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So Cal Supermoto Racing

  

Getting Ready for the Season Kickoff: Ward, Anderson, Pingree and Atkins testing

We stopped by Adams Kart Track out in Riverside, Calif., and found a crew of riders with their head’s down testing for the upcoming 2008 season. Yes, Jeff Ward is officially back and ready to go for another championship. When we asked Wardy what made him change his mind, he said one of main reasons was he wants to help the sport grow. He was already planning on riding the opening round and through round three and the X Game and just figured he would keep it going with five more rounds. 

 

And it was great to see Cassidy Anderson back on a TLD bike after a brief period without a ride. It looks like this dynamic duo will be the two gunning for Team Yamaha - Graves Racing’s Mark Burkhart. Both riders were testing 2008 Honda CRF450Rs.

 

Despite rumors about David Pingree riding Kawasaki, he was spotted riding a fairly stock Honda CRF450R while Pro Circuit was building his race engine. Ping said things were going well as he packed up and headed off to finish up some work for his other job at Racer X. 

 

Factory Aprilia’s Darryl Atkins pretty much rode the tires off his bike before packing it up. His tires were so beat up that chunks were starting to fall out of his tires. I was surprised we didn’t see threads poking out they were so worn. Atkins was working on new settings for his 2007 race bikes as the team is still waiting for a shipment of 2008 VDB 450cc Aprilias. 

 

As the weeks will soon turn to days, teams and riders are scrambling across the country to get ready for the 2008 season kickoff on April 11-12 in San Diego, Calif. 

 

There are a lot of unanswered questions regarding the 2008 season that hope to be cleared up next week. The AMA is allegedly waiting for the 2008 rulebooks to be printed up before they send out racers their licenses. And with the recent sale of several AMA Pro series to DMG, there are a lot of confusion as to whom will be running the show for supermoto in 2008. We know Gavin Trippe helped assemble the 2008 schedule and get two events to run in conjunction with ESPN Moto X and X Games but after that there are a lot of unanswered questions. Trippe said all of this should be answered very soon but he can’t make an official statement as of yet. 

 

We are hoping the new regime and management of the AMA Pro Racing disciplines such as AMA Road Racing, AMA Supermoto, AMA Motocross, AMA Dirt Track and AMA Hill Climb will benefit this group of racing. 

 

For now we can only cross our fingers and wait to hear the good news and get ready for the season kickoff at Qualcomm Stadium.