Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/844701
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE W orld Superbike, or the FIM Superbike World Championship as they now call it, has been coming to America for 28 years. As the series heads back to Laguna Seca this coming weekend for the 15th time, we thought it would be a good time to look back at the history of the champi- onship in America. As hard as it is to believe, America has hosted 44 World Superbike races dating back to the inaugural race at Brainerd International Raceway in Minnesota in 1989. Three tracks have hosted the championship—Brainerd, Mazda Laguna Seca and Miller Motorsports Park (now Utah Motorsports Campus). American riders won 12 of those races. Americans won quite a few in the early and middle years of the series, but it's been eight years since Ben Spies carried the Stars and Stripes around Laguna Seca, after winning both legs in 2009. That likely won't change this year, unless Jake Gagne somehow pulls off a minor miracle. World Superbike launched in 1988, with American Fred Merkel becoming the first champion of the series. While Americans enjoyed that first season on TV, they would have to wait until 1989 to check it out in person when the series came to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and Brainerd International Raceway in June of that year. It was round four of the 11-event championship and a head-turning crowd of better than 30,000 fans came through the gates—probably twice the number any AMA Superbike race had ever attracted to BIR. The rider who will go down in history as the first to win a World Superbike race in America is Frenchman Raymond Roche. In fact, Roche swept the weekend in Brainerd on his Squadra Corse Lucchinelli Ducati 851. Merkel made it to the podium in third on his Rumi RCM Honda RC30 in Race 2 at BIR that year and went on to win he second FIM World Superbike Championship. Unfortunately, the show- down between the AMA and world superbike riders didn't come that first year, with the rules of the two series just off enough to keep many AMA riders from participating. In 1990, Doug Chandler broke through to win the second leg of the WSBK event in front of 41,000 at Brainerd on a Kawasaki, becoming the first American to win a world superbike race on home soil. Chandler and his fellow Americans proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that superbike racing in the United States is world class. Chandler made American pride swell when he won the pole by qualifying at a record 1:42.158 (105.719 mph) on his Muzzy Kawasaki ZX-7 superbike. U.S riders dominated qualifying with seven of the top 10 riders being from the U.S. Those riders included series regular Fred Merkel (second) and then AMA riders Scott Russell (fourth), David Sadowski (fifth), Jamie James (sixth), Thomas Stevens (eighth), and Randy Renfrow (tenth). In 1991, Doug Polen swept the Brainerd WSBK weekend with a double victory on his Fast by Fer- racci Ducati 888. The Texan would go on to win WORLD SUPERBIKE IN AMERICA P120