While you’d think that when it comes to motorcycle racers, it would be the higher the level the fewer the crashes, that’s not always the case. It’s oftentimes more likely that the higher the level, the stiffer the competition, the more risks needed to be taken… and more crashes.
In 2023 and 2024, that wasn’t the case. Last year in this space we talked about the fact that 2023 MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Jake Gagne didn’t crash once en route to his third Superbike title. Gagne simply didn’t fall down. Not in practice, not in qualifying, and not in the races.
The following season, Josh Herrin won the 2024 Superbike title and crashed only once in doing so. Herrin stepped off at Barber Motorsports Park in race two and that was it. The rubber side stayed down for the entire season except for Herrin’s lone Birmingham blip.
Fast forward to 2025 and the MotoAmerica Superbike Championship where the theory of not falling off earns championships was sort of thrown out the window.
Of the three who took the title fight to the last round of the season at New Jersey Motorsports Park in September, it was Tytlers Cycle Racing’s Cameron Beaubier who had the most pre-finale crashes. Beaubier fell off his BMW six times, but only one of those was during a race. The other five were in practice or qualifying sessions, including two in one day in the season finale at NJMP.
In case you forgot, Beaubier emerged from the fray in New Jersey with his sixth MotoAmerica Superbike Championship.
Going into the finale, it was Attack Performance Yamaha Racing’s Bobby Fong who was in the catbird seat. Fong had only four get-offs when the series arrived at its finale in Jersey, but he crashed out of two of the three races and that cost him a shot at the title. Two of his previous four incidents occurred about 25 minutes apart in a tough Q1 session for Fong at Circuit of The Americas.
Josh Herrin definitely wasn’t as clean as he was in 2024. The Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati-backed Herrin crashed four times over the course of the nine-round, 20-race season, but two of those were in races. The defending champion lost the title chase by 25 points to Beaubier.
The Tracks
Pouring through the 2025 MotoAmerica incident report reveals that while none of the top three crashed at Barber Motorsports Park, plenty of others did, and for the second year in a row the picturesque facility in Alabama led the way in crashes. However, the number of crashes at Barber dropped from 80 down to 60 in what was, for most of the five classes, the opening round of their championships.
While it may have been the opening round for several classes, including Superbike, it was round two for the SC-Project Twins Cup class as Barber followed its season opener at Daytona International Speedway. At the end of the weekend at Barber there had been 27 crashes in Twins Cup, with 13 of those coming in a wet race two.
The corner at Barber that claimed the most crashes? Turn nine, the right-hander known as the Museum Corner. Of the 60 crashes, 10 of them were in turn nine.
With Barber leading the way, it was Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, Washington, that finished runner-up with its 50 crashes. Coincidentally, 12 of those get-offs occurred in turn 12, a tight left-hander that is one of the slowest corners in the MotoAmerica Championship.
Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, ranked third in MotoAmerica crashes in the 2025 season with 42 tip-overs. Eight of those came in turn 11.
With just one crash less than COTA, New Jersey Motorsports Park ranked fourth with 41 tip overs and it’s easy to forget that NJMP was the leader in this category on a yearly basis. The semi-new pavement and a nod from Mother Nature have seen the crash number cut in half in New Jersey. Turn nine was home to seven of the 41 crashes.
VIRginia International Raceway rounds out the top five in MotoAmerica’s return to the popular facility. There were 36 crashes in total at VIR, with nine of those coming in turn one.
The Classes
The SC-Project Twins Cup class was an equal opportunity crashing class with 38 different riders crashing at some point in the season.
Royal Enfield Build.Train.Race. had only 12 crashes on the season in their limited schedule, with eight different riders contributing to that total.
You’d expect the Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul racers to be crashing at a high rate, given their inexperience and the amount of close racing in the class. Thirteen different racers suffered crashes in the seven-round debut season of the class, and the rider who was crowned as the class’s first champion Alessandro Di Mario wasn’t one of them.
The Mission Super Hooligan National Championship also raced on a limited schedule and that schedule included their season opener at Daytona International Speedway. Twenty different Hooligan racers suffered crashes over the course of the season.
Forty-one different riders hit the deck in the nine-round, 18-race season of the Motovation Supersport class, so it was not a surprise that the series leader in crashes would come from the Supersport class. It’s also surprising that the class champion Mathew Scholtz only crashed once and the runner-up in the championship PJ Jacobsen never hit the deck.
The Mission King Of The Baggers championship featured the smallest grid size in 2025 and basically all of them had at least one crash over the course of the season with 13 different riders tipping over with varying results.
Stock 1000 didn’t race a full schedule, but the racing was tight, and the crashes were plentiful with 28 different riders crashing a total of 46 times.
An even 20 different riders crashed their Superbikes at least once during the 2025 season. The most experienced racers on the fastest bikes in the MotoAmerica Championship crashed a total of 64 times in 2025.
JD Beach, MotoAmerica Superbike Cup Champion and runner-up in the Stock 1000 title chase, didn’t crash once in ’25. “We didn’t always have spare parts,” Beach half-joked.
The Riders
Instead of us saying, “With all due respect” throughout this portion of the crash story, let’s just say it once. With all due respect, these are the riders who crashed the most in the 2025 MotoAmerica season, per class.
Superbike – Ashton Yates (7), Cameron Beaubier (6), Bobby Fong (6)
Supersport – Cameron Petersen (8), Max Van (6), Kevin Horney (6)
Mission King Of The Baggers – Tyler O’Hara (6), James Rispoli (5), Bradley Smith (5)
Mission Super Hooligan National Championship – Hayden Schultz (6), Corey Alexander (3), AJ Peasley (3)
Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul – Ella Dreher (5)/Derek Sanchez (5), Bodie Paige (4)/Sam Drane (4)
Stock 1000 – AJ Blackmon (3), nine riders with (2)
Royal Enfield Build.Train.Race – Shea MacGregor (3), Brianna Cutler (2), Lucy Blondel (2)
So, with all due respect (oops!), there’s the crash report for 2025. In total, there were 398 crashes over practice, qualifying, morning warm-up, and races in the 2025 MotoAmerica Championship.
Of the 398 crashes, just 43 riders required on-site medical attention, with only five of those being transported to local hospitals.
