The Moto World...change Is Coming!

THE NEXT WORLD WAR IN BREWING OVER THE HORIZON: YOU CAN SMELL THE FEAR FROM HERE

When Feld Motosports elected to drop the FIM sanction for the 2022 AMA Supercross series. It wasn’t that big of a controversy. All the internet wackos said, “It’s about time.” Although Feld never sent out a press release explaining their motives in any detail, but the FIM send out a press release immediately looking for a promoting group that could hold an FIM World Supercross Championship. They wanted a serious contender to regain what they had lost. And they got a taker almost immediately. An Australian group, with experience in the Australian Supercross Championship, that was financed by a Middle Eastern Gulf State corporation, jumped at the chance. Again, the ever-astute web warriors said, “It will fold in the first year.”

But the Aussies weren’t stupid. They realized that to hold a World Supercross Championship (WSX), they needed the best and most famous Supercross riders in the world. They may have thought that they could find riders capable of racing Supercross in Berlin, Jakarta or Istanbul, but if there were riders capable of running the same speed as Tomac, Roczen, Sexton, Webb, Barcia and Anderson, the factory teams that race the AMA Supercross series would have found them by now. They might also have thought that they would be able to get enough MXGP talent to help fill the fields with Italian, German, British, Spanish and Dutch riders—but Romain Febvre’s violent crash at the Paris Supercross put a damper on any top-flite Grand Prix rider risking his career and limbs on a Supercross track. And, the Aussies might not have realized that the foreign riders doing so well in the AMA Supercross series, didn’t show up ready to win — they spent a couple years learning the nasty secrets of AMA Supercross tracks.

Both Feld and the AMA National promoters felt that the World Supercross series was not a threat to them…until the World Supercross Championship (WSX) promoters revealed their race schedule plans. In 2022 they decided to hold three rounds (England, Australia and Indonesia) — these are just “proof-of-concept” races, but when 2023 rolls around the WSX plans to have a full slate of races. But there is a trick to the World Supercross series’ 2023 schedule. They won’t hold any races that conflict with the AMA Supercross series dates (after all, those are the riders and teams they are trying to woo). Instead, they will go all-out to counter-promote against the Pro Motocross 250/450 National series.

Why? The Nationals are vulnerable. They haven’t done anything to improve the life or experience of the riders who come to their races. The purses are a joke. The officials are largely clueless and there is a general ennui among the big-name riders about racing the Nationals (and they try get out of it—even if they have to exploit a minor injury). Even the privateers feel like second class citizens who pay ever-growing entry fees for never-growing purse money. So, the World Supercross series decided to schedule as many races as possible against the American Nationals, which meant that, by proxy, they would also be competing against the MXGP series—but the FIM didn’t care because they believed that none of the Grand Prix riders would want to race the World Supercross Series—except for French riders.

The biggest danger for the National group is to panic, but panic they will—only to realize that turning over a new leaf now will look like flop sweat. There is now talk of Feld and the Nationals cooperating on a new race series that combines some elements of the old Wrangler Grand National Championship (that David Bailey won) with a little bit of Supercross and implemented it into a cut-down National Championship series as an add-on group of races. You can smell the fear from here!

The Nationals have a lot to fear — made evident by Ken Roczen, Eli Tomac, Chad Reed, Cole Seely, Justin Brayton, Max Anstie, Dean Wilson, Kyle Chisholm and riders yet to announced, who by the very fact of signing up for 2022’s three-race series are “down voting” the Nationals. The riders don’t see this as an anti-National statement — instead they see the $250,000 WSX purses and, in the case of the Big Names, an excessive amount of start money. They know, like everyone else knows, that the American Supercross and National promoters will not compete for the riders affections if their money is involved.

The saving grace for the 2023 Nationals is that the American factory teams, by their very structure, are organized and financed to sell motorcycles in North America. The American-based Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, KTM, GasGas and Husqvarna factory teams don’t care about racing in Indonesia, Wales or Australia. If their parent company wants to do that, have at it—but the major factory teams in Supercross have no incentive to spend lots of money flying to far off places—and the Grand Prix series found that out when only nine 250 GP riders showed up for the Indonesian Grand Prix two weeks ago. The other teams and riders couldn’t afford it.

Additionally, the American motocross media is the most read in the world and the Nationals have to ask themselves—who will the press side with? Will they go where the stars go? Will they stay with traditional motocross? Will the World Supercross Championship promoters suddenly find allies in the press? And, not to be overlooked, the big-name factory riders are talking about and signing Supercross-only contracts for 2023—Eli Tomac, Cooper Webb, Marvin Musquin are just a few of the riders angling to be free, either to go on vacation or to head to the World Supercross series after the 2023 AMA Supercross series ends.

This isn’t the first Supercross War, it’s just the first that isn’t intramural. Perhaps there will be winners, but just maybe the whole sport will be the loser.