With the start of the 2011 AMA Pro Road Racing season just one month away race team preparations are picking up and the silly season is winding down, making it a good time to recap who will be riding what during the coming season. In this first part we will cover the AMA Pro National Guard class, starting with what has not changed. Josh Hayes will defend his 2010 AMA Pro National Guard Superbike Championship on his Graves Yamaha YZF-R1. Also remaining with Yamaha will be 19-year-old Chris Clark, who will ride for a yet-to-be-named team with backing from Pat Clark Motorsports. The Rockstar Makita Suzuki factory team will once again enter veteran Tommy Hayden and rising star Blake Young, both race winners in 2010. Geoff May and Erik Buell Racing (EBR) will contest the entire 2011 AMA Pro Superbike season, according to May, and the only question is whether it will be on the 1125RR the team ran last year or on a homologated version of the 1190RS streetbike EBR is working on right now. Team M4 Suzuki will once again field Chris Ulrich, who finished eighth in the 2010 Championship in spite of missing the final two races due to injury, and the Alabama-based team has also promoted Colombian Martin Cardenas, the 2010 AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Champion, up to the Superbike class. After an injury-plagued season, John Hopkins has left Team M4 Suzuki and will race for Crescent Suzuki in the British Superbike Championship. Foremost Insurance Pegram Racing’s Larry Pegram has ended his relatively long relationship with Ducati and will ride a factory-supported BMW S1000RR on his one-rider team in 2011. The biggest change in the Superbike class is the hiring of Ben Bostrom and Roger Hayden by the Michael Jordan Motorsports Suzuki team. Bostrom, a former AMA Pro Superbike Champion and a race winner in 2010, will ride a Jordan-branded GSX-R1000. Hayden, who raced a private Kawasaki ZX-10R in the 2010 Superbike World Championship, will ride a National Guard-sponsored GSX-R1000. In the privateer ranks, “Aussie Dave” Anthony has traded in his 2008-spec GSX-R1000 for a current, 2009-spec GSX-R1000 and will lead a three-rider team that includes former Australian Superbike competitors Jordan “Jordy” Burgess and Chris Trounson. Eric Bostrom will ride a Cycle World Attack Performance Kawasaki ZX-10R Superbike, but the current plan is only for him to ride at Daytona. If more sponsorship materializes, however, the 15-time AMA Superbike race winner and his green machine could show up at more rounds, according to Eric Bostrom. Another semi-regular in the 2011 AMA Pro Superbike Championship will be Jeremy Toye. Toye and his teammate Gary Orr plan to race their San Diego BMW/Lee’s Cycles S1000RR BMWs in about half of this year’s events, says Toye. Former AMA race winner Chris Peris is also expected to make appearances at selected rounds on his Iron Horse BMW/Evan Steel Performance S1000RR, according to Evan Steel. The Superbike class has lost Jake Zemke, who only has plans to race the Daytona 200 on a Project 1 Atlanta Yamaha YZF-R6 Daytona SportBike, and Brett McCormick, the 19-year-old Canadian who filled in for Jordan Suzuki’s injured Aaron Yates last season. McCormick will return to Canada to ride for the factory BMW Superbike team. Yates, meanwhile, continues his nearly-one-year recover from a badly-broken lower right leg. Once again there will be no official Hondas entered in the AMA Pro National Guard Superbike Championship, but there are rumors that American Honda is already gearing up to have an official effort in 2012 to support a new CBR1000RR. Tomorrow we will preview the Daytona SportBike class.