Who will end up with the AMA Pro roadracing all-time wins record?

The return of a former champion, Cameron Beaubier, to the MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike class, and the arrival of new competition in the Supersport category, have scrambled the odds and made it possible, if not likely, that the all-time-wins record could change hands more than once over the next few years.

Josh's hazy odds and Cam's timing

Last year, despite only riding a partial season in the Supersport class, four-time Superbike champion Hayes, then 47, won three races, including a masterful win on slick tires in damp and varying conditions in the Sunday race at New Jersey Motorsports Park that tied him with Duhamel for the most wins across all classes of AMA Pro roadracing. Many expected him to take control of the record with a win or two at the final round at Barber Motorsports Park two weeks later. Instead, a practice crash before the first race left Hayes with a broken leg, and he spent the weekend contributing television commentary instead of racing to break the all-time record.

Two key developments affected Hayes' chances of breaking the record in 2023, one positive, one negative. First, the Squid Hunter Racing team he was riding for decided to run the full MotoAmerica Supersport schedule, instead of a part-time effort, like last year. But counteracting that was the arrival of Xavi Forés, a former World Superbike, World Supersport, and World Endurance racer who took over the 2022-Supersport-title-winning ride of Josh Herrin at the Warhorse HSBK Ducati team as Herrin returned to the Superbike class. Forés has dominated, winning all seven races so far in 2023 on the Ducati Panigale V2 and Hayes, now 48, has not yet been able to come close to winning that record-setting 87th victory on his Yamaha YZF-R6.

Meanwhile, after two disappointing years in Moto2, five-time Superbike champion Cameron Beaubier returned to MotoAmerica. Though his entire Superbike career had been on a Yamaha YZF-R1, Beaubier jumped on the Tytlers Cycle BMW M 1000 RR and surprised everyone by winning the first MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike race of the year at Road Atlanta. Since then, he's added two more wins and consistently been competitive, challenging his former teammate, Jake Gagne, who won the Superbike championship the last two years while Beaubier was away.

Beaubier only needs nine more wins to surpass Duhamel himself, and at age 30, he should have several more good years of racing ahead of him, barring injury.

So it comes down to this: Can Beaubier win nine more Superbike races before Hayes wins one more Supersport race? Or will both happen, and then Beaubier, who is now 30, will continue racing for a few more years and leave both Hayes and Duhamel behind? The way things are going so far this season, it's certainly possible.

Beyond the question of who will break the record, however, it's also interesting to look at the different routes the riders took to get to (or near) record-setting territory.

All-time AMA Pro roadracing race victories
Rider	Total wins	Superbike	Supersport	Superstock	Formula Xtreme	750 Supersport	Daytona SportBike
Miguel Duhamel*	86	32	41	0	12	1	0
Josh Hayes	86	61	9	2	13	1	0
Mat Mladin*	82	82	0	0	0	0	0
Cameron Beaubier	78	57	2	0	0	0	19
* = retired

Domination versus diversification

As you can see from the chart above, the leaders in all-time wins got there by different routes.

If you look at the Superbike class alone, seven-time champion Mat Mladin, who dominated for years on his Yoshimura Suzuki, is far ahead of the crowd. Mladin won seven titles, all of them as part of an 11-year run in which Yoshimura riders — Mladin and Ben Spies — won the Superbike championship every year except for the 2002 title taken by Nicky Hayden on a Honda.

AMA Superbike-class wins
Mat Mladin*	82
Josh Hayes	61
Cameron Beaubier	57
Jake Gagne	33
Toni Elias*	32
Miguel Duhamel*	32
* = retired

All of Mladin's AMA wins came in the premier class, while all the other riders near the top of the all-time-wins list notched victories across several classes. That was particularly true of Duhamel, who raced multiple classes during his career and seemed hardest to beat when he was aboard a 600 cc Honda Supersport bike.

Of course comparing racers from different eras is never going to be a totally fair case of comparing apples to identical apples. On one hand, during the era when Duhamel was racing, there was only one Superbike race per weekend instead of two, as there are now, so there were fewer opportunities to run up the numbers. On the other hand, riders like Duhamel often competed in more than one class back then, something that no top Superbike rider is doing today.

For Duhamel, 1995 was the peak year of his career, when he won both the Superbike championship and the Supersport title. In Supersport that year, Duhamel won nine of the 11 races. He and his Smokin' Joe's Honda CBR600F3 were an almost unbeatable combination.

So who will be the first to surpass Duhamel? Forés' domination this year has made Hayes' task significantly more difficult. And although he is an exceptionally fast 48-year-old, the clock keeps ticking for everyone, and he is 48 years old. Plus, his Yamaha YZF-R6, once the strongest ride in the Supersport paddock, now faces a much wider array of competition under the Next Generation rules. The R6 still has its strengths, but so do the Suzuki GSX-R750s and Ducati Panigale V2s it has to compete against.

Meanwhile, Beaubier is happy to be back home and has gelled remarkably quickly with the Tytlers Cycle team. By his own admission, the nomadic global lifestyle of Moto2 was not a good fit for Beaubier, who has started a young family at home in Northern California. And while the Tytlers team is new to MotoAmerica, it includes several experienced hands.

Whoever ends up with the record, it's only a matter of time before someone else comes along and tops the all-time wins list again. Because records are made to be broken.

The next chance for Hayes and Beaubier to attack Duhamel's record is this weekend at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, with the MotoAmerica Superbike Speedfest at Monterey. (Here's info on how to watch the races.) Hayes will only get one chance for a win this weekend, instead of the usual two, because the Laguna Seca round includes one of two "Supersport Extended Races" this season that run a longer distance and include a required pit stop. Meanwhile, Beaubier will get three chances to record a race win this weekend. For 2023, the MotoAmerica season reduced from 10 rounds to nine, but in order to keep the number of Superbike races at the usual 20, three Superbike races are being run at two rounds.