The AMA has just announced a big reorganization and among those changes are new rules making committees for professional racing. There’s quite a lot to digest and while trying to make sense of it all, I stopped by Roadracing World and noticed a press release from American Honda:
For more than 30 years, American Honda has maintained a seat on the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Board of Trustees. Unfortunately, recent actions taken by the AMA have caused American Honda to question its continued participation on both the AMA Board of Trustees and the Paradama (AMA Pro Racing) Board of Directors. Ultimately, American Honda has made the decision to vacate both seats on these boards effective immediately.
…conflicting interests within the AMA organization have caused a division of ideology and a blurring of the vision that American Honda has always supported. Recent issues, including the departure of dedicated individuals from AMA Pro Racing and its inability to stand by its own rulebook with regard to recent Formula Xtreme considerations, have been particularly alarming.
Honda believes the rulebook is a sanctioning body’s most important asset. When a governing body violates the sanctity of its rulebook, it loses credibility with everyone associated with racing–the teams, the riders, the sponsors and, most importantly, the fans who rely on sanctioning bodies to create racing environments which ensure fair, balanced and exciting competition. Honda believes the AMA and other sanctioning bodies must be responsible for coordinating the efforts of all participants to ultimately benefit the sport. Honda also believes that all manufacturers, through technical committees, must participate in, and collaborate on, development and harmonization of technical rules for each class of competition.
Well, that should wake up a few people. As our posts and numerous comments have laid out, the arbitrary approval of the XBRR for Formula Xtreme leaves an uneasy feeling among those who simply believe everyone needs to follow the rules. Evidently Honda feels the same way. Stay tuned, this should be interesting.
UPDATE: AMA Response to Honda
aaron says
ouch. think we’ll see any more action before the race? I’ve said before, I don’t really follow the ama (at least once the other race seasons start up), so I may be wrong with my next statement. wasn’t honda the only team to take the formula xtreme seriously with a decent factory effort? if suzuki and kawasaki and yamaha continue to focus on supersport/superbike and ducati spends money on superbike only, and honda does something drastic like pull the riders at daytona… would that leave buell as the only “factory” team? what chance would privateers have? could standing up for the little guy (buell) end up crushing the chances of the “little guys”? (the independant teams) maybe the easy way out would be to throw firestorm bodywork on the xbrr? that would be good enough for me…
daytona is the most important race of the year for marketing and prestige purposes, but a boycott could make that a non issue- like ferrari’s F1 win at indy last year…what was that worth?
C.J. Luke says
I can tell you what I don’t want to see…the AMA disolve into insignificance. Hopefully, those powers in the AMA that were pursuaded by Harley/Buel to break the rules and let Buel in…will see the error of their ways. Ever since the MotoGP that ran in the U.S. last year with such a great fan turnout and T.V. coverage, I have been telling myself that with the motorcycle becomming so popular in the U.S. that maybe….just maybe…we would begin to get some decent coverage (TV and Press) that would interest the business world in some sponsorships, and finally get motorcycle racing into the main stream like it is in Europe. It doesn’t matter if you are a Honda fan or not…and I’m not… the AMA cannot afford to have Honda walk away from the table.
Doug says
sometimes the best improvements come after major errors.
on another note…All of the fallout of the AMA catering to Buell is placing more & more pressure on Buell to be successful