Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 16 APRIL 21, 2015 P157 something that was more closely matched to World Superbike. We have that now. Add to that, both the season opener at CoTA and the following week's standalone event at Road Atlanta had challenging condi- tions that could've broken the young series. Race Direction had nearly everything thrown at them weather wise at both events, and the CoTA event had the added disadvantage of schedul- ing issues as the side act to the MotoGP World Championship. But they handled it well. "They made perfect calls all weekend," Cameron Beaubier said when asked about Mo- toAmerica's performance at Road Atlanta. "They didn't send us out in any dodgy conditions. They got the water cleaned up in [turn] five the best they could and I felt like in both races the track conditions were good." For once, the riders appear happy and grateful. After all, it's their livelihood at stake. And, more importantly, it appears to be a rider's championship for a change. Maybe not so surpris- ing with people like Rainey and Aksland involved. There's still some kinks to work out, though. Fans were disappointed that they had to wait a week to watch the season opener at CoTA on TV. Some were also unhappy that it's on CBS Sports Network, a channel absent in their TV package. You're never going to make everyone happy about your TV package (AMA Supercross has every race live and on at least one of the Fox Sports channels, and still people complain). But in this day in age, a week is too long to wait. So MotoAmerica listened and found a solution—online stream- ing. Albeit, down to the wire, MotoAmerica had live online streaming for the second round at Road Atlanta, forming a deal with DMG's Fanchoice.TV to stream Superbike races live on Torque.TV and the support races on Fanschoice, and both on MotoAmerica.com. In this day in age, every series needs to have both live stream- ing and TV. With the growing trend of people ditching their cable boxes for online stream- ing, it's a necessity. It also has the added benefit for fans to be able to watch it anywhere they have access to the internet (quite handy, yet sometimes anti- social). But you also absolutely still have to have TV. At the end of the day it's what sponsors want. As the series predecessor dis- covered. The other hiccup was its all- new timing and scoring system that was buggy at the season opener. While it improved at round two, it still lacks the sophistication of the system set up at AMA Pro. Who would have thought you'd long for a timing and scoring system? I know I miss the app that came with it. With Fanschoice involved, maybe a package deal could be worked out to bring that back as well. So is it perfect? No. But the new series still inspires a lot of hope. I think that's a reflection of the people behind KRAVE—Rainey, Aksland, Richard Varner and Terry Karges. They are passion- ate about the sport and making it a success. And so far they've shown that they are proactive in finding solutions. They've brought in a lot of respected people around the industry, like former Cycle News editor Paul Carruthers. In race direction they brought in Stuart Higgs (the man behind British Superbike Series' success) and retired MotoGP race director Paul Butler to fill in when Higgs has a BSB conflict. Seventh months to essentially start a series from the ground up was a big ask. So I can tolerate the growing pains. And thank- fully, for the most part, the con- sensus seems to be patience. A patience that is needed, at least for a while longer. For years people have been asking for a changing of the guard. Well they're here. Let's give them a shot before breaking out the pitch forks. CN

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