AMA Dragbike Announces New Exhibition Class

AMA Dragbike announces a new heads-up exhibition class, Factory Extreme. The class will showcase modern production motorcycles outfitted as dragbike's with a slick and wheelie bar. Factory Extreme is being billed as a grass-roots Pro Stock for the 21st century.

"Early Pro Stock motorcycles were street bikes modified for drag racing," noted AMA Dragbike president Scott Valetti. "Today the class has evolved to purpose-built racing machines with no modern OEM components. This new class will revisit the origins of Pro Stock using current production platforms."

The stock frame must be used and engines can only date back to 1999. In the spirit of Pro Stock, power adders like nitrous and turbo charging are prohibited.

"The first Pro Stock bikes utilized highly-tuned production motors on a modified stock chassis," continued Valetti. "These motorcycle paved the way for drag racing to evolve to its highest level. With the tremendous performance potential of the Hayabusa and ZX-14 power plants, we felt it was time to revisit the origins of Pro Stock with a new, affordable, heads-up class, showcasing the best technology of today."

The new Factory Extreme class will be a rider and tuner class. With minimum weight based on engine size, it will allow a racer who is not a typical jockey size to compete. "There are a lot of racers that are not small framed and possess excellent racing skills," added Valetti. "This will open the door for them to compete heads-up with a slick and wheelie bar."

Factory Extreme is set to debut at the Pingel Thunder Nationals, O'Reilly Raceway Park, August 2nd-3rd.

Factory Extreme Rules are available online

www.amadragbike.com

AMA Dragbike is based inCincinnati, Ohio and is the Drag Racing division of the AMA (American Motorcyclist Association). AMA Dragbike has evolved over the past 17 years to become the largest motorcycle drag racing sanction in the world. The organization holds records and hosts riders for the fastest (245.36 mph) and quickest (5.799sec) motorcycles on asphalt. The 2008, eight-race tour will bring thousands of bikes in 13 different classes down the finest race tracks in the world all to compete for purses in excess of $450,000 with contingency postings of over $1.5M.