Never signed up for an AHRMA event before? Neither have I. Let’s do it together!
As I’ve noted before, this series isn’t just about the bikes – it’s about everything involved with going AHRMA racing (roadracing, specifically) from the perspective of a newbie. My hope is that this inspires someone else to go racing and that these posts can be a guide when they decide to try it for themselves.
With that in mind: the AHRMA season has already started for 2024 with races at Roebling Road Raceway and Carolina Motorsports Park. The first one vaguely near me is at Buttonwillow Raceway Park.
Before you can sign up for a race, you have to register for AHRMA. Registration is done online and it costs $75/year if you’re a US resident. They put out the rulebook digitally so you can reference it online at any time. They also publish a hard copy that you can buy on Amazon for $5, which I bought partially to send them a couple of bucks and partially as a memento from this season.
I’ll cherish it for 40 seconds and then it goes into a bookshelf, probably until I die.
Once that’s set, then you’ve got to sign up for the individual race. This cost me $220, which broke down as follows:
Race Entry Sun – 1st Entry $90.00
Race Entry Sun – 2nd Entry $80.00
Remote Tech (they’ll come to me) $50.00
There’s two entries because (as previously noted) I’m racing the 160 and my Kramer.
The Kramer will compete in Sound of Singles 1.
An interesting thing about this race – it’s a joint weekend with AFM, so AHRMA is only racing on Sunday. AFM is allowing free reciprocal memberships with AHRMA for the weekend so I could also race on Saturday but they haven’t opened signups yet so I’m not sure what I’m going to do just yet. I think the logical thing would be to also race AFM on Saturday and use it as practice for Sunday but I’m not well-known for being logical.
My lack of logic is why I’ll be racing this thing.
It’s one thing to sign up and pay for the race, but you won’t be allowed to actually hit the track until you show a basic level of competency. Per AHRMA:
“Roadracers: To race with AHRMA you are required to either:
Take the AHRMA Academy of Roadracing;
Provide evidence that in the past two years you have either:
successfully completed a recognized road race school; or
competed with another road race organization acceptable to AHRMA.”
Well, I’ve never done any of those things. Normally, AHRMA offers a Race School immediately before race weekends (except for the last race of the season at Barber) but this joint weekend is definitely not normal for them. Weeks ago AHRMA was tentatively stating that they would offer the race school before Buttonwillow but as we get closer to the event my confidence that the school will happen is diminishing – I have to find an alternative.
Brady Walker of Classic Track Days is offering a 2-day event at Willow Springs very soon – Saturday is at Big Willow and Sunday is a Streets of Willow. He’s partnered up with Mookie Wilkerson to offer a race school on Saturday at the big track, which I can do on my Kramer. Then on Sunday, I can get my first laps with the CB160 at Streets of Willow as it’s a smaller/slower track. C Group is specifically designed for slow folks on bigger bike as well as people on old/slow stuff. While I was writing up this post, Brady sent an email notifying me that the Streets day has been cancelled due to insufficient attendance (turns out it’s Easter Sunday). So I’m going to have to figure out a different way to get quality seat time with the 160 before the first race, but either way I have to get the race school done.
Flyer from Classic Track Days. Maybe I’ll see you there?
There’s one last step – I have to pick a race number! My go to is 17 (which goes back to high school) but as you can imagine, that’s been taken. I ended up settling on 978 as it’s the area code from where I grew up – Andover, Massachusetts.
I’m a big fan of the Skill Level column.
One of the things I’d like to do as part of this series is keep a running tab of my expenses over the season. I don’t think it makes sense to include initial costs for the bike(s) themselves as everyone rides different stuff, but once my 160 is relatively set up for the first race then I’ll include maintenance costs as part of this as well:
AHRMA Registration: $75
AHRMA Rulebook: $5
Race School: $350
Round 1 – Buttonwillow: $220
Grief I’ve Caused VyVy: already priceless.
Total So Far: $650 if I value Vy’s grief at $0.
As we get further into the series, I’ll also split off costs that aren’t strictly required (like the $5 handbook and paying $50 for remote tech).
P.S. I thought about doing another post in this series basically entitled “What is AHRMA?”, but I figured:
1. I don’t know enough at this point to say more than what’s already on their site.
2. I don’t know if anyone’s interested in that. If you are, let me know if you have any questions and I’m glad to answer them (or find people who will know the answers).
When Adam and I were at Barber last year, there were a lot of rumors going around that AHRMA had lost several hundred thousand dollars the year before and that they may not be around for much longer. Turns out the first part was true – per a recent email from the Executive Director and Special Committees Chair, AHRMA lost over $325,000 in 2022. The motorcycle business is tough.
The good news is, they were able to turn it around in 2023 and they ended up with $52,503.31 in profit. Here’s their P&L if you’re curious – kudos to the people who work for free/cheap to make this happen for everyone else. They’re expecting a bump in profit to $150,000 for 2024 thanks to “cost cutting and expense reduction…combined with an increase in sponsorships, member contributions, and a dramatic reduction in professional and staff expenses.” We’ll see how that goes, but I hope that AHRMA sticks around for much, much longer and the turnaround makes me feel better about the inevitable increase in my expense tracker in future parts of this story…
On to Part 9 – let’s learn about my my newest acquisition!