Back To The Future–AMA Style February 20, 2006
by dean adams
Over the weekend, the American Motorcycle Association announced serious changes its structure, specifically in regards to the Pro Racing corner of the AMA, changes that, in the end, saw the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, Honda, resign its long-held position on the AMA board of directors.
Some background: previous to 1994, AMA Pro Racing and its previous inclinations always worked under the AMA awning, in many different forms, but always under the direct control of the AMA hierarchy. Then, after over twenty years of insiders trying to force it to happen (the late racer Cal Rayborn basically outlined the Paradama structure in a 1968 interview) in 1994 Paradama was formed by the AMA. This, supposedly, made AMA Pro Racing a semi-separate “for profit” entity (the AMA still owned it) but one not tangled inside the inner-workings of the AMA, which has always had its hands full with trying to stay on top of government and environment issues for the everyday motorcyclist. For those who watched AMA Racing try to operate several different disciples always under the watchful eye of the AMA and always having as its guiding force “what the members want”, this was a fairly welcome development. What passed for “AMA Racing”, previous to this, was at times a disaster with factory level Superbike races being held on Pro-Am weekends, the ’80s Harley-Davidson/Honda dirt track debacle and the 1979 roadrace season (4 races in total) are seen as evidence of this.
Over the next twelve or so years, Paradama was ruled by a series of CEOs and an AMA Pro Racing board of directors, the latter of which made of OEM representatives and others. With the previous system used in comparison, which is the only fair way to do it, AMA Pro Racing/Paradama worked fairly well. The people who were ignorant of racing stayed out of it and marketing people with a decent track record were brought in to help build the sport. No disciple outside of Supercross grew exponentially, but every one grew in size and scope except dirt track.
A frequently heard criticism of the AMA Pro Racing board was that it was tilted too much in favor of American Honda’s needs. Critics labeled the board the “Ray AMA”, named after now former AMA Pro and AMA trustee board member (and Honda VP) Ray Blank. In support of this opinion, many people still cling to the belief that Honda was behind the Daytona 200 becoming a 600 FX race and that Honda entered their bikes in the class because it’d be an easy win for their factory team.
In reality, it was the Daytona International Speedway that pushed for the 200 to become a 600 race because of safety concerns, and Honda showed their immediate support for the 200 by entering their factory team, and hoped other OEMs would as well. In fact, there is little evidence that the AMA Pro Racing board was tilted in Honda’s favor in roadracing, and moreover, with the current Buell XBRR situation in mind, it’s pretty clear that Honda doesn’t even have the internal pull Buell enjoys at the AMA. “Ray AMA” indeed.
The last month has been an interesting period to observe the AMA. AMA Pro Racing CEO Scott Hollingsworth left his job with no official reason given as to why that happened (rumors suggest Hollingsworth made a play to replace AMA President Rob Rasor and was dismissed because of it) on Jan 24, after about six and half years as the head of AMA Pro Racing. Then, Pro Racing CEO PJ Harvey got the shag on Feb 8 (the release stated he would not “seek re-election” however as a close-confidant of Hollingsworth’s, you can guess what really happened). Next, AMA Pro Racing put out a press release on February 10 confirming that the Buell XB12RR is legal for the FX class, even though prevailing opinion, and Buell’s own release for the bike, seem to indicate it is not, in fact, legal. Eight days later, the “weekend of bloodshed” happened when the AMA dissolved the AMA Pro Racing board, announced new rules committees, etc. and, reading between the lines, indicated AMA Pro Racing is no more. On the same day, American Honda resigned from the AMA’s Board of Directors, mentioning they found it alarming that several key individuals had recently left AMA Pro Racing and AMA Pro Racing’s “inability to stand by its own rulebook with regard to recent Formula Xtreme considerations” as reasons they decided to get out of Dodge.
The AMA will replace the AMA Pro Racing board with several different committees for rules, equipment standards and the like. Entities that will make up these committees will be chosen from the industry and according to the AMA “the AMA president will appoint enough other members of the committee to assure that the manufacturers cannot constitute a majority”; transparency will be a goal. This should prove interesting to watch.
I have just one question: What on earth was so broken with AMA Pro Racing—the recent Buell development aside—that this is chosen as a way to improve the system that runs and governs US racing? Certainly Scott Hollingsworth appeared to have hit a plateau in terms of his effectiveness (there’s a few more people there in the upper-echelon of the Pro Racing that need to be shown the door), but on the whole, everything seemed to work fairly well in terms of vision and operations of Pro Racing. Does anyone really feel that the creation of more bureaucratic committees to make decisions will be a huge improvement over having a simple board of directors?
Time will tell.
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Comments»
In 2005, Honda fielded a “Factory” team in FX and as a result, blew the doors off all the privateers. Even though the CBR600RR is sold on the street, I doubt that the factory bike is anything that you or I could build or buy. The Japanese sport bikes are pretty close to being last years GP bikes with lights hung on them. Buell just hasn’t gotten around to hanging lights on its XBRR yet and selling a street model. The XBRR is based on the XB12R just as much as the factory Honda is based on the CBR, they just decided to take a short cut and build the bike at the factory and save us the headache of doing it ourselves. In the end, both are race bikes of a similar lineage, having a street bike as a base. FX allows unlimited mods to an aircooled pushrod V-twin which means that no matter what you do to the bike or who does it, it will still be legal. As far as the argument that the XB is not really air cooled, but air/oil cooled, I say hogwash. Many if not most air cooled bikes have oil coolers, including the Buell street bikes. As long as air goes over the cylinders as the only cooling medium, then the engine is air cooled. If I ride my air cooled bike in the rain should It be disqualified because the water in the air makes it water cooled?? Pleeease!! I think the AMA can see this and complaints from Honda are just sour grapes. If Honda can get away with fielding a Quasi-factory bike then why not anyone else? As for Buell’s press release about the XBRR being a track only bike, Isn’t the CBR based Honda also a track only bike as prepped for FX? After looking at many photos of the XBRR, I would conclude that the frame, basic engine, wheels, etc are nearly identical to those found on an XB street bike and a person with enough ability could duplicate it from an existing XB.
There are plenty of places and classes for the factories with unlimited resources and million dollar riders to go racing but few real venues for the privateer on a budget to come in with whatever modified bike he might have and get a fair shot at a win. This is what the “formula” classes attempt to address by creating a class that has a category for everyone. Buell recently sold 50 XBRR’s for about $30,000 a copy, I doubt you could get last years winning Honda for that price, much less 50 of them. I would bet that the factories would lose interest in FX if there was a “claimer” provision in the formula that would allow anyone to purchase the winning bike for a preset cap price as there once was in drag racing.
Personally, I would rather see the factory teams barred from FX and allow only private and dealer teams, then each year, ammend the rules to attempt to bring the different types of machines to a common performance level. The racing public would be better served.