With the recent cancelling of the 8th round of the AMA Pro Racing season at VIR, the AMA was left with a big gap to fill. But after desperate efforts, the AMA has announced that there will be no replacement for VIR. The AMA Pro Racing season is officially an 8 round series.
"We recognize that the 2011 season calendar is not ideal," said AMA Pro COO and Managing Member David Atlas. "But I assure our paddock and fans that a great deal of hard work went into trying to create a schedule that was. We'll finish the season strong, delivering more of the exciting, head-to-head racing AMA Pro is known for at each of our three remaining rounds, then look to 2012 and an exciting, comprehensive calendar of race events."
Yep, there are just two rounds and three races left this year. The AMA Pro Racing series will head to Laguna Seca this weekend before ending the season in New Jersey with a double header event. The XR1200 class will race at the Indy GP, but that will be the only AMA series that competes at Indy.
With tight competition in the Superbike, Sportbike, and Supersport classes, cancelling two races will have an enormous impact on the outcome of the season. Blake Young currently holds 11 points over Josh Hayes in the Superbike series, Danny Eslick has 15 over Josh Herrin in the DSB, and for the Supersport series, the AMA had to rearrange some points opportunities to make everything fair for the East and the West divisions.
The AMA said that in the West, the Supersport riders will not be using the qualifying session at Laguna as an opportunity to gain points. In the East, the Supersport riders will be fighting for race points during qualifying. That means that the East coast Supersport riders will basically have three races at New Jersey to end the season.
Cycle News reports that the last time the AMA had an 8 round racing season was in 1990.
