“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor… and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” Gladiator, Universal Pictures 2000 What do you do when you’re a four-time AMA Superbike Champion, a former Yamaha factory rider, and for the first time…
Altus Motorsports has one of the bigger team footprints in the MotoAmerica paddock. Last year, they were a multi-rider team, and there was always a beehive of activity going on under their team canopy. We got in touch with team manager Janette Nassaney to get the lowdown on her team’s plans for 2019. Janette, you and your husband George own…
After a season of racing in the Superbike World Championship for the Red Bull Honda team, Californian Jake Gagne is returning to the MotoAmerica Series for 2019, joining the Scheibe Racing team where he will compete in MotoAmerica’s Superbike series aboard the #32 BMW S 1000 RR. “I’m excited to be back in the MotoAmerica paddock,” Gagne said. “I…
While we motorcyclists and motorcycle road racing fans in the Northern Hemisphere muddle through the winter months, occupying our time in the garage or bench racing with our two-wheel-obsessed cohorts, it’s midsummer on the continent of Australia, and smack-dab in the middle of the road racing season. The 26th International Island Classic takes place this weekend at Australia’s Phillip Island…
For the past three decades, the American Motorcyclist Association has sanctioned a class of professional motorcycle racing that features 600cc sportbikes. The 600 Supersport class debuted in 1987, and the very first race was held on March 6, 1987, at Daytona International Speedway. Doug Polen won the race aboard a Honda Hurricane 600. It was early days for “race-replica” 600cc…
“Everyone” wants an American to win a World Championship. Wayne Rainey wants an American to win a World Championship. I know I do, and I’ll bet you do, too. The last American to be a conquering hero in a professional motorcycle road racing World Championship was Ben Spies, who famously won the World Superbike Championship in 2009, which was his…
1. Why do motorcycles have twist throttles? Your daily driver, SUV, pickup, or even your UTV has an accelerator pedal right there on the floorboard. Your ATV or snowmobile has a throttle lever on the right handlebar that you operate with your thumb. And your personal watercraft has a similar throttle lever that you squeeze with your index finger. So,…
Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing and Suzuki Motor of America, Inc., are proud to announce its MotoAmerica Superbike riders for 2019. Riding once again for the team this coming season will be Toni Elias, the 2017 MotoAmerica Superbike Champion and former Moto2 World Champion. Joining the team for the first time is Josh Herrin, the 2013 AMA Superbike Champion. The…
At its core, motorcycle road racing is competition. And, while the purest manifestation of that competition takes place on the racetrack and between the riders, it is also a known fact that motorcycle road racing is a team sport, and everyone on the racing teams within the paddock play a part in that competition. With the advent of sophisticated electronics…
When the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup debuted in 2007, of the 25 young riders around the globe who were chosen to compete on the world stage, three of them were Americans. Finishing sixth in the final standings that season, with a race win and three podiums, was Cameron Beaubier, while JD Beach, who notched three top-10 finishes, was 16th…
When JD Beach announced that he would compete in both the MotoAmerica Championship and the American Flat Track Championship in 2019, no doubt, those among us “of a certain age” immediately harkened back to the halcyon days of the original AMA Grand National Championship. Founded and sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association in 1954, the AMA Grand National Championship encompassed five…
RiCKdiculous Racing arrived on the scene in MotoAmerica a few years ago, and the team has grown by leaps and bounds to where it is today. One of the premier race teams in the paddock, and operating out of a large semi, RiCKdiculous fielded a MotoAmerica Supersport team this past season that featured Hayden Gillim, who very nearly stole the…
The following is from Yamaha… Yamaha’s Rick Hobbs, Crew Chief for Cameron Beaubier’s 2018 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship-winning Monster Energy/Yamalube/Yamaha Factory Racing YZF-R1, was inducted into the Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame during a banquet and reunion that took place in Burnaby, British Columbia on Saturday night. Hobbs’ storied career, from dealership service manager to Superbike Championship-winning guru, received accolades as…
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the demise of sportbikes. Doomsayers cite everything from sales figures, to new sportbike production numbers, to a supposed dearth of new models being introduced, with the long-in-the-tooth Honda CBR600RR presented as the poster bike for the death of sportbikes. But, this fall, there has been strong evidence that, to…
It’s well known that one of the specific missions of the MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Road Racing Championship is to introduce young men and women to the sport of motorcycle road racing. The pathway starts in Liqui Moly Junior Cup, where MotoAmerica nourishes the young apprentices, cultivates their skills and racecraft, and helps advance them through the various MotoAmerica classes,…
John Ethell knows his way around a motorcycle, he knows his way around a motorcycle road racing paddock, and he also knows his way around motorcycle road racers. For Ethell, the colloquialism “been there, done that” is an apt description of his career, and it’s precisely why JD Beach recruited Ethell to be his crew chief on this year’s one-rider…
I love the word conundrum. I love typing it, saying it and, in the shower, I even love singing it. With a cloud of steam fogging up the bathroom and the mirror on the medicine cabinet completely obscured, I pretend I’m Eddie Vedder and belt out “co-NUN-drummmm!” with all the gusto that Vedder sang “Evenflow.” Three syllables are powerful.…
Benjamin Smith is only 18 years old, but the Pennsylvanian is already a MotoAmerica veteran. He joined the series in 2016, raced for a year in the KTM RC Cup spec class, then came back for a second year in the class, and he notched five victories, including the final race of the season to clinch the 2017 championship. For…
Two or three days after we got home from Austria, he could hardly walk. He was seeing double. You could see the muscles in his arms. They were… rippling under the skin is the only way I can describe it. It was really weird. We took him to the hospital, and we told them, “My son can’t walk. He can…
When Monster Energy/Yamalube/Yamaha Factory Racing’s Cameron Beaubier took the checkered flag in MotoAmerica Superbike race two at New Jersey Motorsports Park, he joined an elite group of road racers. The win was his 32nd AMA Superbike victory, which moved him into the top three among all riders in AMA road racing history. He is currently tied with Miguel DuHamel and…
Roadracing World’s David Swarts got into a crouch that resembled a catcher poised to throw out a runner trying to steal second base. He rocked to the left while pivoting his head to the left, then rocked to the right while pivoting his head to the right, and he calmly explained proper positioning on the motorcycle. Clad in full leathers,…
We previously chronicled the pathway that brought AMA Superbike privateer legend Dale Quarterley back to the MotoAmerica paddock as the team owner of Quarterley Racing/On Track Development. And, speaking of “development,” Quarterley’s team continues to develop and expand in terms of riders as well as racebikes and racing classes. At the beginning of the 2018 MotoAmerica season, Fast by Ferracci…
New Jersey Motorsports Park, which is set to host round eight of the 2018 MotoAmerica Championship schedule this weekend, features two road courses called “Thunderbolt Raceway” and “Lightning Raceway.” Thunderbolt Raceway is the 12-turn, 2.25-mile road course on which MotoAmerica’s riders compete, and Lightning Raceway is the more-compact 1.9-mile, 10-turn road course located adjacent to Thunderbolt Raceway. Thunderbolt and Lightning…
Three brothers who share a mutual love of motorcycle road racing. Sound familiar? But these three brothers were born just a little bit further south of Owensboro, Kentucky–in São Paolo, Brazil, to be exact. The Silva brothers now live in Miami, Florida, after the family relocated to the U.S. in 2008 and their father started an exporting company in America.…
For the second time this season, literally hundreds of racers will take to the MotoAmerica starting grids as the Championship of Pittsburgh gets under way this weekend at Pittsburgh International Race Complex in Wampum, Pennsylvania. All told, PittRace will see a total of 112 entrants competing in MotoAmerica’s five classes, which include the Motul Superbike class, Supersport, Liqui Moly Junior…
Four-time AMA Superbike Josh Hayes has said, on many occasions, that he’ll stop racing when someone “pries his cold-dead fingers from the handlebars.” The Mississippi Madman got kind of a late start in motorcycle road racing – not getting involved until after he graduated from high school – and he was bound and determined to not have an early exit.…
Due to its popularity among the enthusiastic fans who attended the Cycle Gear Championship of Sonoma, MotoAmerica is bringing the Ball of Steel and V-Twin Stunt & Wheelie Show to next weekend’s MotoAmerica Championship of Pittsburgh for an encore appearance in the paddock. The Ball of Steel is a giant steel cage shaped like a globe in which riders Jonathan…
Saturday’s Motul Superbike race at Sonoma Raceway was an eventful one for Genuine Broaster Chicken Honda rider Cameron Petersen. After a solid Superpole effort that put him seventh on the grid, the South African was hoping for a top-five result in the race. Unfortunately, while negotiating the technical layout of Sonoma Raceway on lap 12 just past the halfway point…
RiderzLaw Racing’s Andrew Lee is currently leading the MotoAmerica Stock 1000 Championship aboard his Kawasaki ZX-10R. Lee is from Clovis, California, and he and his ARMY GIRL Team MF & Kawasaki team recently finished 19th overall in the iconic Suzuka 8-Hours Endurance Race. What was even more impressive is that he and his team finished second in the Superstock class,…
For thousands of years, and long before Europeans came to America, the Choctaw Nation was a tribe of farmers that lived in what is now the Southeastern United States, specifically in the Mississippi River Valley. But, in 1830, the United States federal government seized the Choctaw’s ancestral territory and sent the tribe on a forced migration to Southeastern Oklahoma. The…
