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Being competitive on the race track doesn't mean you can pay the bills. That harsh fact was proven again today as the RoadRace Factory team announced it will not compete in MotoAmerica in 2019 and the team will be liquidated.
The team built by Danny Walker and campaigning the last two years as the Genuine Broaster Chicken Honda team was always one of the top non-factory teams in the MotoAmerica paddock, but still had to pull the plug on the effort. That, on top of the quiet disappearane of the Yamaha factory Supersport team, leaves the paddock weaker for 2019.
Today hurts.. @RoadRaceFactory is no more. 😥 this was the hardest press release I’ve had to write over the years. We’ve become a tight knit family over the years and these folks have become the ones I look forward to seeing the most.
— Corey J Coulter (@GeoCrashPhoto) November 20, 2018
I’m going to miss you all 😣 pic.twitter.com/ABeqam43qH
Since the team was formed in 2011, it has brought along some top riders, including J.D. Beach and Jake Gagne. The team won championships three straight years: Tomas Puerta in Supersport in 2013, Gagne in Daytona Sportbike in 2014 and Gagne again in Superstock 1000 in 2015. After that, the team moved to the Superbike class with Gagne as their rider. He performed well enough that he was chosen to replace Nicky Hayden on the Red Bull Honda World Superbike team. He was replaced on the Genuine Broaster Chicken Honda team for 2018 by Cam Petersen, who suffered some bad luck, a freak injury and spotty results.
When another private team, Meen Motorsports, pulled out in the second half of the 2017 season, Walker talked to me about the difficulty of making it without factory support.
"This is a tough business as a team owner," Walker said. "The dynamics of being a team owner right now in this paddock, unless you are the factory, is about the dumbest business plan you could ever come up with. Why would you want to burn money like that? ... (If) you’re not having fun, it doesn’t make sense to be here."
Yamaha's Supersport team: Retire on top?
The Monster Energy/Y.E.S./Graves Yamaha Supersport team quietly disappeared after the end of the 2018 season. There are two ways you can look at this. You can wonder how a team and a motorcycle that are so dominant can pull the plug on such a successful effort. Or, maybe you can look at it as a sensible decision. If the Yamaha YZF-R6 is going to dominate the class anyway, why spend money on a team?
The R6 was by far the most common bike on the Supersport grid. It has won the Supersport title every year since MotoAmerica took over the series, and this year swept 42 of the 51 podium positions (only M4 ECSTAR Suzuki's Valentin Debise broke up Yamaha's domination). Beach won the title early, winning 11 of 17 races. If that's not enough success to keep you going, what would be?
On the other hand, the R6 is used by so many teams, it's still a favorite to win the title in 2019 without Yamaha spending a penny to fund a Graves Yamaha team. In fact, Beach will be back on an R6, only riding for Rickdiculous Racing (while also competing on a Yamaha in the American Flat Track series for Estenson Racing).
The one thing that's clear is that it is too simplistic to assume that succeeding on the race track automatically makes a team a success overall. In the current U.S. motorcycle market, you can win it all — as Graves Yamaha did in Supersport — or put together one of the most competitive and professional private teams — as RoadRace Factory did — and it still may not be enough.
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