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Three times in the short history of MotoAmerica Superbike racing, a European rider with serious world championship racing experience has come to the U.S. series to challenge the locals. In 2022, it happens for a fourth time, and this one might be the most interesting foreign incursion yet.
The MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike series begins competition this weekend at the Circuit of the Americas in conjunction with the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, the only MotoGP round in North America. Easily the biggest MotoAmerica news in the off season was that MotoGP race winner and multi-time podium finisher Danilo Petrucci will ride for the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati New York team in the Superbike class. Petrucci comes to MotoAmerica after his impressive debut in the Dakar Rally, where he won a stage in the event, proving his broad motorcycle racing skills. He's also a popular rider with a positive personality that wins fans, so he's likely to have an impact on the MotoAmerica series on multiple levels.
Of course the main question is whether a racer can come into a new series on a different kind of race bike and win. The historical record on that is mixed, so let's take a look to see what history might tell us about Petrucci's chances.
What happens when MotoGP riders come to MotoAmerica
MotoAmerica has always had a strong international presence, with riders from South Africa, France, Spain, Canada, Mexico, and El Salvador winning races and appearing on the podium in Superbike and Supersport. And the biggest impact of them all happened in 2016. With Jake Lewis injured, the Yoshimura Suzuki team called in former MotoGP rider and Moto2 world champion Toni Elias as a substitute and he won the first three races of the season. It started to look like the locals couldn't stand up to top international competition. But after starting three-for-three, Elias won just three more races of the last 15, finishing third in the championship behind locals Cameron Beaubier and Josh Hayes.
Elias did get his championship the next year and finished second in the standings in 2018 and 2019. But the fact that he didn't just walk into the series and dominate actually raised the MotoAmerica series' reputation a little.
Last year, the foreign invasion was led by World Superbike contender Loris Baz on the Warhorse Ducati and former MotoGP racer Héctor Barberá on the Schiebe Racing BMW S 1000 RR. Some thought Baz would make easy work of the MotoAmerica field, and he did get nine podium finishes in 20 races. But he got zero race wins and finished fourth in the standings, a whopping 207 points behind runaway champion Jake Gagne. Meanwhile, Barberá, on the outdated Schiebe BMW, never made the podium.
That's not because Baz and Barberá are slouches. After the MotoAmerica season ended, Baz returned to World Superbike as a replacement rider for five rounds and finished on the podium in two races. It just goes to show that while the MotoAmerica field isn't as deep as World Superbike, the top handful of riders are able to hold their own against world-championship-level racers, who come into the U.S. series with the handicap of racing on unfamiliar tracks, different machines and different tires.
Petrucci will be the next to challenge the MotoAmerica regulars. He got a head start on getting used to the Panigale V4 R race bike and Dunlop slicks with a private test at Algarve International Circuit in Portimão, Portugal, in February, where the team worked on establishing a base setting for the bike and Petrucci. In an interview with GPOne.com after the test, Petrucci made it clear he knows the history of top outside riders coming into MotoAmerica, especially Baz, who rode the same motorcycle.
"Baz did not win any races in MotoAmerica, then he came to SBK and finished third," Petrucci noted. "Racing there is not an easy ride at all."
Elias came to the United States, settled here, got married and became a father. Baz, by contrast, was here one year and gone. It will be interesting to see what lies ahead for Petrucci, now that his MotoGP days are behind him.
"I want to continue to have fun and to keep riding my bike, so I have chosen this project to make a new experience on the human side," Petrucci said. "I will live in America, this is something new and exciting for me, so I am very curious and eager to start."
Jake Gagne, the king until proven otherwise
Of course the first challenge for Petrucci will be defending champion Jake Gagne. While a year ago everyone would have named Gagne as one of the contenders for the 2021 season, nobody predicted the utter domination that ensued.
Backed by the Fresh N Lean Progressive Yamaha team captained by Richard Stanboli, Gagne shattered records and demolished the competition. He finished the year with a record 17 wins, a record 16 of them in a row, and a record 445 points. But to me, the most amazing stat of all is that during that 16-race win streak, Gagne led 244 consecutive laps. For a good part of the summer of 2021, nobody ever led Jake Gagne across the finish line, even for a single lap.
The other Yamaha YZF-R1 always near the front in recent years has been the Westby Racing bike with South African rider Mathew Scholtz, who finished second in the standings last year with two wins and 16 podiums in 20 races.
The Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team has an all-new lineup for the Superbike class. Remember how I mentioned above that it was Jake Lewis' injury in 2016 that opened the door for Tony Elias? Well, after a long journey, Lewis has worked his way back to a ride on a Suzuki GSX-R1000 Superbike, a place he earned by winning both the Stock 1000 class and the Superbike Cup, a separate award for the top Stock 1000 riders racing in the Superbike races. Lewis' teammate will also be interesting to watch. 2019 Supersport champion Richie Escalante is finally getting his chance to move up to Superbike and will also ride for the veteran Suzuki team run by Chris Ulrich.
Barberá will also be back on the Superbike grid in 2022 and still on a BMW, but with a team new to the series. Tytlers Cycle Racing out of Wisconsin will field BMW M 1000 RRs for Barberá and P.J. Jacobsen, who suffered a setback from burn injuries in 2020 and sat out last season. While the team may be new, both Barberá and Jacobsen have significant world championship experience as well as knowing their way around the U.S. tracks. The team is the biggest unknown among the Superbike contenders this year.
And then there's Petrucci and the Panigale, the biggest story to watch of them all. Can Petrucci win on the Ducati where Baz couldn't? He starts the season this weekend at a track where he has race experience, no doubt hoping for a COTA debut like Elias had in 2016.
A new entry in Supersport and other classes
Only the Superbike class will compete at this weekend's MotoGP round at COTA, so the other classes won't get started until two weeks later at Road Atlanta.
For the past two years, two men dominated the Supersport class. For 2022, both are gone. That leaves the door wide open for a young and rising racer to make a mark in the class this year.
2020 champ and 2021 runnerup Escalante is in the Medallia Superbike class and 2020 runnerup and 2021 champ Sean Dylan Kelly is racing in the Moto2 world championship. Sam Lochoff, yet another South African, will ride for the Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team that gave Kelly a title-winning ride last year and was the only rider regularly able to challenge Escalante and Kelly in 2021. Rocco Landers and Benjamin Smith are two other young riders in the class who look like they could be ready to break through to the next level. And there's always the chance some other young rider could make a big step forward.
By far the most interesting rider to watch in Supersport, however, will be a veteran. Former Superbike champion Josh Herrin has moved to the Supersport class and will ride a Ducati Panigale V2 for the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati New York team. The rules for the Supersport class, long dominated by inline-four-cylinder 600 cc race bikes, especially the Yamaha YZF-R6, have changed for 2022, allowing other bikes, such as the V-twin Panigale, the three-cylinder Triumph 765, and the Suzuki GSX-R750, to give a few examples. But while the new options are intriguing, the reality is that most of the MotoAmerica Supersport field will still be on Japanese 600s, because they are well known, fully developed, tried-and-true race packages.
The Daytona 200 was our first preview of the new Supersport rules and Herrin and the Ducati look like a formidable threat to the youngsters on 600s. He qualified in pole position for the Daytona 200 and was running up front until a miscalculation on fuel mileage caused him to run dry and coast in for a pit stop. He was still running the same pace as the leaders but couldn't make up the lost time. Even though the V2 is an unproven package, Herrin has to be considered a favorite in Supersport in 2022.
The other big open question is which Suzuki Lochoff will be riding. The GSX-R750 is now eligible under the new Supersport rules, but there was a problem, as explained recently on the MotoAmerica web site. Supersport rules require a ride-by-wire throttle but the GSX-R750, which hasn't been updated by Suzuki in years, still has a cable-operated throttle. According to the MotoAmerica report, the Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team worked with European companies to develop a kit to convert the Gixxer throttle. Does that mean that Lochoff, the top challenger to Escalante and Kelly last year, will be on a GSX-R750? And will the 750 be the bike to beat in the class? We won't really know until we see bikes on track at Road Atlanta.
Then there's the slightly bizarre and significantly popular Mission King of the Baggers series, which started as a single exhibition race in 2020 and expands to seven races in 2022. Kyle Wyman's name was not mentioned in the Superbike section above because he has sold his Ducati Panigale V4 R and is focusing exclusively on defending his King of the Baggers title for the Harley-Davidson factory team, along with brother and teammate Travis Wyman. The baggers already began their season at Daytona and it was Tyler O'Hara on the Mission Foods S&S Cycle Indian Challenger who emerged with a solid points lead.
In other support classes, the increasingly popular Stock 1000 class, which runs its own races and also fills out the field in the Superbike races, is back, along with the STG Junior Cup and the Twins Cup. The Royal Enfield Build Train Race program, in which an invited group of women build a Royal Enfield Continental GT650 into a race bike and race it themselves, is doubling in size for 2022 with 15 builder-riders and six races. The Mini Cup by Motul, for racers 14 years and younger, is set to run in conjunction with four MotoAmerica rounds this year. And finally, a new addition to the schedule is the Roland Sands Design's Super Hooligan National Championship, which ran two races at Daytona and will race at two more MotoAmerica rounds.
It all promises some packed weekends of road racing around the country, but it starts with the Superbikes only in the spotlight as the support class for MotoGP this weekend at COTA.
How to watch MotoAmerica races
Medallia Superbike races and Mission King of the Baggers races will be broadcast on Fox Sports. Supersport races will be shown live on MAVTV and STG Junior Cup races will be aired on a delay. A new source of programming this year is MotoAmerica.tv, which streams past races and will show the Twins Cup and Stock 1000 races from the current season. The paid streaming option is MotoAmerica Live+, which shows all practice sessions and races in all classes and costs $109.99 for the season and $12.99 for a single weekend event.
