In case you hadn't heard American Honda has bowed to the economy (and it's absolute frustration with DMG) and cancelled any factory superbike effort in favor of supporting Erion and Corona Racing. As far as I know they will pay Neil Hodgson's contract and I predict he will end up with a Superbike on one of the support teams (probably Erion).

If you go back to my earliest threads on this I predicted that Honda could sit out a year or two given the rift with AMA/DMG, throw in the economy and there you have it.

I also predict Kawaski and Suzuki will soon follow suit so congratulations DMG *** sucking Yamaha on your 2009 AMA/DMG unearned Superbike Championship. Enjoy it it's probably the first and final year for the AMA
/DMG cluster ****.

 

I try to catch every race on TV during the season. Any racing is better than no racing, but the "Suzuki Train" in AMA Superbike has gotten kind of boring. That's obvious when the announcers are focusing on the race for 6th place to get a shot of more than one bike on the screen.

 

I don't argue that the Suzuki dominance has been a real turn off, but now (barring Hodgson on a support team superbike) your going to be treated to a Yamaha show with 2 bikes clearing out and the rest fighting for 3rd (sound famailiar).

Actually given the giant lack of participation by the OEM's I'm not sure the AMA/DMG series will finish the season. When the individual track owners sit down and look at the numbers w/o factory teams and in a tremendously bad economy don't be surprised if they start to bail too.

 

I usually try to get to one AMA race each year. I'm not going to make the effort in 2009. I'll go to the Indy Motogp and to Shannonville for the Canadian series and wait for the dust to settle in the AMA/DMG.

 

This sucks...I wish it was 1997 again...

 

Honda is HUGE, mabey dmg will get their act together when they realize the 09 series is gonna suck because of their crap. It figures this would happen the first year that New Jersey Motorsports Park was included in the schedule, I was looking forward to going. I guess I'll just have to keep looking forward to World Superbike, the BMWs, Haga, and Corser, after all it is by far the most exciting racing out there.

 

+1 on WSB.

 

WSB definitely has the best racing. Troy Bayliss will be missed though.

 

Sorry I've been out of touch for awhile so let me get up to speed!

DMG has backed away from the announced purse structure!

DMG has negotiated a TV contract that will essentialy show the race a "week or two" after the fact!

DMG's vision of racing is so popular that there are rooms available right outside the track (Never in the last 20 years has that been true) I'm talking about Daytona!

DMG will tell anyone who will listen how great and innovative their program is just read their press releases. Have you seen the Emporor Edmonson's new clothes!

I was wrong about Hodgeson he didn't go to Erion he (and what would have been Team Honda and their 09 bike) went to Corona (bigger budget for sure)!

So if Suzuki stops cheating (trust me they were) the Yamaha's will probably go right to the front with their new firing order crankshaft and Hodgson and Mladin might be fighting for a podium spot.

 

World Superbike starts this weekend at Phillips Island, Australia. Ben Spies will be debuting on a Yamaha.

Should be interesting.