being a Moto2 Champ and MotoGP race winner.

 

You mean like when Miguel DuHamel and Doug Chandler came back from the GP circus?

Or Mat Mladin coming to AMA superbike after being a 500GP racer?

Or maybe Fred Merkel, after winning multiple AMA Superbike championships, and 2 World Superbike Championships, returned to AMA to run....750 Superstock!

Or Doug Polen coming back to the US after winning 2 World Superbike championships, to finally win an AMA Superbike championship?

Oh, the horror indeed.

 

Don't forget WSBK third place finisher Ben Bostrom...

 

Are we really throwing mladins gp run in as a highlight?

 

Most of those don’t count. They came back to superbike.

 

This seems common among road race and dirt bike racers, they come off very entitled when it comes to sponsors and support.
People can say what they want about Nascar but 90% of those guys beg and walk the streets looking for sponsorship.

 

Hey, he was a 500GP rider. Miguel only had the one season in 500GP as well, but I included him.

 

In Doug and Miguel's case it was to the HD VR1000. Not exactly a top shelf piece of equipment.

 

I'm sure PJ and his team would love to be running superbike, just need a sponsor and a shit ton of cash.

 

Sprint road racing is basically dead. Where it exists, the drivers bring the majority of the sponsorship.

In endurance racing, the majority of the drivers pay for their rides, and thus supplement the paid* drivers. IE: Rich guy pays the team $$ for the weekend and the hot shoe will get to race the car for free. Most of their salary comes from their week gig being a driver instructor and the like.

The few drivers who actually collect salaries are on the factory teams. Even then, they are usually rich (self made, trust fund, any combination) and used that to open the doors. Look at at the Taylor brothers in IMSA.


Looking at F1: Lando Norris and Lance Stroll (sons of Billionaires), Verstappen (dad was former F1 driver), Carlos Sainz (dad was former WRC Champion), Kevin Magnussen (dad was former F1 driver, former Factory Corvette driver), Daniil Kvyat (has Russian oligarch backing), Lewis Hamilton (snapped up by Mclaren at like age 12), Sergio Perez (Mexican $$$ backing), Alex Albon (had help from the Filipino government), etc.

Look at the history of F1... Ayrton Senna (if not the best, one of the best ever) had a rich family and another sugar daddy backer to get him to F1. Then he tests with F1 teams, goes as fast or faster than most of their primary drivers, and the drivers on those teams basically threaten the teams with pulling their personal sponsors if they sign him, thus he ends up on Tolman. Ultimately he shows he has so much talent that teams can't refuse to ignore him, but it was a blood bath up to then... and that was 35 years ago at this point. The point being, in car racing, except for the very pinnacle , the drivers usually bring the money.

 

Don't underestimate a ruling body's power to make life seriously unpleasant for a racer who doesn't fall in line. This isn't about MA, just speaking in general.

I'm pretty sure I've seen DuHamel and Mladin on 600 cc bikes after racing world championship GP.

I'm gonna push back on Hamilton, here. Ron Dennis wasn't his rich uncle. The kid earned his contract on the track, racing karts out of the back of his dad's (a nobody in motorsports) station wagon.

 

Yeah, MA has limits on who can enter Stock 1000, not Superbike. Others were told they could not, yet PJ was allowed. Bryce Prince being the most erroneous of instances...
Others were told they could not run the V4r in the class, Celtic was allowed to.
MA has issues with rules and applying them
Evenly across the paddock. The only point to having rules is to maintain a semblance of parity. Factories and teams campaign for
Rules that give them a competitive advantage. MA has failed at keeping the rules balanced and applying them equally across the paddock, hell the technical director can’t even communicate equally with all competitors much less apply rules evenly.

 

He did, but he got snapped up before costs really escalated (not that karts are cheap, but they're A LOT cheaper than F2/F3/ Formula Renault).

 

True but his dad worked really hard to get him to that point