Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.
A Clear Channel Entertainment Motor Sports executive said that AMA Pro Racing refused to sanction a Clear Channel Entertainment Motor Sports-promoted SuperMoto race scheduled for Saturday, October 4 at Del Mar, California, turning down a $25,000 sanction fee.
Clear Channel Entertainment Motor Sports Vice President (and former AMA Grand National Champion) Mike Kidd said today that he contacted AMA Pro Racing Vice President Andy Leisner earlier this year and was turned down when he asked AMA Pro to sanction the event.
Roadracingworld.com recently learned that AMA Pro Racing is attempting to run a round of its SuperMoto Series in Columbus, Ohio on October 5.
Two rounds of the inaugural AMA SuperMoto Series have fallen off the schedule: An event in Colorado that was subsequently run without AMA sanction, paid a $20,000 purse and will be televised on Speed later this year; and another event in Atlanta that encountered permit problems. Two of the promised six races in the 2003 AMA Series have been held, and a season finale has been scheduled for Las Vegas, but the remaining three events have not been confirmed or announced.
Kidd said that Clear Channel, which promotes the AMA Supercross Series, had several reasons to seek an AMA sanction for its SuperMoto race at Del Mar. “With Clear Channel’s relationship with KTM–we do that Supercross Junior program with KTM–and the relationship we’ve had with AMA, when we decided to do a SuperMoto race at Del Mar the first place we called was AMA to sanction our event as part of the Red Bull KTM series.
“Andy Leisner is the one I spoke to regarding the SuperMoto event. After I was turned down by Leisner, I called my good friend P.J. (Harvey, Chairman of AMA Pro Racing) and he knew nothing of my request to do an AMA SuperMoto race at Del Mar.
“We’ve had the Del Mar event, this would be our fourth year, and Chris Agajanian had it for about six years prior to that. It is a highly successful Southern California weekend of motorcycle racing and the addition of our SuperMoto race would have benefitted the AMA Red Bull series.
“This event is going to be held in front of the main grandstands at Del Mar, which has all the amenities–not stuck out in a parking lot–with Diamondvision so the spectators can see 80% of the track and what they can’t see they’ll have on Diamondvision.”
The Del Mar race has a $15,000 purse, and will pay $3000 to win.
Returning a phone call requesting comment, AMA Pro Racing’s Leisner said “Mike (Kidd) called me prior to Elkhart Lake saying he wanted to run a Superbikers event at Del Mar and had heard we were looking into running one of our Nationals on the same date, which we had been investigating and in fact are still working on. He asked if there was any way of us changing our date, or if they could do anything to help make this not a conflict. Both he and I spoke several times and looked to see if there was any way we could not have a conflict, and we ended up getting ours moved back a day, so they weren’t on the same date.
“Mike did ask if we wanted to be involved and work with them on his round, and I said that would be great, but impossible because we were going to be off at our event, which is going to happen October 5th. There was never any refusal to do business with them. We actually had really good conversations about both events. No money discussions happened. We’re tied up running our event, he’s tied up running his event and we’ll do whatever we can to make them run together. That was pretty much my conversations with Mike (Kidd). Like I said, we were able to get our date moved one day so we don’t completely conflict with each other.”
This just in, from Mike Kidd, via e-mail:
“Leisner is incorrect. I knew nothing of Columbus when Leisner and I talked about Del Mar.”
