The opening round of the Shell Advance Australian Road Racing Championships kicks off this weekend at Barbagallo Raceway, Wanneroo, Western Australia.

There has been a fair bit of politics played out in the lead up to this first round with all but one of the factory teams choosing not to send their riders to the WA round. 

I believe this is as a protest against Motorcycling Australia for trying to run a truly national series. Kawasaki, Yamaha and Honda favour a championship which just moves up and down the Eastern Seaboard rather than venturing West at all.  This decision has been arrived at from industry meetings between the big players.  The fact that rival companies even get together to discuss such things is frightening enough, but when they seek to effectively sabotage a national championship for reasons known only to themselves then things are really scary.

Be assured it is not the factory riders' decision not to come to WA, they love coming to Perth.

Suzuki are sending their factory squad. Suzuki is the only Japanese manufacturer not participating in the other Australian Championship, Formula Xtreme. The Formula Xtreme Series is a Tri-State affair, it only covers Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. It is very popular and provides great racing from packed grids. The major sponsor of the series is Yamaha and all SuperBike runners must carry a large Yamaha sticker on the bike, this is the reason behind why Suzuki will not race Formula Xtreme. I believe that they do not want to see their product racing on the track with a large sticker displaying a rival’s company name.

In the future Motorcycling Australia may be forced to bow down to pressure and drop the WA round.  This must be purely politics as all the privateers always seem to be able to make it okay without complaining about costs.

I believe that the major reason that MA has not capitulated to these demands so far is because Shell, the major and naming rights sponsor of the series, instructs MA to ensure that the championship does come to Western Australia as Shell see it as an important part of their market......

Nevertheless the racing will be great this weekend with local WA riders Tulk and Adams scrapping with the GSX-R 1000 riders from the East, which includes 2000 Australian Champion Shawn Giles.  Other riders on the new GSX-R include Alistair Maxwell, David Simpson and Jay Normoyle. The main Yamaha protagonists will be New Zealand Champion Tony Rees and the young Damian Cudlin who hails from Taree, both ride for the BikeBiz Team.   A team who is sponsored by an Eastern States bike shop that will derive no direct benefit from being in WA but still manage to make the distance okay.

Craig Coxhell is a factory Yamaha rider who packed up his own bike in his van and made the trip without his factory backing.  This is extremely commendable of the young man even though he will, and no doubt already has, copped a lot of flack over this.  But the situation is that young riders like Craig seek to go overseas and good results in the Australian SuperBike Championship will help them towards that goal.  A factory not allowing their riders to attend this first round of the 5-round series are doing their riders a big disservice.

These decisions have not been made by the racers, or even the teams, but by the people holding the purse strings.  It is a sad state of affairs we have here in 2001 that politics is deemed to be more important than racing.

Myself as a long time race fan, and West Australian, is absolutely gutted that we are being treated this way.  

The factories are not punishing anyone else but the Western Australian racing fan.  

Sad, but true.  I thought long and hard about publishing my views here but came to the decision that someone has to say something, as not a word on this issue has been mentioned anywhere else............