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AMA SUPERBIKE AMA PRO SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL ROUND/SEPTEMBER 13-14, 2014 NEW JERSEY MOTORSPORTS PARK/MILLVILLE, NEW JERSEY P44 Hayden. Martin Cardenas led the race early over his teammate Hayden, with Spanish up-and- comer Bernat Martinez running a close third on a customer Graves Motorsports Yamaha R1. The treacherous conditions caught out many riders, including even- tually Cardenas and Martinez, as well as Beaubier - the only rider with even a remote chance to catch Hayes in the champion- ship. Beaubier remounted, but Hayes, seeing his muddied team- mate a lap down, decided to en- gage in the fight with Hayden for the lead. "I wasn't thinking about the championship at all," Hayes ad- mitted. "I had a huge smile in my helmet and I was having fun. I wanted to win the race and I gave it everything I had." Hayden was looking for the win, but while battling with Hayes didn't want to screw up his run for the title. "The last couple of laps were pretty fun," Hayden said of when Hayes joined the battle for the lead. "I knew he was going for the championship and didn't want to do anything dumb. Then he kind JUDGING DMG It will take years and the perspec- tive of time and distance for history to accurately judge the Daytona Motors- ports Group (DMG) era of controlling motorcycle road racing in America. How this six year period of racing (sev- en if you count the transitional 2008 season) is ultimately viewed could depend a great deal on how the new overseers of the sport, MotoAmerica, do in their efforts to reinvigorate the series devastated by the recession and the resulting plummeting sport- bike sales, and the loss of television coverage and sponsorships. While there's wide opinion on the details of just how AMA Superbike and its accompanying support series' fell so far, so fast, the early consen- sus in the paddock is that while the DMG shares some of the blame for the decline, the primary culprit was the effect of the Great Recession on motorcycling. If you'd take a snapshot of the AMA Superbike Championship of 10 years ago and compare it to today, the contrasts are quite vivid. Everything from the number of paid riders, the amount they were being paid, the number of teams, crew members, races, sponsorship dollars, television coverage, race attendance, and so on, are a mere shadow of what the sport enjoyed in its heyday of the late 1990s to mid-2000s. Perhaps the biggest impact was on riders. At its peak there were a couple of dozen racers who made a very good living from road racing, more than a few were millionaires as the re- sult of the boom. Riders from around the world sought the coveted seats in AMA Superbike. That changed drasti- cally. It's estimated that only a handful of riders actually make a living from racing and even fewer still are making anything approaching a respectable income when compared to a decade ago. For fans, TV, general media cover- age and lack of crowds at the races are the most visible incarnations of the precipitous fall of the series. And the drop in the number of venues able to host an AMA Superbike event is directly tied to a lack of crowds and sponsorship dollars. It was not uncommon for a presenting sponsor of individual races 10 years ago to pay mid-six figures for that privilege. Many events were largely paid for before a single fan came through the gates. The most successful rider in the DMG era was undoubtedly four-time AMA Superbike Champion Josh Hayes. When asked about his opinion of the DMG era Hayes pondered for a time before answering. "The DMG era has been tough, but I've thrived in it and was lucky to be someone who did," Hayes said. "I got a lot of championships during that time and I'm really proud of that time as far as my career goes. I'm optimis- tic for the future… cautiously. Large change is always difficult." The series has been under DMG control long enough now that some younger riders have never known any- thing else. One of those is Cameron Beaubier. But even he has a perspec- tive on racing's landscape. "I came into AMA racing in 2010, so that [the DMG] is all I've known really," Beaubier said. "I saw how great it was before. Like 2005, 2006, 2007, it was amazing really, just watching my heroes race, it was crazy. And then obviously the last few years have been pretty rough, but I think with Wayne [Rainey] involved I think it's going to be… obviously, it might not get better right away, but I think it's going to be a really good building process from here on out and I'm really excited for it." Yamaha and Suzuki were the two manufacturers who stuck with the championship through thick and thin. And the senior team in the paddock is Yoshimura Suzuki, a team that has roots going all the way back to the beginning of AMA Superbike in 1976. Yoshimura's senior VP Don Sakakura has been around for most of the years since and he perhaps has the best perspective on the DMG era of racing. "Obviously with the announcement of the new organization coming in there's a lot of excitement or interest at this stage," Sakakura said. "There's a lot that's unclear still; I think there are a lot of things that are in motion right now. We can only look at the positives and hope that in the very

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