ASBK in tatters

It was once the jewel in the crown of local motorcycle racing, but the slow, painful collapse of the Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) has continued following the announcement by Motorcycling Australia (MA) that round two scheduled for June 21-22 at Hidden Valley at Darwin has been cancelled – consigning this year’s series to a skeleton two-round affair.

But even the status of the new round two, to be held at Phillip Island on July 19-20, is up in the air following the second bombshell delivered by MA in a statement delivered on its website late last Friday, May 9: championship promoter IEG and the governing body have severed ties, effective immediately.

That leaves the Phillip Island round without a promoter: a vacuum that could be filled by the Phillip Island circuit (which promotes the WSBK round), a motorcycle club, or even MA itself.

The statement from MA read as follows:

IEG (International Entertainment Group) began promoting ASBK in 2009, but it was a bumpy road from the beginning – the start of what has been an excruciating six-and-a-bit-years of underwhelming governance.

Despite the championship crumbling under IEG’s watch, the company again had its promotional rights extended by MA as late as last September. Now, eight months later, ASBK -- which was inaugurated in 1987 to replace the former two-stroke dominated Australian Road Racing Championship -- is without a promoter, and maybe even a long-term future.