In the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the United States ruled MotoGP.
Between 1978 and 1993, American riders won 13 of 16 world championships. Kenny Roberts won three in a row between 1978 and 1980; Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson traded titles between 1983 and 1986; and Lawson, Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz claimed six straight crowns between 1988 and 1993.
And since?
Kenny Roberts Jr. won the championship in 2000 and the late Nicky Hayden did the same in 2006. He was the last American champion, though.
No rider from the U.S. has won a MotoGP race since 2011. An American hasn’t even held a full-time ride in the series since 2015.
Roberts Sr.’s technique, honed on the dirt tracks of California, paved the way for his fellow Americans. He opened a school in Barcelona to teach the Old World his ways. Seven-time champion Valentino Rossi of Italy was one of his pupils. That dirt-track style has been a cornerstone of the career of six-time champion Marc Márquez of Spain.
While talents from southern Europe have reaped the rewards, the pipeline of riders draped in stars and stripes has dried up. The beginning of the end coincided with the global financial crisis of 2008.
Before global economies were decimated, the U.S. was home to the strongest domestic road-racing championship in the world. Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Ducati all had factory efforts in what was then known as AMA Superbike, each paying multimillion-dollar contracts to their riders.
As belts tightened, brands reevaluated their non-essential spending, and the number of corporations who view racing as essential can be counted on two hands. It was a reckoning in motorsport. Honda pulled out of Formula One. Kawasaki pulled out of MotoGP.
That same year, AMA Superbike was sold to Daytona Motorsports Group, an outfit co-led by NASCAR CEO Jim France. The rulebook was turned on its head, and with sport bike sales in decline and the American series no longer aligned with the interests of the manufacturers and the rest of the road-racing world, factories scaled back spending or pulled out entirely.
There was a far more cost-effective means of going racing: supercross and motocross. Go to any supercross or motocross race today and you’ll see trailers and hospitality units representing the factory efforts of Honda, Yamaha,…
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