If the opening weekend is anything to go by, MotoAmerica could be entertaining and worthwhile. Ducati and BMW are expanding their footprint in the series, with Warhorse adding a second superbike for Loriz Baz and Rahal taking over Supersport operations. BMW has provided SDK and company with a factory-spec machine for his return to MotoAmerica. Yamaha have also done a reasonably good job of keeping their operation in tact. Fong has been swapped with Scholtz as their 3rd Superbike, and Scholtz has been moved to Supersport to replace Josh Hayes. All of their riders had strong showings this weekend, particularly Mathew Scholtz, who was moved to Supersport when Westby Racing withdrew, but who delivered a crazy and impressive performance in Supersport Race 1.
Fortune did not favor the M4 Suzuki operation at Road Atlanta. The team still has a relatively competitive operation, but the results did not materialize. Brandon Paasch had a forgettable debut for the superbike team, and Escalante had a mediocre showing in Race 1 before suffering a terrible crash during the cool down lap with Loris Baz. It's unclear who chopped the throttle or who wasn't looking, but Escalante rear ended Baz and he's suffered serious injury that will require surgery and prolonged outage. In Supersport, Ty Scott crashed out of the lead from pole position, and Teag Hobbs, who had a reasonable rookie campaign, was farther down the midpack than normal. The bright spot for Team Hammer is that Supersport had 40 entrants this weekend, and about half of them are on GSX-R750s. It seems they will be busy building bikes and selling parts. Rumor is that a GSX-R750 can do an entire season on a single engine, if you can avoid crashing it too hard. Privateers must love it.
MotoAmerica feels like it's one mega-sponsor away from turning a corner. The takeover of MotoGP by Liberty Media could be huge for them, since a rising tide in the US will life all ships, and MotoAmerica has a strategic alliance with Dorna to develop talent. If Liberty can help them land a few corporate sponsors, the series could make a big leap. For some reason, I keep thinking of 7-Eleven. Of course, the same thing was said about corporate sponsors and DMG, but the series continued to deteriorate under their management, despite corporate money.
