Sunday, July 27, 2008

Smart money says new AMA Pro Racing will get it right

The entire professional road racing community has been up in arms since DMG (now officially AMA Pro Racing) began making their presence felt. The complaints have been long, loud, and many. A person less magnanimous than me might even call it incessant whining. But I won't do that. I understand what all the furor is about. The road racers were, more or less, happy with the status quo, and DMG have begun shaking that up — not always in a positive direction. But in MX and Flat Track the situation is different.

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Mike Kidd chosen to lead AMA Pro Flat Track

AMA Pro Racing (the new AMA Pro Racing) announced Thursday that long-time, old school flat track racer, former AMA Grand National Champion, race promoter, Motorcycle Hall of Fame member, and Texan Mike Kidd has been chosen to head the redevelopment of the national flat track program. This is good news. Kidd has been around the block more than once and knows the flat track business. He's also seen the ups and downs of race promoting, being one of the first to bring racing to the small arenas in the mid-'80s.

I love flat track — watching those big Harley XR750s pitched completely sideways at 100mph in a mile race is awesome. The old AMA's apathy toward flat track was exceeded only by their apathy toward outdoor MX. Flat track is a genuinely American form of competition and deserves much better. I've read that AMA Pro Racing's Roger Edmondson is a big flat track fan, and this move to bring in Kidd is encouraging.

Kidd has done some very innovative things in his promotional career, but it seemed he never really had the big bucks behind him that he needed - even though he had the backing of Clear Channel for a while. It just didn't work. But now that he's got the backing of a group with both money and a love of the sport things could be very different. I hope so.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Davey Coombs wants to make outdoor motocross cool again

I just read the interview with Davey Coombs in the new Cycle News — Issue #29, July 23, 2008 — talking about MXSports, outdoor MX, Barber Motorsports Park, and the future of motocross and the outdoor series:

We want to make motocross as cool, as competitive, as entertaining, and as safe as possible.

Live TV, improved facilities, adding new venues, listening to riders, listening to fans, taking a business approach that admits we have to modernize but recognizes motocross has its own unique value — that it does not have to be Supercross, just in the daytime.

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Long live the two-stroke Part Deux: FUD in the marketplace

Two-stroke technology is not banned. Never was. Yet this myth continues to run rampant over the internet. Two-stroke technology is changing, getting cleaner, but this is a story about how purposeful misdirection and a campaign of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt created a myth, killed development of a promising technology for over a decade, and changed the face of a sport.

Let's assume that a large, multi-national corporation (for simplicity we'll use a fictitious entity called Company H) manufactures everything from inexpensive lawn mowers and power generators to motorcycles and $40,000 SUVs. Every item in their massive product line is powered by a four-stroke motor. Every item, that is, except a small group of dirt bikes. The company has enormous investments and intellectual property in the development, marketing, and sales of four-stroke-driven products.

Company H is aware that certain proprietary methods, techniques, or technologies for lowering two-stroke emissions are either available or under development, some by their primary competitors. But Company H doesn't own any of the intellectual property (patents) associated with this improvement. Further, two-stroke engines do not fit the company's financial model — costing extra for development (since they can't leverage their vast institutional knowledge of four-strokes) — while generating lower margins in sales and service parts.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

Davey Coombs takes on the future of outdoor MX

This just in: RacerX Illustrated founder, 2nd-generation motocross promoter, track owner, prolific media entrepreneur, and all-round good guy Davey Coombs just announced in Racerhead #28 that he is stepping down from the day-to-day operations of his RacerX empire to focus on the future of outdoor MX and the pro motocross Nationals. In less than a year we've gone from feeling the AMA genuinely wanted to kill the outdoor series to having someone like Davey step up to drive the sport forward. No one has a better grasp of the sport's past and future than DC. We could not be in better hands.

Coombs has already talked about things like raising the minimum age for Pro licenses, the problems with

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Harley to acquire MV Agusta Group

Back in early June I posted this note on the talks between H-D and MV Agusta. According to this AMA press release the two groups have signed a definitive agreement worth approximately $109 million US. The agreement gives H-D 100% of MV Agusta.

This is not Harley's first foray into Italian motorcycles. Most of us remember when Harley sold...

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

FIM to put 2-strokes on even footing in 2010

According to this Dec 21, 2007 press release (pdf) from the Federation Internationale de Motorcyclisme, the Permanent Bureau has decreed the following:

Motocross Classes: as of 2010, single cylinder engines will be used in MX1 and MX2 and multicylinder in MX3, whether 2 or 4-stroke (open concept). The cubic capacity will be 250cc in MX2, and up to 650cc in MX3. Discussions are currently being held about the cubic capacity in MX1. A decision should be taken in the next three months. Concerning the MX2 class, a maximum age limit of 23 years will be introduced. Moreover, a World Champion will be allowed to defend his title only one time (in the following year).

The FIM Junior World Championship will have an additional class as of 1.1.2010: 65cc. All the classes (65cc, 85cc, 125cc) will be exclusively 2-stroke.

I think this is a move that's long overdue. I'd prefer that there not be a specific technology...

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AMA approves sale to Daytona Motorsports Group

Here's the press release from the AMA regarding final approval of the Pro Racing/DMG deal. I'm sure the road race community is up in arms over this, and I feel for them. The changes underway there have created a lot of friction with the riders, factories, and race track owners. There's a lot of bluster going on now between all sides. As Dave Despain said in his Wind Tunnel editorial a couple of Sundays ago, a lot of this is posturing for negotiation, so let's get to negotiating guys and get it worked out.

But the NPG have been busting their butts in a way that has not been seen since...

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