Blake Young may not have a full time AMA Superbike ride this season but he will get the chance to compete in some high-profile races. CycleNews reports the former Yoshimura Suzuki rider will race for Attack Performance on its Kawasaki-powered CRT racebike at the three U.S. MotoGP rounds.

Young was runner-up to Josh Hayes in the last two AMA Superbike campaigns. In 2011, Young trailed Hayes 363-358 at the end of the season but had a 7-3 edge in race wins. This year, Young had three wins but they all came in the first three double-header events before Hayes separated himself from everyone else on his way to a record-setting season. Despite being one of the few racers with a good chance of catching Hayes, Young found himself without a ride after Yoshimura decided to go in a different direction.

Now that he’s landed with the Attack Performance team, Young will be chasing M1s around the track instead of R1s at three MotoGP races. Young will compete in the April 21 Grand Prix of the Americas at Austin’s new Circuit of the Americas, the July 21 U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., and the Aug. 18 Indianapolis Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Continue Reading »

Attack Performance Racing and GPTech made history this year as the first teams to build and enter motorcycles under MotoGP’s Claiming Rule Team rules as a  wild card entry. Both teams will race again, receiving wild card invites to all three U.S. rounds in the 2013 MotoGP season.

Attack Performance debuted at the Laguna Seca round but failed to qualify due to a fuel pump problem, but returned weeks later for the Indianapolis Grand Prix, finishing 14th overall and earning two championship points with Steve Rapp riding a Kawasaki ZX-10R-based race bike. Indianapolis Motor Speedway also saw the debut of GPTech‘s Suzuki GSX-R1000-based machine which Aaron Yates piloted to 16th place. Continue Reading »

Former AMA Daytona Sportbike racer Tommy Aquino is coming back to the U.S. to compete as a wild card entry in the Moto2 race at the 2012 Indianapolis Grand Prix.

The California native has been racing in Spain’s CEV Moto2 class this season for Canadian-owned FOGI Racing this year. Aquino has been riding a Moto2 bike with a chassis by FTR, a combination he’ll repeat Aug. 19 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“It has been a lot of hard work over the past nine months to get the team where it is today. We worked tirelessly to get the proper rider, equipment and infrastructure together to put us in a position where we could take advantage of an opportunity such as this,” says Andrew Murray of FOGI Racing. “We still have a lot of work to do to find a team sponsor for this event, but we are confident this opportunity will open up new organizations in North America who want to partner with a successful team and take advantage of the enormous market reach found in MotoGP / Moto2 / Moto3 for their products and services.” Continue Reading »

America is starting to become a hotbed for wild card Claiming Rule Team entries in MotoGP. First there was Attack Performance getting awarded a wild card for the U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca and the Indianapolis Grand Prix at The Brickyard. Indianapolis Motor Speedway will see another U.S.-based wild card, this time it’s Indiana-based GP Tech preparing its own CRT machine.

GP Tech has drawn wild cards at the Indianapolis Grand Prix before, in the Moto2 class. In 2010, GP Tech prepared an FTR chassis for Jason DiSalvo and in 2011, GP Tech prepared another FTR race machine for Jake Gagne. DiSalvo finished ninth in the 2010 race while Gagne (pictured above) was 31st in 2011.

This time, GP Tech is taking advantage of the new CRT classification to compete in the premier MotoGP class. While Attack Performance is mounting a Kawasaki ZX-10R engine in a custom-built frame, GP Tech is teaming up with the Vesrah Suzuki/MCJ Motorsports team to build a race bike powered by a Suzuki GSX-R1000 engine with a billet aluminum frame by BCL Motorsports. Continue Reading »

Attack Performance officially announced it will race in the 2012 U.S. Grand Prix and Indianapolis Grand Prix on a Kawasaki-powered Claiming Rule Team machine.

Reports the Huntington Beach, Calif., racing parts manufacturer was granted a wild card to the two American MotoGP rounds surfaced last week, the AMA Pro Racing regular officially confirmed the news just as the 2012 MotoGP World Championship got under way.

Attack Performance is building its own chassis and will use a modified Kawasaki ZX-10R engine to compete in the two races against other CRT entries and factory prototypes. Attack Perforamnce faces a daunting task, but this is the kind of scenario MotoGP organizers were hoping for when they instituted the CRT rules. Continue Reading »

Elena Myers completed demonstration five laps of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway circuit on the Suzuki GSV-R, becoming the first woman to ride an 800cc MotoGP race bike.

The 17-year-old AMA Supersport racer was clocked going as fast as 190 mph along the front straight as regular Grand Prix racers including Rizla Suzuki‘s Alvaro Bautista watched on.

“Wow! I can’t really say anything else; it was just such an incredible experience! I can’t thank the guys at Suzuki MotoGP enough – they have been awesome!” says Myers. “This makes me so hungry to come out here and try it someday for real on a race weekend: Well I guess this is a race weekend, but I mean for real next time. I can’t say enough about the bike either; it does everything 20 times better than I ever would have imagined – this has just been amazing and I think I’ll slowly realize what just happened over the next couple of days. The GSV-R just blew me away!”

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Elena Myers will ride demonstration laps of Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the Suzuki GSV-R.

After a visit at the Rizla Suzuki garage during the 2010 U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, the 17-year-old Myers received an invitation to ride the GSV-R at the post-season test in Valencia, Spain. Those plans fell through however, but Myers will now get her chance to ride a MotoGP racebike at 12:45 pm on on Aug. 25, press day for the Indianapolis Grand Prix.

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