Following up from the shock announcement yesterday of Parts Canada withdrawing their main sponsorship of the Canadian Superbike championship, CMG called Parts Canada’s Marketing Manager, Laura Lang to try and get some more insight into their decision.
According to Lang, the decision to pull out goes directly back to the rant that CSBK’s Kevin Graham made about certain individuals on cherrypickerracing.ca, though this was the decision maker, the relationship between the two organizations was already somewhat frayed.
Lang stressed that the issue is not with Superbike racing per say, and that they will continue to sponsor racing and indeed, would be interested in sponsoring Canadian Superbike racing in the future, just not while it is under the current management. She was quite clear that their relationship was done.
For now she’s waiting to let the dust settle and figure out what can be done. If there were an opportunity to work with someone else, then they would be open to discussions, though the time to do so to save next season would seem to be rather tight to say the least.
Unfortunately if there is no CSBK national series next year then it could also put in jeopardy the associated national races such as Harley Davidson’s XR series and Honda’s new CBR250R series.
Maybe this quote from Lang is the best place to leave this right now, “Everyone needs to take a breath and regroup. Something will come in the future”. Hopefully it’s a short breath if we’re going to see any national racing in 2012.
More as we hear it.
let’s hope so, and soon…