AMA Supercross Championship
 |
|
| Category |
Motorcycle sport Motorcycle racing |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Inaugural season | 1974 |
| Classes | 450SX, 250SX East, 250SX West, KTM Junior |
| Riders | 38 |
| Constructors | Honda · Kawasaki · KTM · Suzuki · Yamaha • Husqvarna Motorcycles |
| Riders' champion |
 Ryan Dungey
|
| Teams' champion | Red Bull KTM |
| Constructors' champion |
 KTM
|
| Official website | www |
The AMA Supercross Championship is an American motorcycle racing series. The race series was founded and sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in 1974. Supercross is an offshoot of the sport of which is held on natural terrain, closed courses. Supercross racing involves off-road motorcycles on an artificial, man-made dirt track consisting of steep jumps and obstacles. The AMA Supercross Championship is sponsored by Monster Energy and is held from January through early May in major league baseball and football stadiums. The easy accessibility and comfort of these stadium venues meant that by the late 1970s, Supercross had surpassed motocross as a spectator attraction in the United States.
The first motocross race held on an artificially created race track inside a stadium took place on August 28, 1948 at Buffalo Stadium in the Paris suburb of Montrouge. With the surge in popularity of motocross in the United States in the late 1960s, Bill France added a professional motocross race to the 1971 Daytona Beach Bike Week schedule. The 1972 race was held at Daytona International Speedway on an artificial track on the grass surface between the main grandstand and the pit lane.
The event that paved the way for artificial, stadium-based motocross events was the 1972 race held in the Los Angeles Coliseum and won by Marty Tripes at the age of 16. The event was promoted by Mike Goodwin and Terry Tiernan, President of the AMA at the time. It was billed as the "Super Bowl of Motocross" which eventually led to the coining of the term Supercross. The Superbowl of Motocross II held the following year was an even greater success and, eventually evolved into the AMA Supercross championship held in stadiums across the United States and Canada. While Motocross and Supercross are similar in many respects, they would become a distinctly different forms of racing, taking motocross to more people and broader audiences through the use of television. Supercross would evolve until it arguably became the most important motocross series in the world, displacing the as the premier off-road motorcycle racing series.
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