Canadian Motorcycle Road Racing New Entry Level Class-Come on out for the fun!

At the February Motorcycle Show in Toronto, the CSBK (Canadian national Superbike racing organization) people held a meeting to introduce their new Lightweight racing class. In the past, the CSBK group has had several one make ‘spec’ classes run on their Superbike weekends. The first was a Honda CBR125 race class. When Honda Canada started importing the CBR250, the CSBK group replaced the CBR125 class with the CBR250 series. For a few years there was even a Harley Davidson XR Sportster class. Most recently, the CSBK people ran a Kawasaki 300 class at their events.
These spec classes were highly regulated with lots of rules on what you could and (mostly) could not do to the street bike converted into a road race bike. Their logic was that these classes were entry level to bring in new young riders. I helped sponsor a young rider in one of these series who did go on to race in several regional road racing classes. However, these series didn’t exactly provide all of the results that were hoped for. Yes, they did provide TV coverage for some of the new riders. The costs to race were far less than the 600cc Sport Bike and Superbike classes. This is a major consideration for people new to the sport or families who are sponsoring one of their kids.

However, these ‘spec’ classes were age limited and in most cases there wasn’t a clear ‘next step’ class for the ‘graduates’ before getting into the highly competitive and expensive 600cc Sport bike classes. With the end of the Kawasaki 300 series and the end of a similar one make KTM RC390 Series in the US, the door was wide open to a true lightweight motorcycle racing class. It also helped that the motorcycle manufacturers were now bringing out lightweight sport type bikes that were affordable and reasonably sophisticated. Honda had the CBR300 and CBR500, Kawasaki the 300 Ninja and now a 400 Ninja, KTM has the RC390 and 390 Duke, Yamaha has the R3, Suzuki has just introduced the 250 GSXR and BMW has a new G310R.

With all these new or recently introduced machines available in most market places around the world, many racing organizations have introduced lightweight racing classes. Big grids full of bikes and riders are happening in Europe and Asia and are expected in the US Moto America series. In Canada, we have a small population base spread across a very big country. Add in a shorter riding season than most other countries and a limited number of race tracks. These are real stumbling blocks. Face it, road racing motorcycles is not a national sport in Canada or even close.

Given all of these factors, the folks at CSBK made the smart choice of having a lightweight racing class that will include all of these bikes and is open to riders of any age and any level of experience below the PRO level. The meeting in Toronto was a call out to any motorcyclist (current racer or new to the track) who was interested in racing in this new class. The meeting brought together the potential racers, some potential race sponsors and the CSBK Tech guys who could explain some of the rules. The rules can be found at CSBK.CA

Why should I care? Well if you ever wanted to try motorcycle road racing this series would be a great place to start. For a lot less money than purchasing a 600cc sport bike and converting it, one can buy a used lightweight bike that is legal for the class. Then spend a reasonable amount to prep it for the track and then race with the “National” guys. Not just race with the national CSBK people but also race in a class that will be televised.
Make no mistake, this class will not be the place for people who are looking for high speed thrills. Many of the motorcycle track day ‘junkies’ will scoff at the slower speeds and less sophistication of these bikes. However, those guys and gals are used to spending in tires and upgrades what a lightweight class bike actually costs. The CSBK guys spent a considerable amount of time in the meeting covering the basics of motorcycle preparation and went out of their way to emphasize that there is lots of help available to get bikes prepared. One tire supplier, one fuel supplier and a single electronics supplier takes a lot of the preparation questions away.

While this lightweight class will be using supersport rules for the machines, you don’t have to be a master mechanic to prepare a bike for the class.
So, if you have an unfulfilled desire to go motorcycle road racing but have been reluctant to jump into a full blown race program, this might be the place for you. If you raced back when you were young but quit to raise a family, maybe now is the time to look at rekindling that part of you that wants real fun instead of that nonsense the casinos are calling ‘fun’. If your son/daughter/nephew/niece/wife has wanted to try something other than hockey, soccer or video gaming, maybe this is what you want to look at seriously.