With the final, really final, AMA Superbike race this weekend as the impetus, essentially the entire paddock will be looking for a bar Sunday night and may very well be drunkenly singing the theme song to the 1980s TV show Cheers. With the DMG/AMA series still in major flux and the MIC series still in the building stages no one knows what the future will bring, thus with some notable exceptions, it's very likely that many jobs, teams and rides are going to dry up and float away. Will they return once the schism has been decided?

Many factory riders are looking off-shore for 2009 rides. Jake Zemke has been rumored to be signing to ride a Ducati in WSBK and was also rumored to be testing the factory Yamaha WSBK machine yesterday in Europe. Josh Hayes raced the World Supersport race last weekend in Italy and Jason DiSalvo has made runs across the pond to try and nab a job. Ben Spies, with his MotoGP dream now apparently on the shelf, has also been rumored to be now riding in the WSBK series in '08 on a factory Yamaha, although Sylvain Guintoli tested the bike this week in Vallelunga.

Rider managers and agents not accustomed to making trans-Atlantic phone calls in order to find their riders paying gigs are brushing up on their Italian, French and Spanish language skills.

Laguna Seca's 'Last Supper' AMA event already has an 'end of an era' feel to it and also has the possibility that it may very well be the last time that American race watchers see riders like Mat Mladin, Miguel DuHamel, Tommy Hayden, Ben Spies, Eric Bostrom and others in a full-on Superbike race, or, for that matter, race in America for some time.

Oh, but to be in the opposite camp. For a perennial (and third-generation) rider like Larry Pegram these are presumably heady days of glee while he watches the factory Superbike system, with their works parts, big budgets and multi-digit paychecks being burned to the ground. Riders like Pegram and his associates have everything to, literally, win in the new DMG series as it stands today.

Who loses? Maybe the fans. On Sunday morning at Mid-Ohio I counted the people who stood in line to get the autographs of Miguel DuHamel and Neil Hodgson. I stopped counting at about two-thirds, in the very high two-hundreds, with the line snaking half-way around the first garage building. The line ended not for a lack of people, but for a lack of space to put the line. Later, there was a line nearly that long for the Suzuki riders when they held their autograph session. Both times the teams had to cut the sessions off--with hundreds of fans still in line--so the riders could prepare for the race.

Thus far what has brought people to the races, and tuning in on TV, is to see stars and hard parts. A lot of success, and perceived interest is brought to the series each weekend from the manufacturers and their support.

Will the race fans who have been attending AMA Superbike events, drawn in by the factory technology and world championship-caliber riders, still buy tickets and stand in line to get the autograph of perhaps someone like Johnny Rock Page? Time will tell.