2023 MotoAmerica - Round 9 - Circuit of the Americas

MotoAmerica is back in action at COTA this weekend. It's gonna be HOT in Austin this weekend.

Gagne has already clinched the Superbike championship with Cam Beaubier's recent run of bad luck and mistakes. Both Cams (Peterson/Beaubier) are out for the remainder of the season. The question in Superbike is whether Herrin and/or Jacobsen can convert their straightline speed advantage into wins this weekend.

Supersport is basically wrapped up. Fores only needs a couple of points. He's been promised a Superbike ride if he wins, and he said he wants to race in the US. Are they getting rid of Herrin already? or adding another bike for the Warhorse SBK team?

Anyway, should be a good time at COTA, though the racing may not impress. We'll see.

Overall not a bad weekend of racing. A bit surprised that Josh Hayes struggled. He claimed at Road America that his bike had good acceleration in 5th and 6th gears, but he was left for dead on the back straight and powering up the hill into Turn 1. Congrats to Tyler Scott on his Race 2 win. It was a little ugly, and both riders were all over the track (and off the track), but it seemed like he won fair and square. David Anthony was really close to bagging a podium in Race 2, but it didn't quite happen. Would have been great to see him get a result after switching to Supersport fulltime. He still has a lot to offer, but Superbike seems to have passed him by.

Superbike wasn't particularly entertaining, and Herrin only got the job done in Race 2. I expected the Ducati to have the legs in both races, but he had some issue in Race 1. Gagne continues to ride like a champ and take whatever the race gives him. He's not forcing it nearly as much as last year, and his results are even better, in terms of margin of championship victory.

Yeah, hooligans was nuts and interesting. Hard to believe riders can go over the highside on those lead sleds, but I guess they have tons of lowend torque. Even if they rev slowly it only takes a couple of power pulses to break traction permanently.

DavidSim said:

I feel sad to say that I have no interest in MotoAmerica, I used to watch US road racing years ago, even made the treck from Toronto to the Daytona 200 one year in it's heyday, not much different for the Canadian Superbike series unfortunately (although there is a new person running the show who hopes to return the series to it's previous glory so to speak).

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Understandable. There are some interesting things going on in MotoAmerica, particularly with the GSX-R750 Supersport package, which was developed in the US and races in the US exclusively. If MotoA used Pirellis it would already be in WSSP, but I suspect Euro teams are not keen to adapt the chassis. We'll see what happens in the future as the 600s are phased out. Teams will be looking for other packages to run.

Yeah, it's kind of a shame what's happened to AMA Superbike. They ousted Daytona Motorsports Group, and they ended up with performance balancing from the FIM anyway. I'm sure the management is better now, but they lost a lot of sponsor clout when they sent DMG packing. Maybe it will work out in the long run.