World,AMA,British,Australian,Canadian

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 14 2007, 08:34 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Remove Gayliss and Biaggi from that list and its about right.
i think they would be competitive enough.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (frosty58 @ May 14 2007, 02:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>
i think they would be competitive enough.

Its a borderline case, and i would deny both of them based on their age.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 14 2007, 08:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>deny both of them based on their age.
watch it sonny!!!!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (frosty58 @ May 14 2007, 02:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'> watch it sonny!!!!

Sit down grandpa! Its just that if your hiring someone slow, make it someone who has prospects to learn, gain experience and get more competitive in the future. It also helps if they don't grind into a pile of dust every time they stack, young people bounce better.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 14 2007, 09:00 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Sit down grandpa! Its just that if your hiring someone slow, make it someone who has prospects to learn, gain experience and get more competitive in the future. It also helps if they don't grind into a pile of dust every time they stack, young people bounce better.
i won't argue that. but sometimes experience pay's or comes cheap...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (frosty58 @ May 14 2007, 03:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'> i won't argue that. but sometimes experience pay's or comes cheap...

This is true, experience is a very valuable asset. These are the decisions that most team managers have to make.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (povol @ May 12 2007, 10:22 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>.Xaus was not a champion and had no bargaining power which led to a ride in GP that set back his career.Mladin was a mutiple time champion who would not settle for a .... ride just to be in GP,i cant say i blame him.

including that self important prick teammate of his.I just dont hate any rider,i admire them all but pull for some, more than others.
I see your point. But at least Xaus gave it a shot, and that earns respect in the eyes of us not knowing all the personal reasons why guys don't move up to international series'. Mladin would have had more "bargaining power" as a champion.

Which teammate do you think is a prick? Ben or Tommy? (I can very well guess, but just wonder, and why?)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 12 2007, 10:37 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I dunno, he may have been a multiple champion, but at riding inside his comfort zone in a domestic series. That doesn't really hold much weight. Nicky Hayden was spotted very young as a massive talent, and rightly so. Mladin had very little to offer the top gp teams when they could find young talented riders, riders with gp experience, and riders who have proven themselves to a larger extent than he. And for that reason i think he was too stuck up to accept a fair opportunity to prove himself on second rate kit and then get a chance on the factory stuff if he was good enough. Unless he just plain knew he wasn't good enough already.
Yes, I agree.

But as Povol said, he had many personal reasons not to go to GP, they just don't sit well with me. I wonder what others would have done in similar circumstances. Money is pretty attractive, and settling down to form a family is also extremely important. Oh well, we will never know how good he really was or would have been.

I accept family as a reason not to go to world championships, because some things are more important than racing. but other excuses, like money are pathetic.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 14 2007, 08:48 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I accept family as a reason not to go to world championships, because some things are more important than racing. but other excuses, like money are pathetic.
What about money to support your family?

Its not like these guys are poor man. Mladin could move to motogp unpaid and have enough money to support his family in comfort until he stops racing.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 14 2007, 09:05 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Its not like these guys are poor man. Mladin could move to motogp unpaid and have enough money to support his family in comfort until he stops racing.
I'm not the defender of Mat, if anything, I may have voiced most of the contempt here for him not moving up. But at the time he was to move up to MotoGP (say after his second title), he wasn’t that rich yet. Perhaps he thought of his family’s future more than his own legacy. Maybe not, maybe he was just a selfish prick.

But, I still think he's a ...... (Ignorance is bliss I guess).

Yes, we read this post. He is still a ..... in my eyes. Unless he did it for family--but I doubt it.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (povol @ May 12 2007, 11:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>As it turns out,Mladin did race in GP. After winning the Australian Superbike title,he went GP in 93 and rode the Cagiva 500 where he did OK.He then came to America and flourished in AMA and when approached again to go GP he said no for a couple of reasons.One being,he was happy where he was,2,he was happy because they were paying him big bucks.3,he was starting a family and globe hopping was not conducive to that and 4,he had ridden a .... bike in GP and wanted no part of it again.Now maybe you can just dislike him like i do instead of Hating him for never trying GP

I think to some extent the reason some think AMA SBK riders are so bad is the race coverage itself. The camera angles are crap and the organizers are idiots. I dont think any one can tell who the best riders are to be fair. I do think that WSBK packages their product much more attractively. To say categorically that WSBK is better than AMA SBK is not valid without head to head comparisons. Speaking of comparisons Hodgson (WSBK champion) raced AMA SBK and all he did was cry about how unfair everything was.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ogunski @ May 18 2007, 06:16 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I think to some extent the reason some think AMA SBK riders are so bad is the race coverage itself. The camera angles are crap and the organizers are idiots. I dont think any one can tell who the best riders are to be fair. I do think that WSBK packages their product much more attractively. To say categorically that WSBK is better than AMA SBK is not valid without head to head comparisons. Speaking of comparisons Hodgson (WSBK champion) raced AMA SBK and all he did was cry about how unfair everything was.


His reasons on many levels are right though. Yoshimura-Suzuki will spend 500 thousand a bike(according to Ben Spies) while you or me could spend 10 thousand and buy a bike ready to race AMA SBK. There is no parity. Ducati could not justify spending that much on a National racing series, while having a promising Moto GP bike and a at that time of the withdrawl, a great WSBK racer.

Must have missed this thread. Well I watch AMA, BSB, Aus SBK, WSBK and Motogp. I'm basing my rankings mainly on the 07 season.

1. WSBK
2. BSB
3. AMA
4. Aus SBK

WSBK is definitely the best production based class. The results and no. of different manufacturer wins this year shows the class of the riders and also the machinery. All manufacturers have managed a win, 4 different manufacturers in the top 4 spots.

BSB wins hands down over AMA. Watch any of this years races and you'll see why. AMA blows big time, look at the 1st Superbike race from Infineon. Mladin wins by 19 secs! What a ....... joke, he lapped up to 7th place. Suzuki win every round unless they have a failure, its pathetic to watch. There just hasn't been one interesting race in the AMA this season. Fontana threw up something late in the race, but by then I'd lost interest as the previous 24 laps were a parade.

The camera work sucks, the tracks are ordinary (the ovals are just plain ....) and the bikes themselves look like street bikes. They look like actual streetbikes! No livery, no sponsors, nothing. All of the factory bikes look as though they were wheeled out of the showroom floor on the track. Dress the ....... bikes up you idiots, give me something that looks like a race bike, not the .... from the dealer! Its part of what makes them special, put on a Spies replica helmet and you cant tell the difference from the ....... on the track to the guy on the street. Whomever markets this series should be shot in the face and whomever lets Suzuki do what they do should be forced to watch the Daytona race for the rest of their life. F1 racing is boring as ...., but they have conned people into thinking its the greatest show on earth, I want the AMA to pull the wool over my eyes, what Im seeing at the moment just hurts them too much.

Spies is the only young guy doing anything. He doesn't want to leave, signed for next year WTF is that? Is it money? Maybe if he goes over a 3 time champion people will care? Somebody get him the .... out of AMA before it swallows his career. I think Mladin will beat him this year, he isnt backing down, last year made him look like .... and he'll try to kill Spies on track. As far as the other riders go, who cares? they'll win one race this season and try not to get lapped in the others. Its like Spies and Mladin are on GP bikes and the rest of the field are on production based equipment.

Give the field a ten second head start to make it interesting.

Nice to know somebody else has seen what domestic superbikes should be like, so they can realize that AMA is rubbish!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (povol @ May 25 2007, 07:33 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Vale i agree with most of what you said except the part about the bikes looking like thay rolled off the showroom.Im assuming your talking about the lack of corporate logo's splashed all over the sides that makes them look mundane but i promise you they are very trick race bikes.There is nothing stock about them.Im not sure why the bikes dont look like rolling billboards like most other racing series.Is it by choice or lack of alternatives,i dont know.Even the Yoshimura Suzukis dont have Yoshimura plastered all over them and you know they could if they wanted.

Im not questioning the quality of the machinery, at least not the Suzuki's, Mladin was comfortably running with the WSBK boys at phillip island testing. My big problem is the marketing of the series. It feels like a club race when I watch it on TV. Its similar to Aus SBK in that respect, the Yamaha's (which are dominating the series) and the Suzukis look like showroom bikes.The allure of race bikes for me is that they are more than showroom models in parts and look. When I think back to early schwantz days I remember the Pepsi Suzuki vividly, Doohan on the Rothmans Honda, Malboro Yamaha with Rainey. These are the things that stick in my head, at the moment there is nothing visually that links the rider, bike and sponsor.

A "recent" example is the Suzuki GP bikes before Rizla jumped on board. The GP bike looked like a street Suzuki, actually the GSX-R1000 was probably faster , it wasnt the bike you picked up on screen, it never caught your eye. The racing has to be great, but these series need to be marketed well to continue to flourish and attract sponsorship and I think the AMA is doing a piss poor job.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom @ May 12 2007, 07:15 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Does anyone know what the situation is with the all-japan series, is it any good these days?
I meant to reply to this back when I first read it, but didn't have time.

Motorbike racing in Japan has nothing like the coverage, public support, factory support and money that it used to. Even the 8 hour race doesn't get much more than a 10 second grab on the news showing the winner these days. Suzuka has been in decline since it lost the MotoGP, and, of course, now it's lost the F1 too.

The fact that Akira Yanagawa won the most recent round (and Norifumi Abe came third) should tell you about the level of competition. These guys were good riders in their day, but their best is behind them. There's only one overseas rider in the series right now--a young Brit, actually, by the name of Alex Camier riding for Moriwaki. Does anyone know anything about him? The average age of the rest of the riders looks to be over 30. It's hard to see anyone coming out of JSB and making it onto the world stage anytime soon.