In the early 1970’s AMA road racing consisted of two classes of
Grand Prix style road racing machines: Heavyweight and Lightweight. The Heavyweight class, akin to Formula 750 in Europe, limited displacement to 750cc; while the Lightweight class limited 2 stroke engine displacement to 250cc and 4 stroke displacement to 360cc. Required by
homologation, these motorcycles “must be a standard catalogued production model and at least 200 of this same model with identical engines and transmissions must be available for inspection and/or purchase within the United States”. While they were based on a standard production model, these motorcycles were either purpose built, or highly modified for racing, equipped with high performance engines and aerodynamic bodywork. Commonly the teams racing in these classes were factory backed, and capable of bringing engineering and financial resources unavailable to the common person. By 1974 both the Heavyweight and Lightweight Classes were almost completely dominated by the
Yamaha TZ, and fans were becoming tired of the watching the same make and model win two seasons in a row. The event proved to be popular with racers and fans alike. Spectators enjoyed watching racing between machines that were available to the public, while racers enjoyed the low barriers of entry for the same reasons. Other Road Race Nationals began adding Production races to their lineup. In 1974, Open Production returned to Laguna Seca, drawing enough popularity for it to make the cover of
Cycle News. Later that season, the Ontario road race national featured an Open Production event, this time won by
Reg Pridmore on a BMW R90S. Superbike Production saw more changes in 1979 for both the motorcycles and race format. Racing carburetors were now allowed, marking another step away from the production origins as teams sought to make their bikes more competitive. The
Daytona round, previously a 50 mile race distance, was extended to 100 miles, and allowed a refueling pitstop. Yoshimura Suzuki, which had seen success in prior seasons, went on to win the 1979 Championship with rider
Wes Cooley. As the series gained more and more attention in America the factories took note. In 1980 Honda entered the series with a factory team and brought a top rider from their stable,
Freddie Spencer, to compete on their behalf. Honda, which had been competing in the series with bored out versions of the CB 750, came prepared for this rule change with new technologically advanced motorcycle, designed to win the AMA Superbike Championship. This bike, the
VF750F, was a large departure from the air-cooled, perimeter frame, twin shock motorcycles that had won in prior years. Its chassis featured a square tube steel
perimeter frame which wrapped around the outside of the engine and
monoshock rear suspension. It was powered by a liquid cooled V4 engine, with four valves per cylinder, dual overhead camshafts and a slipper clutch. Where the original Japanese 4 cylinder bikes became race machines from production origins, the VF750F was a bike specifically built for racing in mind, and marked the beginning of a period of great technological advancement. Honda did not experience immediate success with the VF750F. The 1983 Championship began with Wayne Rainey winning the inaugural race on Team Muzzy Kawasaki
GPz750. The GPz750 was regarded as a low tech machine at the time, itself based on the KZ750. Honda went on to win the next 5 races of the 14 race series that year. Despite this, the experience the Kawasaki team had from winning the Championships the previous two years, along with the talent of rider
Wayne Rainey, allowed them to come back and secure a third consecutive Championship in 1983, defeating Honda’s VF750F. As the popularity of the series grew the long established
Daytona 200 motorcycle race, which had begun on a course constructed on the beach in 1935, and had moved to the asphalt auto-racing track in 1961, became a Superbike event in 1985. The event had been one of the few venues where FIM style Formula 1 500cc machines raced in the United States, but the speeds the machines were reaching on the high-banked tracks were deemed unsafe given the tire technology of the time. This increased the visibility of Superbikes even further, and cemented in the minds of many Americans that the Superbikes were now the de facto premier motorcycle racers in the United States. In 1986, the AMA recognized the changing nature and increasing popularity of motorcycle road racing, and split the road racing series into their own championship. This made the Grand National Championship into a dirt-track-only series. The newly formed road racing championship consisted of only two classes; Formula 1 and Superbike. Despite not winning its debut 750cc season, the mid 1980s marked a period of unprecedented success for Honda. With the VF750F, and its evolutions, the
VFR750F and the
VFR750R (RC30), In the latter years of the 1980’s, Yoshimura Suzuki with the ever evolving GSX-R750 was able to slowly chip away Hondas advantage. By the 1987 and 1988 seasons, Suzuki was winning more races than Honda. This increased success culminated in the 1989 season with Yoshimura Suzuki winning the Championship with rider Jamie James. Production based superbike racing hit the world stage in 1988 with the first season of the
Superbike World Championship. Inspired by the popularity of production based racing in the United States, World Superbike experienced great success for many of the same reasons AMA Superbike was successful. Fans enjoyed watching racing on motorcycles that were accessible to them. The introduction of this series heightened manufacturers' interest in production based racing and brought about the concept of the “homologation special”. These motorcycles were produced specifically for racing and were sold in very low numbers at a high cost. Typically only enough were manufactured and sold to meet the homologation requirements, proving that they were indeed a “production” model. Examples of these early homologation specials include the
Ducati 851 and the
Honda RC30. Homologation specials quickly made their way to the United States to begin racing in the AMA Superbike championship. The 1989 season also saw the return of Team Muzzy Kawasaki fielding the then new
ZX-7. Kawasaki was the last of the Japanese manufacturers to release a new 750cc superbike, but the new ZX-7 proved to be a serious contender in its first year, winning 2 of the 6 rounds that season. By 1990, Team Muzzy having sorted out all of the problems with their new platform, won 4 of the 8 rounds and took home the Championship with rider
Doug Chandler. 1990 was also the year that the Vance & Hines team partnered with Yamaha to become their official AMA road race team. Fielding Yamaha’s homologation special, the FZR750R (OW01), the team won the Daytona 200 in their debut season. Vance & Hines saw limited success for the rest of the 1990 season, but went on to win the 1991 Championship - Yamaha's first - with rider Thomas Stevens. Team Muzzy Kawasaki remained competitive in 1991, winning 4 of the 8 races but failing to have the consistency of the Vance & Hines team. The following season, Team Muzzy, now armed with the more potent ZX-7R, Kawasaki’s homologation version of the ZX-7, won the 1992 Championship with
Scott Russel taking 3 wins in the 8 race season. Team Muzzy experienced heavy competition from
Doug Polen and the Fast by Ferracci Ducati team fielding the
Ducati 888. Fast by Ferracci went on to be the most dominant team in the 1993 season, with Doug Polen winning 6 of the 10 races. Team Muzzy was urged by Kawasaki to focus their 1993 efforts on the Superbike World Championship. Honda and Ducati both introduced new models in 1994 that would elevate their competitive advantage. The
Honda RC45 and
Ducati 916 can both be viewed as evolutions of the successful racing motorcycles that preceded them, the RC30 and 888 respectively. The RC45 was fielded by the Smokin’ Joe’s Honda team in 1994 while Fast by Ferracci chose to wait until 1995 to introduce the 916. Honda, now with rider Doug Polen chose to focus their 1994 efforts on World Superbike, and it wasn't until 1995 with rider
Miguel Duhamel, that the Smokin’ Joe’s team became competitive. Winning 8 of the 10 races that season, the Honda RC45 proved a capable machine and Miguel Duhamel became the first and only Canadian to win an AMA Superbike Championship. Team Muzzy came back to win both the 1996 and 1997 Championships with Doug Chandler. With these wins, Doug Chandler joined only Reg Pridmore and Fred Merkel to have won three AMA Superbike Championship titles at the time. The 1996 and 1997 seasons were highly contested with Team Muzzy winning the championship despite taking 1st place in only 2 and 1 races respectively. Honda continued to develop their RC45 and by 1998, with the bike producing a claimed 180 horsepower, they came back to win the Championship with rider
Ben Bostrom. Slowly gaining experience with the new machine in 1997 and 1998 seasons, team Yoshimura Suzuki went on to win three consecutive championships from 1999 to 2001. All three were won by Australian rider Mat Mladin and he became only the 4th rider to have won three titles. The 1990s were a period of tremendous growth for AMA Superbike, and superbike racing as a whole. Throughout the decade, the popularity of the series grew and by the mid 90’s, the entire series was televised. Manufacturer involvement was at an all time high, with several companies producing motorcycles specifically for the purpose of superbike racing. The rules in World Superbike, similar to those established by AMA Superbike, permitted two cylinder engines to displace up to 1000cc. By the late 1980’s Ducati had developed their
L twin engines to produce equivalent, if not more power than the 750cc four cylinder bikes. This, combined with the packaging and aerodynamic benefits offered by the narrower engines, gave two cylinder machines a significant advantage in superbike racing. These were the
Honda RC51 and the
Suzuki TL1000R. The American Honda team, fielding the RC51, won several races in the 2000 and 2001 seasons with riders Miguel Duhamel and
Nicky Hayden. By 2002, Honda released an updated version of the RC51, and with this bike, Nicky Hayden went on to win the 2002 championship, By 2002, “a privateer had not finished on the podium of an AMA Superbike race in seven years”. AMA recognized the inaccessibility of the series and brought about a large rule change for the 2003 season designed to address this situation. Now eligible to compete were near stock, 1000cc multi cylinder motorcycles with “specific restrictions on weight and engine modifications”. The Japanese manufacturers were prepared for the inclusion of 1000cc four cylinder motorcycles in 2003. Yamaha had launched their
YZR-R1 in 1998, Honda their
CBR954RR in 2002, and Suzuki their
GSX-R1000 in 2001. These motorcycles were not homologation specials, and were available to the public en masse. Although they were not produced in minimal quantities, they all packed serious technology derived from the 750cc racing motorcycles that preceded them. With minimal modification, these “liter” bikes were capable of performance very close to the homologation specials fielded by the factory teams. As a result, smaller privateer teams could run a liter bike in AMA Superbike and be competitive on a much smaller budget. For 2003, Kawasaki continued to field their bored out ZX-7RR, and Honda their twin cylinder RC51, but as the season went on, it became evident that the liter bikes had the advantage. The Yoshimura Suzuki team switched to the GSX-R1000 for the 2003 season and went on to win the Championship that year. This began a period of unprecedented success for a team competing in AMA Superbike. Yoshimura Suzuki went on to win 7 consecutive championships from 2003 to 2009, four with Matt Mladin and three with
Ben Spies. Mat Mladin’s 2009 Championship cemented him as the rider with the most AMA Superbike Championships, winning seven. Ultimately this new ruleset was not liked by all competitors. In 2006 Ducati withdrew factory support from AMA Superbike racing, claiming that the rules were unfavorable for their two cylinder motorcycles. Overall participation in AMA Superbike steadily fell after this rule change, going from roughly 50 entrants per race in 2004 to 27 per race in 2008. Eventually they chose the Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG) led by
Jim France, the CEO of
NASCAR and Roger Edmonson, President of the
Grand American Road Race Series. The Superbike Championship would continue to be run under the AMA name to retain its legacy and public recognition. Hopes were high that the new ties to NASCAR would bring an influx of money and publicity to the AMA road racing series. For 2009, rule changes were put into effect to allow twin cylinder bikes up to 1200cc. This mirrored the rule change made in World Superbike to allow Ducati to be competitive with their
1098R. Unfortunately, the leadership at DMG ended up doing a poor job operating and marketing the series, and the timing of the 2008 financial crisis did not help matters. The Honda and Kawasaki factory teams dropped out of the 2009 season, leaving just Suzuki and Yamaha to field factory supported teams. With this loss of this manufacturer support, many sponsors and fans left the sport as well. The number of races per season was cut in half, going from twelve in 2009 to six in 2014 with even fewer receiving television coverage. Despite some intermittent factory involvement from BMW and KTM, the number of entrants per race continued to fall, with only 15 motorcycles competing at Road America in 2014. Nonetheless, the superbike racing continued and the Yamaha Factory Racing Team, fielding their YZF-R1 defined this period. Matching the level of success seen by Suzuki prior to the DMG acquisition, Yamaha won the Championship every year from 2010 to 2016. Four of these 7 titles were won by rider
Josh Hayes, two by
Cameron Beaubier, and one by
Josh Herrin.
MotoAmerica & FIM alignment (2015 - Present) In 2014 it was announced that
MotoAmerica, an affiliate of the KRAVE Group, was going to purchase the commercial rights to AMA road racing. The KRAVE Group, which consists of
Wayne Rainey, Chuck Aksland, Terry Karges, and Richard Varner, approached the AMA in 2013 with an intent to purchase the commercial rights to the series. Through “complicated” negotiations, the AMA reacquired the sanctioning rights to all AMA road racing series from the Daytona Motorsports Group, and sold the commercial rights to KRAVE. With the shared goal of revitalizing the U.S. road racing, the AMA re-established itself as the sanctioning body and entrusted “the promoting and commercial rights for professional racing to a talented, dedicated, well-capitalized professional entity”. Superbike was to remain the premier class with the rules surrounding the chassis remaining as is, and the engine regulations closely adhering to the 2015 World Superbike engine rules. With these moves, AMA Superbike racing has had race entrants increase, and seen combined viewership total 1.9 million for one round of the series. The increase in popularity of the series has attracted manufacturers back as well, with Ducati and Honda rejoining longtime factory supporters Suzuki and Yamaha. The Yamaha Factory Racing team continued its success seen in the DMG era, winning the first two MotoAmerica run Superbike Championships in 2015 and 2016. Yoshimura Suzuki, won the 2017 Championship with Spanish rider
Toni Elías, the first ever Spanish rider to win an AMA Superbike Championship. Yamaha retook the Championship in 2018, and went on win six consecutive championships through 2023, three with rider Cameron Beaubier and three with
Jake Gagne. Cameron Beaubier's 2020 Championship was his 5th, making him the rider with the second most AMA Superbike Championships, only behind Mat Mladin who has seven. With factory support from Ducati, the Warhorse HSBK Ducati team won the 2024 AMA Superbike Championship with rider Josh Herrin. This ended Yamaha's six year win streak, and was Ducati’s first AMA Superbike Championship since 1994. == Current Regulations ==