First Person/Opinion

by Michael Gougis

More Superbikes, more race winners, more race-winning teams – MotoAmerica’s Superbike grid is set for one of its biggest shuffles in recent years as the 2026 season gets closer. While a few seats remain unfilled, some of the highest profile moves already are set. In this installment, we’ll focus on the top level of the MotoAmerica Superbike grid, which will see dramatic changes among the front runners and Championship contenders in recent seasons. You have to go back to 2021 – five years ago, already! – to find the last season where the reigning Superbike Champion did not return to defend his title with the same team and brand he won the Championship with.

That Superbike Champion is none other than Cameron Beaubier, who earned five Superbike titles in six seasons from 2015 to 2020 before departing for the Moto2 World Championship. Beaubier won his sixth MotoAmerica Superbike Championship in 2025 aboard the Tytlers Cycle Racing BMW M 1000 RR, and then made the highest-profile shift in the off-season. Shortly after the 2025 season ended, Beaubier announced that he would join the Warhorse HSBK team and ride a new 2026-spec Ducati Panigale V4 R in the MotoAmerica Superbike class. Warhorse is stepping up to a two-rider Superbike program for 2026, but Josh Herrin, the 2024 Superbike Champion on a Warhorse Ducati, will no longer be in the Warhorse camp. The second Warhorse seat will go to Benjamin Smith, a seasoned MotoAmerica rider who raced a Yamaha YZF-R1 Superbike for Flo4Law Racing in 2025. Flo4Law also will join Warhorse HSBK as a sponsor. Tytlers is not expected to compete in MotoAmerica in 2026.

Ducati is slated to have four machines on the Superbike grid, all of them full Superbike-spec machines built in the Ducati Corse racing shop in Italy. Rahal Ducati Moto, which fielded PJ Jacobsen on Panigale V2 racebikes in Supersport, will move Jacobsen into Superbike, and the team has intimated that the move is a precursor to running a multi-rider Superbike team in the class in the future. The new 2026 Panigale features, among other things, a shift to a double-sided swingarm, and in World Superbike testing, 2025 Championship runner-up Nicolo Bulega already was under the race lap record at Jerez on the new and still-developing racebike.

One good thing about a stable rules package is that last season’s well-sorted and fast racebikes tend to remain competitive, especially at the start to the season. And last year’s Ducati Panigale V4 R racebikes ridden by Herrin to multiple victories will be back on the grid. Wrench Racing, which ran the satellite Yamaha YZF-R1s Bobby Fong took to two Superbike wins and eight podiums in 2024, will run the ex-Warhorse machines in 2026. Wrench’s rider will be Cameron Petersen, who is a MotoAmerica race winner across multiple classes and the 2020 Stock 1000 Champion. Petersen’s crew chief will be his dad, Robbie Petersen, who has had a stellar career as a racer internationally and in the U.S.A., and as a successful crew chief in MotoAmerica.

The BMW landscape has shifted to OrangeCat Racing, which won the 2025 MotoAmerica Stock 1000 title with Andrew Lee on Alpha Racing-built BMW M 1000 RR racebikes. OrangeCat dipped a toe into the Superbike waters at the final 2025 round at New Jersey with Lee and Jayson Uribe, running upgraded Stock 1000 machines in the Superbike class with positive results – Uribe took fifth in the final Superbike race of the season, 4.325 seconds off the race win. OrangeCat’s 2026 plan is to field Uribe and Sean Dylan Kelly, who is moving over from the Team Hammer/Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team. Kelly was a race winner in his last appearance in MotoAmerica on a BMW and was a consistent threat for the podium last year. Three-time Stock 1000 Champion Lee is no longer with the team.

Noteworthy about the two makes mentioned above: This means that there will be at least six Superbikes on the grid that were built overseas in either factory racing shops (Ducati Corse) or by the official factory racing partner (Alpha Racing). Both of those operations have had significant success across the globe in International and National level Superbike racing. It’s a big commitment for a team to run such a bike, especially the Ducati – if you want to race one, you have to commit to sending mechanics to Italy to spend weeks learning the machine prior to the start of the season. For a fee, Alpha will send technicians to support a BMW effort, and they have access to a pool of information gathered by teams racing the identical machine around the world.

Attack Racing will field Bobby Fong on its Progressive Insurance-backed Yamaha YZF-R1 for another crack at the Superbike title that slipped through Fong’s fingers in 2025. Attack Racing, which has fielded two riders for the past several seasons, has not yet announced its second rider. Three-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Jake Gagne, who has ridden for Attack’s Superbike program since 2020, struggled with injuries in 2024 and 2025 and his future plans were unknown at this time. Attack’s track record in MotoAmerica Superbike competition demonstrates that its machines are front-runners (and sometimes runaway winners) year after year and there’s little reason to expect them to not continue running at the front.

Strack Racing, which won the 2025 Supersport title with Mathew Scholtz on a Yamaha YZF-R9, announced plans to move up to the Superbike class in 2025 but has made no further official announcements. The only thing that is official is that Motoamerica.com reported that Scholtz tested an YZF-R1 Superbike at The Podium Club in Arizona along with Fong, and on MotoAmerica’s Facebook page there are photos of Scholtz in his Strack leathers with the Attack squad at the Podium Club in November. Scholtz is a multi-time MotoAmerica Champion, as is Strack, and Scholtz notched race wins in Superbike before moving to Supersport with Strack, where he won titles on Yamaha’s YZF-R6 and YZF-R9. 

Team Hammer will once again field Richie Escalante and a second rider, as yet unannounced. The Suzuki GSX-R1000R was competitive in 2025, and both Kelly and Escalante had podium finishes, including a 2-3 finish in a race at VIR. A wild card here is the new 2026 GSX-R1000R, which brings to the table internal engine modifications that Suzuki says increase both power and durability in stock trim. That may bode well for the power of the machine in race trim. And Suzuki has finally incorporated fairing-mounted winglets on the production GSX-R1000R, meaning they will be allowed on the racebikes as well.

Honda’s plans are as yet unannounced. But last year the company stepped up its involvement in Superbike and the Stock 1000 class, with JD Beach and Hayden Gillim both standing on the Superbike podium. HRC representatives from Japan visited the MotoAmerica round at The Ridge last year, and Honda’s results went on an upward spike for the rest of the season. If Honda keeps increasing its commitment to the series, it’s reasonable to expect a more competitive effort in 2026.

So, looking at the announcements to date, the MotoAmerica Superbike grid will have at least eight MotoAmerica National Champions from various classes and at least six riders who have won in the Superbike class in recent seasons, all of whom are on bikes and/or teams that were on the podium last season. And all of the rider announcements have not been completed, so when the green flag drops at Road Atlanta in April, there could be even more former Superbike race winners and National Champions fighting for the win. Stay tuned.