RIchard Stanboli, the owner of Attack Performance (an aftermarket parts manufacturer and tuning shop) and the man directly responsible for three Daytona 200 wins and four AMA Pro National Championships and a MotoGP CRT program, is working with Josh Herrin, (former AMA Pro Superbike Champion and former MotoAmerica Superstock 1000 Champion) on a deal to compete in the 2018 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship.
Herrin (with Stanboli as his crew chief) finished eighth in the 2017 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship with two podium finishes. In spite of riding lower-spec equipment and working with fewer resources provided by the private Meen Motorsports team, Herrin competed with and sometimes beat the factory-team riders at the front.
Now, Stanboli and Herrin are trying to put together a new and better Superbike effort for the 2018 season.
“We’re still waiting for a couple of higher-paying sponsors to come on board to enable us to go out there 100%,” said Stanboli in an interview January 19 at Attack Performance in Huntington Beach, California. “That’s where we are right now. We’re right in the middle of talking to one or two guys, but they’ve been kind of slow to react. So we’re still working on it.”
Although it is very late in the off-season to still be trying to finalize a top-level Superbike effort, Stanboli is a man who designed and built his own MotoGP racebike from billet aluminum in just four months and scored World Championship points in the motorcycle’s second outing.
“To build this Superbike properly it’s probably going to be about eight weeks, from start to finish,” estimated Stanboli. “It’s like six weeks to get the electronics. Then after you get them you still have to build the wiring harnesses. Even if you just worked on that alone it could take eight weeks. So by the time you order wheels and forks and build your fuel tanks and swingarms it’s going to be all of eight weeks to get a bike built.
“So we’ll have to figure it out by the end of January or it will be a no-go. So far we have Yamaha tentatively supplying us with bikes and parts, and Herrin is all in. So we just need a couple of [sponsors] to step up and pull the trigger on the thing and go for it.”
And the notion of putting a bike together to just fill the grid and struggle just to get to each round is not an option that’s being considered.
“My only goal would be to win races,” said Stanboli. “We’re not there to just show up. If I do it it’s going to be done 100%. That’s the only way. It’s either 100% or zero. There’s nothing in between. We’re not showing up to finish in the top 10. If we’re not racing for the podium every single weekend, then I don’t want to go.
“I’m sure we could put a bike together and roll out without hardly any testing and go exactly like Josh did at the end of last year. I’m very confident. We have all of the set-up notes, the gearing, which would take all of the guesswork out of it. The only thing we might struggle with is the electronics, getting our heads around what that requires. But after that we will be all good to go. I’m not too worried about it.”