N2 split from WERA?

not speculation. Done deal. This has been worst kept secret for months.

 

cool. Thanks Mike

 

I think Scholtz is immediately dicing it up with the front runners if on that bike.

Thats said...I hope it's Rocco. I really like that young man as a rider. He's fast on everything he throws a leg over, and he learns quickly.

 

Stanboli has been high on Rocco for a while. IIRC he wanted Rocco to do a fill-in ride in 2022 and said it was only stopped because he wasn’t 18 yet. Also went out of his was to call Rocco one of the few SBK ready riders a few months ago on the podcast… the question was only about current SS riders.

If it happens I won’t be surprised, but I will be very, very excited.

 

N2 email sent out this long ass email. Copy pasted below.

N2 Racing 2025. The Rest of the Story.

N2 Racing - We made a strategic decision to do things right, instead of right now.

As many of you know, N2 Track Days recently announced that it was bringing an end to our 2025 racing efforts. In response to speculation, and consistent with our commitment to transparency, we wanted to provide additional context on how we came to this decision.

This may be more detail than you’d typically expect, but it’s a story about our commitment to the track day and racing community.

History:

In 2014, six like-minded friends started a track day business and built it into the premier east coast track day provider we are today. Each owner brought a unique set of business experiences with the goal of supporting and growing the sport, we were passionate about. In the last ten years we have grown N2 into a successful, stable business with a large, engaged audience, and a reputation for professionalism in everything we do. We built strong relationships along the way with partners who shared similar goals. We value those relationships and that reputation for professionalism and we will do everything we can to maintain that standard.

The N2/BobbleHeadMoto MotoAmerica Racing Team:

The MotoAmerica team is the easy part of this story, so let’s start here. In 2017, with significant help and vision from our partner Kris Smith and technical support Shiloh & Emerson from BobbleheadMoto, we built a very competitive premier MotoAmerica team. The team was fortunate enough to see several riders come through the ranks, ultimately landing a two-time national championship with rider Blake Davis and a Daytona 200 win with Kyle Wyman. It was never part of the plan to continue to run a professional race team indefinitely. When the program began to take focus around Blake Davis, we knew that extraordinarily talented kid would eventually move on to different teams, series, and classes and that move would align nicely with ending the MotoAmerica team. With the MotoAmerica race program coming to its planned conclusion, we have a lot to look back upon and celebrate. Let’s not be sad that it’s gone, let’s smile because it happened.

Let’s talk about Endurance Racing:

Back to 2016, there was a clear lull in American road racing. As MotoAmerica continued building and expanding on their platform, we could not help but notice other venues like endurance racing literally dying off. Looking back, this all came to a critical moment when WERA, known for its endurance series for decades, ultimately abandoned the program with one of their last endurance rounds at Roebling Road Raceway had only 4-5 teams show up to race. Clearly, this was not a sustainable program.

Elsewhere in the industry, others felt that racing was languishing, and it wasn't all for lack of participation. Enter Russell Masecar and Michael Copoulos and the RBOM gang, also known as Russell's Band of Misfits. We watched these gentlemen bring a simple purse of $4,000 to a WERA race event so the twins riders had something to compete for. More than 50 riders/bikes came to VIR to throw down. No one got rich that day, but the sport was the richer for it. The playbook for a revival was staring us right in the face.

The N2 team listened to rider feedback and sadness that endurance racing had come to an end. This was the moment when we decided to step in and see what sort of change we could affect. Though we had not met Evelyne Clarke, we pitched the idea for a grand experiment where we would together host a race at Pitt Race for the first time. We offered to cover all the costs and hire WERA to officiate the events as we did not have experience officiating professionally. There's a lot of work, experience, and nuance that goes into making the magic happen - and it's not all about the timing and scoring, it takes dedicated and experienced people. Needless to say, the event was an incredible success, sponsors took notice, the racing industry took notice, and our little experiment (along with RBOM's example) showed us that this was worth fighting for. N2 would fund, promote, sponsor along with others, while WERA officiated the events through 2024.

As we reached our 6th year into this endeavor, we watched the series grow from a 5-team roster to more than 140 teams participating over the course of a race season. By any yardstick, that is an amazing success story. This gave us enough time to digest the good, the not-so-good and where we could make improvements to build a larger and more well-rounded and modern program. N2 will always be grateful and thankful for all of those involved and what they've poured into the program. In the end, differences about said changes and modernization simply weren't in alignment, so a new path was carved to take endurance to the next level in the form of N2RA.

The fundamentals of the new N2RA endurance race series were simple: design a more modern Endurance Racing based organization that provided fun, affordable club level racing and that would ultimately make the transition to racing at the national level easier. The program itself was simple at its core, but it was a significant change from the status quo. The efforts to provide such a platform would be difficult and did present some risk.

We solicited assistance from the racing industry - and boy were they willing to provide it. We enlisted professionals to help with the technical rulebook for endurance. With the buy-in from MotoAmerica, the FIM, AMA, and other industry voices, the plan to build a more comprehensive and modern endurance program was underway.

In addition to improving the rulebook, the program's classes would also better align with MotoAmerica. This way, the same bikes and specs could easily transition between the platforms. Rather than just have "yet another" racing organization out there, this one would be more of a transition platform from one to the other. Start with local racing organizations, step up to longer, endurance style races, and ultimately onto the national stage, assuming you have the budget, the chops, and the talent to get there. With oversight along the way, this would create a more comprehensive and clearer path from one level to the next.

Now, a rulebook is a great start, but it doesn't get you to the finish line. We also needed sponsorship, officiating, timing and scoring, material investments and staff making absolutely certain the show runs smoothly. This requires a lot of planning and having each station of the program backed by competent individuals who share the same passion about racing that we do.

We have accomplished a lot of work and there was no shortage of partners willing to contribute, but ultimately, we ran out of time to deliver on a professional program that meets our expectations and gave our participants and partners enough time to plan for the 2025 season.

WHICH BRINGS US TO TODAY

While there may be some contention in the industry over our decision to build the N2 racing organization (N2RA), or our decision to postpone it, know that this decision didn't come lightly and the intent is still to build a better program that serves the racers, the racing community and the industry as a whole.

If we couldn't do this to our standard of professionalism, we were not doing it. This has been a longstanding philosophy for N2.

Forcing an outcome would not have been good for the industry, so we felt it best to stand down the program for 2025 and focus on our core business and make plans for future years.

It's not about money; that's the straightforward part of the equation. To us, it was about flawless execution. Though some of the internal discussions were not without passion and even sparks, the painful truth is that launching a rocket at all costs can have disastrous outcomes for all involved. With all the work and effort put into this program, the worst possible outcome would be watching our rocket blow up on the launch pad.

While we're building our rocket, we offer nothing but love, peace and respect. We want to thank our partners who continue to support us in this endeavor and welcome other who share the same passion we do.

Team N2

 

Sounds like they jumped in the deep end a little too fast and had gtfo

 

Ohhhhhhh, that’s who Blake Davis is I was just riding dirtbikes with him a couple weeks ago. Cool kid.

 

Regardless of the N2RA launch misfire, I want to thank N2 & WERA (and the others mentioned).
After ~20 years, I hung my leathers up in 2010 but after an invite and one race with a new endurance team I was hooked again. The combination of the team support, racing venues, paddock environment and organization makes it fun and "fun" was not always a word I used to describe racing way back when.
So thank you again.
For a retired racer its great to be planning and executing race seasons, riding trackdays, making new friends and memories and I look forward to what comes next