Former Formula USA Champion and multi-time (and 2000) WERA National Endurance Champion Tray Batey has no ride for the 2001 season. “I’d like to race,” Batey said in a telephone interview from his home in Gallatin, Tennessee January 10. “I feel like I’m still riding pretty good but as of right now it looks like I have nothing going on and I’ll be riding dirt bikes. No one has talked to me, no one has called me up to talk about anything. I’m sitting here in the garage fooling around with car parts. “I can’t ride for nothing,” Batey continued. “If I have to pay to ride I’m just gonna stay home. Looks like I got shut out. If that’s the case I have a really good race to look back on, that TLR race at Atlanta, (the Suzuki TL1000R Cup Final in October 2000), especially since Lee (Acree) won all the other ones and I trounced him on the TLR. “I don’t feel like I did the wrong thing leaving Valvoline EMGO Suzuki and Formula USA (at the end of 1998) and signing with Arclight to do the endurance. I felt there were some young guys coming up and I needed to step out of the way.” Batey’s 1999-2000 team, Arclight Suzuki, has left the WERA National Endurance and National Challenge Series to concentrate on the Formula USA Series with riders Lee Acree and Brian Parriott. Valvoline EMGO Suzuki, aka Team Suzuki Endurance, followed the same path out of WERA competition in 1998.