AMA Approves Changes to Competition Rules
The American Motorcyclist Association Board of Directors met in Las Vegas for two days in November to consider a number of competition rule change recommendations levied by the AMA Congress in October.
The AMA Congress consists of delegates elected from each of the chartered AMA districts across the country. Those delegates submit proposals for rules changes that are then voted on by the entire Congress during its annual gathering in early October. Those Congress recommendations are then considered by the Riding and Racing committees of the AMA Board before going before all Board members for final decision.
The Board considered 54 rules recommendations from the AMA Congress, approving 50 of those proposals, voting against three of them, and requesting further investigation of one.
On the road-riding side, the Board approved six proposals, most related to technical language in the AMA Road Riding rulebook. Those recommendations included minor changes to the running of events in the National Championship Poker Run Series, along with changes in nomenclature in other areas of the rulebook.
In the area of amateur racing, the Board approved changes to National Championship Enduros designed to make it easier for promoting clubs to hold this form of competition and also ratified a rewritten chapter better defining the sport of observed trials and making it easier for clubs and promoters to run these events. In addition, the Board agreed with the AMA Congress to increase the allowable displacement of motorcycles in the Super Mini class, to 112cc for two-strokes and 150cc for four-strokes. Four-strokes up to 150cc also will be allowed in Schoolboy-class racing.
The Board decided against three specific recommendations from the AMA Congress.
In the first, the Board disagreed with a Congress recommendation that would have allowed two-stroke motorcycles displacing up to 144cc as built by the manufacturer to compete in motocross Class 2. Currently, riders in that class can only compete on 144cc two-stroke motorcycles if they were built and homologated as 125cc machines, then bored out to the larger displacement.
The Board also voted against approval of Congress recommendations that would have increased minimum purses at Pro-Am races and increased displacements in the 90cc ATV racing class.
Finally, the Board voted against immediate enactment of a Congress recommendation that would have made sweeping changes to the AMA competition class structure, eliminating the separate displacement limits for two-stroke and four-stroke machines.
Noting that this proposal would have changed class structure for the 2007 racing season, which begins in less than two months, the Board instead directed AMA staff members to submit to the Board a three- to five-year class structure plan, after consulting with technical experts in the field.
“When we looked at this recommendation,” said Carl Reynolds, chairman of the AMA Board’s Racing Committee, “we realized that it would have ramifications for nearly all of the AMA’s racing programs, and that a couple of months was too short a time frame to expect racers to react to those changes. We have instead asked staff to give this issue the type of technical investigation it deserves and come up with appropriate rules for the future.”
The AMA sanctions more than 4,500 organized on-road and off-road competition events in the United States.
