MotoAmerica has celebrated that it is the first professional motorcycle racing series in the United States (if not the first in the world) to return to racing in front of fans. After a pulling off a weekend of racing with no fans four weeks ago (a surreal experience for many reasons, not just the absence of fans), MotoAmerica returned to Road America this weekend and opened the gates. By any measurements I’ve seen, it was a success.
So far, at least. In the age of pandemic, today’s success can look like tomorrow’s bad idea, in hindsight. Plus, one good weekend of motorcycle racing in Wisconsin doesn’t indicate that the other series, which are expected to stage races and welcome fans in the coming weeks, will also go off well. In fact, things are looking iffy on several fronts. Beyond that, I think odds are essentially zero that we will see a U.S. MotoGP round in 2020.
The pop-ups and tents and campers were back at Road America for the second round of MotoAmerica racing, the first in front of fans. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
What we learned from round two at Road America
Going into this weekend, I was genuinely curious. Would fans flock to Road America in large numbers because they were starved for live entertainment? Or would they shy away, thinking that maybe it wasn’t the best time to be part of even a widely dispersed crowd of strangers?
In the end, aided by beautiful weather, it appears that a lot of people chose entertainment over worry. Those on the ground (I went to the first round at Road America, but not this one) said the crowd was as big as ever and track officials were pleased with the turnout. So, good news for motorcycle racing, right? I don’t think it’s that simple, and here’s why.
Road America is perhaps the perfect place to put on a sporting event in front of fans at this particular moment. The longest track on the MotoAmerica schedule, Road America calls itself the National Park of Speed because it is like a big park. It’s 680 acres of woods and fields and rolling hills. Even a big crowd can spread out.
Plus, Wisconsin is not among the states most seriously affected by COVID-19 and the small-town, rural area near the track is even less affected. The problem is that the next test cases for motorcycle racing lack some or all of those advantages.
The next MotoAmerica round is scheduled for Road Atlanta on July 31 through August 2. While Road Atlanta also offers a lot of opportunities for fans to see some racing while still spreading out, Georgia is one of the states that was at the forefront of reopening businesses after the coronavirus outbreak and is now seeing rising numbers of cases. What will the public attitude be in a month when the Superbikes roll into Georgia? Nobody knows for sure.
American Flat Track is planning to start its season July 17 and 18 at the Volusia Half-Mile in Florida, another state seeing a new surge in cases. Plus, unlike road racing, assembling a crowd for a flat-track race means packing fans into stands. Is that going to be feasible in three weeks? Will it be appealing to enough fans to make the event successful? Will it even be legal? Again, nobody knows for sure.
The best chance for a next success is probably the opening round of the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross season also scheduled for the weekend of July 18 at Ironman Raceway in Crawfordsville, Indiana. That’s another outdoor, open-air venue where distancing is more possible and another state where COVID-19 cases are not currently surging.
There’s also another way this weekend’s MotoAmerica event can still go wrong even after it appears to have gone off without a problem: What if there’s a surge in cases that is linked to the race weekend? Or what if one or more of the teams picked up the virus this weekend and it sweeps through the entire team, putting them out of commission?
Based on the interaction I had with the professionals in the paddock at the first Road America round, the attitudes range about as widely as the general public’s: Some take the virus seriously and others don’t worry about it that much. And while some distancing precautions were taken, fans at Road America this past weekend were still allowed to roam the paddock. That access is one of MotoAmerica’s big advertising points, and it’s understandable they don’t want to give it up, but what if just one of those fans unknowingly gave the virus to a racer or a team mechanic? Maybe I worry too much, but if I were a team owner, knowing how much money is spent just to get to the track on race day, I’d be very nervous that one asymptomatic fan could breathe on one of my team members and that could lead to my entire racing team being out sick for two weeks. Or worse.
But maybe I just worry too much, or at least more than professional racing team personnel. Defending HONOS Superbike Champion Cameron Beaubier even talked about how pleased he was to be “high-fiving fans” this weekend. Let’s hope those fans had all washed those fives.
No MotoGP?
Finally, there’s the question of whether we will have a U.S. round of MotoGP in 2020. It’s currently tentative for November, and the last MotoAmerica HONOS Superbike round is supposed to be run alongside it.
Personally, I think there’s no chance. MotoGP has said the overseas rounds outside the 13 currently planned in Europe will only take place if they can be run in front of fans. Right now, cases of COVID-19 are surging in Texas. The European Union has just decided to ban travel from the United States, which has been labeled as one of the countries mishandling the outbreak. The idea of the Euro-centric MotoGP series sending its teams into Texas seems preposterous right now.
Of course a lot can change between now and the fall, but most of those things would have to change for the better for the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas to take place at the Circuit of the Americas in 2020. It’s going to take more than one good weekend of racing in Wisconsin to get me that optimistic.
And already MX Sports has announced that the planned opener for the delayed Lucas Oil Pro Motocross series at Ironman in Indiana has been delayed.