ELKHART LAKE, WIS, JUNE 7: American Suzuki is prepared to withdrawal its support from the AMA Superbike Championship if the currently proposed set of rules is enacted.
That was the word from Mel Harris, American Suzuki’s vice president for motorcycles and ATV’s, at Road America on Saturday afternoon. Asked directly if American Suzuki would race next year, Harris said, “I don’t think you’ll see us racing if the rules stay the way they are now.”
Harris supports the rules originally endorsed by the American distributors of the Japanese manufacturers for the 2009-2010 Superbike class. Daytona Motorsports Group CEO Roger Edmondson agreed to those rules in the Literbike class, but only if each manufacturer guaranteed four motorcycles in qualifying. (They didn’t have to be factory machines.) But the cost of having four Superbikes was prohibitive and Yamaha’s Keith McCarty suggested a move to more restrictive, and less expensive, rules. Edmondson then gave the American bosses of the Japanese factories a choice; the 2009-2010 rules or more restrictive regulations. Harris was the only senior executive who never responded to the query.
“I haven’t answered him yet, because I was waiting for what the factory to give me more direction,” he began, “because with Suzuki being a small company, we can’t be racing different rules all over the world. We need to be racing rules that make sense.” The rules which cap horsepower for the Literbike class at 185 horsepower, and Daytona Superbike at 140, depending on the weight of the motorcycle, don’t make sense to Suzuki and make it difficult to predict the future.
“I can’t tell you the plan” for 2009, “but I can tell you I’m not racing the rules that were just presented,” he said. “I mean I don’t think that that’s best for us and that’s not best for the industry. So I think that there’s still a lot of talking that needs to be done before everybody gets ready to put on a show for next year.”
Suzuki has always been more interested in racing 1000’s, specifically the GSX-R1000, and that was where they’d focus their efforts, if the rules changed, Harris said.
“You know, we haven’t really been in the 600 Formula Xtreme or that much with 600’s,” he said. “Either class you go in, the costs are about the same, so you can’t go into two classes, so you have to go in one. Well, all of our development is in the 1000’s. As I look at it, it’s easy (use) 1000’s to sell 600’s, but will 600’s sell 1000’s? And we sell a lot of big bikes.
“So at this point we want to race in the 1000 class, but we want to race with rules that make sense. I still say the rules that all the manufacturers agreed with for two years, we at least ought to give it a shot. No spec tires, no spec gas, no holding ECU’s. Let’s just race like men out there. Do the right thing.” Edmondson has said there will be a control tire and a control fuel supplier. The requests for proposals will go out once the technical rules have been finalized.
Harris also said it would be more helpful if there were consistent rules among the various Superbike championships worldwide. For the American distributor to race completely different rules, which, to a point they do now, “just doesn’t make sense. Our company’s not big enough to support all that kind of activity. At this point we’re still waiting and they’ve kind of given me their ideas, so now I can probably sit down and talk a little bit more with people and see what we can do.”
More ominously, Harris also said that if American Suzuki didn’t race, they’d wouldn’t support any other teams. Currently, they’re the largest supporter of satellite teams and privateers in the paddock. Among their premier satellite teams are Jordan Suzuki, M4 EMGO Suzuki, and Matsushima Performance Suzuki.
“Well, if we’re not racing, it would probably be pretty tough to give all the support out,” he said.
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