World Moto Clash, the no rules motorcycle race, is now only 50/50 to happen, says CEO
The World Moto Clash promised no-rules motorcycle racing and a $1 million winner's prize, but its CEO now says there's only a 50/50 chance the event will actually take place.
Remember World Moto Clash? The $1 million motorcycle race that promised to throw the rulebook in the bin and let riders turn up on basically whatever they fancied? Even its CEO is giving it a 50/50 chance of going ahead after all.
The news comes after the event's founder and CEO, Stanford W. Crane Jr, said the event's primary investor failed to provide funding by an agreed deadline.
That is something of a problem for a race which is supposed to hand its winner a cheque for $1 million, with a total purse of $2.86 million up for grabs.
Speaking to Roadracing World, Crane said: "It's 50-50. We're meeting with two [potential investor] groups over the next couple of days."
According to Crane, the original investor didn't provide the agreed funding and instead came back with a counteroffer which would not allow World Moto Clash to meet its objectives. The organisers are now attempting to secure backing from two other potential investors, both of which apparently have experience in motorsport.
The event is currently scheduled for 18-20 September at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Ohio, although that date itself is something of a recent development. The original plan was to stage the first World Moto Clash at Utah Motorsports Campus in July, before the organisers moved the event after discovering a clash with the MotoAmerica calendar. Utah is now apparently scheduled to host WMC in summer 2027.
And this isn't some normal motorcycle race that needs a few riders and a couple of transporters to turn up. World Moto Clash has been pitching itself as something altogether more ambitious.
What exactly is World Moto Clash?
The basic idea is simple enough: take the rulebook, throw it in the bin and see what happens. It is described as an invitation-only, open-class, open-equipment race. There are no conventional engine-capacity classes and, at least according to the organisers' description, no mandated technical specification dictating what sort of motorcycle can compete.
That effectively opened the door to scratch-built specials, former WorldSBK and MotoGP machines, cruisers, sportsbikes, nakeds and adventure machines.
The stated philosophy is essentially that if a motorcycle can compete, it can race. The organisers even talked about machines capable of exceeding 200mph and leaning beyond 60 degrees.
The planned format would have seen 48 riders starting the event, with that field reduced to 30 for the final grid. The original event was described as a three-day, six-race weekend, with sessions split into 'Red' and 'Black' groups. What those groups actually mean has never been particularly well explained, though, and there is no conventional class structure or obvious balance-of-performance system.
The theory behind it all was that removing technical restrictions allowed engineers to find new ways of making a motorcycle go fast. In practice, though, you could end up with a field containing machines with radically different performance characteristics, which creates some fairly obvious questions about safety, competitiveness and just how you actually make a race out of it.
There is also the small matter of actually getting the bikes onto the grid.
When World Moto Clash was announced, former MotoGP and World Superbike racer Colin Edwards was among the names attached to the project, with Miguel Duhamel and Gregg Smrz also involved. The organisers have also recruited television production talent in an attempt to make the event as much an entertainment property as it would a motorcycle race.
But as of now, there are no confirmed entries and, according to Roadracing World's latest report, no professional racing teams have announced plans to participate.
That makes the latest financial problem rather more significant, as WMC has been selling the idea of a million-dollar winner-takes-all race, 48 riders, 30 starters, unrestricted motorcycles and potentially 200mph-plus machinery. But before anyone can win that $1 million, somebody needs to pay for the race.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
