Although it was originally billed as a one-event program, the Cycle World Attack Performance Kawasaki team will continue racing, but it will do so with 19-year-old J.D. Beach riding the team’s ZX-10R Superbike instead of Eric Bostrom, who has chosen to leave the team to pursue other interests. Bostrom and the brand new machine showed promise during the AMA Pro National Guard Superbike season-opener March 10-12 at Daytona International Raceway. Bostrom qualified 8th, less than one second slower than pole-sitter and 2010 Superbike Champion Josh Hayes, but the weekend went downhill from that point. The Californian was knocked down by another rider in Race One and suffered a heart-stopping near-crash on the banking and finished a distant eighth in Race Two. And when the team’s Superbike rolled out on track during an official AMA Pro test May 2-3 at Miller Motorsports Park it was 2010 AMA Pro SuperSport East Champion Beach at the controls instead of Bostrom. “I haven’t really talked to Eric about it, but he made his own decision not to ride it,” Beach told Roadracingworld.com. Asked about the team’s plans moving forward, Beach said, “We’re just going step-by-step still. We did the test, and we’re trying to make plans to go on to the next races.” Beach could only confirm he would race at the next AMA Pro round, May 13-15 at Infineon Raceway, and it’s this lack of long-range plans that Bostrom says led to his decision to step aside, in turn giving Beach a new opportunity. “I can’t really continue doing the program if we’re not going to have any vision of actually racing up front,” Bostrom told Roadracingworld.com in a telephone interview May 5. “Unfortunately, it takes money to do that, and the team didn’t really find the necessary funding to do that. The bike is still a very good motorcycle. Unfortunately, it’s not race-ready, but it’s a great platform and it will be plenty good enough for J.D. to get his feet wet on.” Bostrom (who took a hiatus from AMA Pro Road Racing from the end of the 2008 season until joining the Cycle World Attack Performance Yoshimura Suzuki magazine project during the second half of 2010) does not want to classify himself as “retired” and said he would consider a full-time return to professional racing if given the right opportunity. But given the current economic environment he thinks finding that opportunity is unlikely. “The fact of the matter is that’s going to be a tall order,” said Bostrom. “I certainly hope that I have the opportunity to look at that option. That will mean it will give other racers that opportunity as well. It’s kind of a heart breaker to see”¦there’s more good young talent coming up now than I’ve seen in a long time, and there’s just no place for them to go. “It was so much fun to come back, but then at some point you want to return to where you were, which is the top or at least somewhere at the front. But that was going to take time. Without the time there’s no point in considering it, and we didn’t have the luxury of time.” Bostrom said he hopes to remain active in the motorcycle industry, but he said he will also be kept busy in his new role as the Director of Developing Projects with the U.S. Cup mountain bike racing series and Team Sho-Air/Specialized cycling team.