AMA Superbike Championship

AMA Superbike Championship is an American motorcycle racing series based in the United States. The series is organized by MotoAmerica and is sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) as well as the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). [ 1 ] For most of its existence it has been considered the premier motorcycle road racing series in the United States. The championship features “highly modified, production based liter class motorcycles” competing at premier tracks acro...

The AMA Superbike Championship can trace its roots back to the AMA Open Production event that began in 1973. [ 3 ] AMA Open Production was hosted alongside the AMA Road Race National at Laguna Seca Raceway in 1973 and 1974. By 1976, the event became a major class, appearing at all 4 AMA Grand Nationals that season, and its name was changed to Superbike Production. [ 4 ] In 1986, the AMA made the Grand National Championship into a dirt-track-only series splitting off the road-racing rounds into t...

In the early 1970’s AMA road racing consisted of two classes of Grand Prix style road racing machines: Heavyweight and Lightweight. The Heavyweight class, akin to Formula 750 in Europe, limited displacement to 750cc; while the Lightweight class limited 2 stroke engine displacement to 250cc and 4 stroke displacement to 360cc. Required by homologation , these motorcycles “must be a standard catalogued production model and at least 200 of this same model with identical engines and transmissions mus...

The early 1970’s saw the introduction of many high performance, large displacement road bikes such as the BMW R90S , Kawasaki Z1 , and the Ducati 750SS . These motorcycles brought unprecedented levels of performance and power to the showroom floor, needing little to no modification to make them competent racing motorcycles. Buyers of these bikes knew this, and were eager to begin competing in races aboard their performance oriented machines. Soon, various club racers were competing in grassroot ...

Sensing the growing desire for production based racing, AMA race promoters Gavin Trippe and Bruce Cox invited production racers to compete at the 1973 Laguna Seca AMA National Road Race Weekend. Two production based races occurred, one being the Open Production class and the other being the Lightweight Production class, which was limited to 350cc. The regulations for these races required the motorcycles to retain their stock appearance, exhaust, brakes, instruments and carburetors. Yvon Duhamel ...

Other Road Race Nationals began adding Production races to their lineup. Later, in August 1973 the Pocono National featured Production racing, with Yvon Duhamel winning again, riding a Kawasaki H2 this time. In 1974, Open Production returned to Laguna Seca, drawing enough popularity for it to make the cover of Cycle News . Later that season, the Ontario road race national featured an Open Production event, this time won by Reg Pridmore on a BMW R90S. [ 4 ] The 1975 season saw both the Daytona Bi...

By 1976, the popularity of production racing, particularly around the Open Production class had swelled sufficiently for the AMA to make Open Production an official championship class to be run at all Round of Road Race Nationals. The name Open Production was dropped in favor of Superbike Production. Rules mandated that motorcycles competing in Superbike Production must “retain stock chassis and original silhouette. The engine could be modified as long as it retained the stock stroke - capacity ...

At the inception of the series there was little competition between the more experienced teams racing European twin cylinder bikes, which included the BMW R90S, Ducati and Moto Guzzi motorcycles and the teams racing the more powerful Japanese inline fours from Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Honda. While the Japanese bikes produced more horsepower, the European bikes tended to have superior handling. "In the beginning, the liter bikes actually lapped slower than the AMA 250s". [ 8 ] The power being produc...

The inaugural series in 1976 consisted of four rounds, BMW took three wins and Moto Guzzi took one. The Championship was won by rider Reg Pridmore on a BMW R90S owned by Team Butler and Smith. [ 5 ] For 1977 the series was expanded to 7 races and the European machines continued to show their strengths, winning the first four rounds. [ 7 ] By the 5th round, after two seasons of work, the Team Racecrafters Kawasaki Z1 won the first race for a Japanese motorcycle. Racecrafters and Reg Pridmore - wh...

By 1978, Yoshimura Suzuki and Vetter Kawasaki were two of the leading teams taking advantage of the new 1000cc Japanese machines. The 1978 season also brought new rule changes to the series. More extensive modifications, such as aftermarket 4-1 exhausts were allowed. Fierce competition between Suzuki, Ducati, Kawasaki and BMW continued, with the Championship again going to Reg Pridmore, this time riding a Vetter Kawasaki KZ1000. [ 9 ] Superbike Production saw more changes in 1979 for both the mo...

As the series gained more and more attention in America the factories took note. In 1980 Honda entered the series with a factory team and brought a top rider from their stable, Freddie Spencer , to compete on their behalf. [ 6 ] The Kawasaki factory team, which began in 1979, hired Rob Muzzy , an experienced dirt track mechanic to build their engines, and eventually the entire bike. [ 8 ] The engine displacement limit was increased to 1025cc, likely to accommodate the stock displacement of the K...

By the early 2000s, it became clear that the motorcycles being raced in AMA Superbike no longer represented the grassroots style production based racing the series was founded around. Manufacturers were developing purpose-built racing motorcycles that were produced in such low quantities that they were essentially unavailable to the public. Factory backed teams were competing with large budgets and the series was becoming less accessible to privateer teams. [ 42 ] By 2002, “a privateer had not f...

AMA recognized the inaccessibility of the series and brought about a large rule change for the 2003 season designed to address this situation. Now eligible to compete were near stock, 1000cc multi cylinder motorcycles with “specific restrictions on weight and engine modifications”. [ 42 ] These 1000cc motorcycles had a higher minimum required weight of 370 pounds, and were permitted far fewer performance modifications than the existing 750cc machines. The extensively modified 750cc multi cylinde...

The Japanese manufacturers were prepared for the inclusion of 1000cc four cylinder motorcycles in 2003. Yamaha had launched their YZR-R1 in 1998, Honda their CBR954RR in 2002, and Suzuki their GSX-R1000 in 2001. [ 46 ] [ 47 ] These motorcycles were not homologation specials, and were available to the public en masse. Although they were not produced in minimal quantities, they all packed serious technology derived from the 750cc racing motorcycles that preceded them. With minimal modification, th...

For 2003, Kawasaki continued to field their bored out ZX-7RR, and Honda their twin cylinder RC51, but as the season went on, it became evident that the liter bikes had the advantage. [ 48 ] By 2004, Honda chose to field their new CBR1000RR four cylinder; similarly, Kawasaki moved to their newly released ZX-10R . [ 49 ] It was the Suzuki GSX-R1000 that emerged as the clear recipe for success after this rule change went into effect. Fifty nine of the seventy three entrants in the 2003 season were ...

Ultimately this new ruleset was not liked by all competitors. In 2006 Ducati withdrew factory support from AMA Superbike racing, claiming that the rules were unfavorable for their two cylinder motorcycles. [ 51 ] Overall participation in AMA Superbike steadily fell after this rule change, going from roughly 50 entrants per race in 2004 to 27 per race in 2008. [ 49 ]

In March 2008, Rob Dingman, the CEO of AMA announced that he was selling the sanctioning, promotional and management rights of AMA Pro Racing to the Daytona Motorsports Group. The leadership of AMA at the time wanted to distance themselves from their racing activities to focus on being a membership organization and providing membership benefits. Rob Dingman claimed that the AMA was facing too much controversy as the sanctioning body for the racing series and that they needed to return to their c...

Hopes were high that the new ties to NASCAR would bring an influx of money and publicity to the AMA road racing series. For 2009, rule changes were put into effect to allow twin cylinder bikes up to 1200cc. This mirrored the rule change made in World Superbike to allow Ducati to be competitive with their 1098R . [ 54 ]

Unfortunately, the leadership at DMG ended up doing a poor job operating and marketing the series, and the timing of the 2008 financial crisis did not help matters. [ 55 ] The Honda and Kawasaki factory teams dropped out of the 2009 season, leaving just Suzuki and Yamaha to field factory supported teams. [ 56 ] With this loss of this manufacturer support, many sponsors and fans left the sport as well. The number of races per season was cut in half, going from twelve in 2009 to six in 2014 with e...

Nonetheless, the superbike racing continued and the Yamaha Factory Racing Team, fielding their YZF-R1 defined this period. Matching the level of success seen by Suzuki prior to the DMG acquisition, Yamaha won the Championship every year from 2010 to 2016. Four of these 7 titles were won by rider Josh Hayes , two by Cameron Beaubier , and one by Josh Herrin . [ 57 ]

MotoAmerica & FIM alignment (2015 - Present)

Motorcycles competing in AMA Superbike must follow the requirements of the FIM homologation rules and must appear on the FIM North America homologated motorcycle list. [ 64 ] General regulations are as follows:

Minimum Weight: 370 pounds

Engine:

The AMA Superbike season typically consists of 9-10 rounds, each with two races, held from April through September. [ 65 ] [ 66 ] Occasionally, there will be three Superbike races held at some of the rounds, with two races instead of one being held on the Sunday. [ 67 ] Each round begins on Friday and ends on Sunday:

Current AMA Superbike races typically range in distance from 40 to 50 miles. Depending on the track, the number of laps can be as few as 12 or as many as 21. [ 68 ] Riders have two sessions to qualify for Race 1, one on Friday and one on Saturday morning. The lap times set in these qualifying sessions determines the starting order for Race 1. The starting order for Race 2 is determined by the finishing order of Race 1. If a third race is scheduled for a round, its starting order is determined by...

Points are earned at each of the races in the round, and accumulated throughout the season. [ 70 ] [ 71 ] At the end of the season the rider with the most points wins the Championship. The points allocation is as follows:

No points are earned for finishing a race in position 16 or higher.