Well, when I last checked in we we’re heading to Mid Ohio for our next 2 races, The weekend went well for us with Mat taking maximum points with pole, 2 wins and most laps led in each race. Mat now has a 33-point lead in the championship with 4 races left, but with the points system over here that’s still pretty tight with 150 points still available.

The first race was very good with Mat and Kurtis Roberts going at it, the lead changed 4 times in the last lap and a bit, when Kurtis got a bit excited and threw it down with a less than half a lap to go. Kurtis must be getting frustrated having spent 3 years on a factory RC 51 and not having won a race yet.

Yatsey is up to second now as the General E (Eric Bostrom) didn’t ride after Yatsey did his best “Terminator” impression on him (and about 5 others) at the Laguna WSB round. Eric has some damage to his shoulder/neck area and maybe out for the rest of the year, its unfortunate for him that his season ended like it did as he was consistent as usual, and in 2nd place in the points, and to have an crash that wasn’t your fault in a non championship race end your season would be disappointing for him.

It’s looking good for Suzuki as now they have 2 shots at the championship with Aaron now in 2nd with Bostrom out. Mats Mid Ohio result I guess breaks the myth over here (that a few wankers actually believed) that this was Aaron’s track. I guess Aaron’s done well here in past years, although I haven’t seen anything special the last 3 years, in fact just the opposite. So Mat was pretty fired up and let a couple of people know what he thought about it, all good fun!

After Mid Ohio we went to Barber Alabama to test at the new track there. The complex is quite good overall, very well looked after and arguably the best all round facility in the USA for motorcycles. On the negative the tracks pretty slow, (we only used 3 gears) and there are a few corners that are a little dangerous. For a circuit that was built from scratch this is a bit disappointing, and there are no garages. Some people are saying that they will have a Moto GP there soon, all I can say is that no way in its current state. The test went well and we have a reasonable setup to go back there with.

From Alabama we went back to Virginia where we were rained out last month and got a couple of good days testing in.

On we went to Daytona, the center of world racing (they actually say that), the capital of crap racetracks is what I say. Very fast and very dangerous, a track that has out grown today’s bikes for professional championship racing, a bit like the Isle of Man. Tyres are the biggest problem there and this test was no different, we actually saw tyre temps higher than the Dunlop technicians have ever seen before. To give you an idea of the tyre problems, you take the hardest over the counter tyre available and it won’t do a flying lap at Daytona before coming apart. Anyway we got through the test unscathed and Mat actually went quicker than he went at last years race. As you can see, we’ve been racking up the frequent flyer miles and living at airports a lot recently, and our transport engineers (that’s truck drivers) Hansie and Willie, have been putting the hours in behind the wheel of the semi’s.

A bit of news recently has been the announcement of new rules for the AMA series next year. Some people think you got it bad in Australia with MA but the inconsistency and decision making in the AMA is unbelievable.  (AMA by the way is the first 3 letters in AMAteur).

The new rules for Superbike 4 cylinders machines are that we must go back to standard throttle bodies and standard air boxes, along with our standard valves and cam lift from this year. The twins stay as they are but they can only 1 different gearbox from standard. (Same for the 4 cylinder). So I guess because 1 rider has won most of the races this year then the rules must be wrong and the twins need help, (god help Moto GP if the same people got involved), I guess nobody here has seen any World Superbike where twins have won everything. The only twins racing here by the way are 4 factory bikes and 3 of those don’t look like racing next year, so the changes are for just 1 machine at present.

Then the AMA introduces a new 1000cc supersport class (with slick tyres though) and is trying to stop “Factory contracted Superbike riders” from competing. You could assume that they are trying to make it more attractive for the privateer rider with that ruling, but surely common sense would tell you that a 1000cc bike will be harder to ride, more expensive to run, and harder on tyres than a 600 supersport machines, which by the way have no entry restrictions and is open to anyone. I’ll stop bagging on the AMA as I could fill this website if I kept going.

On a positive note for the AMA series, the fall off in World Superbike interest can only help push this series along. The tyre regulation should allow more input from the other tire manufacturers here and the withdrawal of the factory teams will also help as they should increase support to the AMA series.  There are rumours about Xaus and McCoy, amongst others, coming here to race although Xaus will need to stop crashing as much as he does because with the circuits here his chances of hitting something will increase about a million %.

We are off to VIR this weekend and hopefully Mat can consolidate his lead in the series, I’II get back to you after that.

PD

Mat Mladin and the 2003 GSX-R1000 look the ones to beat this year in American Superbike