AMA Flat Track: Brandon Robinson #44 to Ride for USC Racing Kawasaki Team in 2013

Brandon Robinson relaxes in the pit area at round 10 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Lucas Oil Indy Mile on August 18.  Riding for the Werner-Springsteen Monster Energy Kawasaki team for the 2012 Twins Series events, BRob44 had the best finish of his young career in his fourth season as an Expert-ranked rider by finishing 11th in the overall standings at the end of the season.

Robinson took the #44 Werner-Springsteen Racing/Sponseller/Penske/Motion Pro-sponsored Kawasaki 650R-based parallel twin to a superior finish of 2nd-place later in the evening at Indy for what was his best-ever finish in the Grand National Championship.  Leading laps and almost pulling off the upset win over veteran Sammy Halbert, Robinson backed up his 4th-place finish earlier in the season at the Sacramento Mile with another top-5 performance for the season in his first year with the team.

As was announced a few days ago thanks to the always entertaining, energetic and informative Tyler Porter from Fight For Dirt Track.com, Robinson will be taking his skills in the saddle to the USC Racing Kawasaki team for the upcoming 2013 AMA Pro Flat Track season. 

Brandon will join part-time team mate JD Beach (who will be returning to the Geico Motorcycle AMA Pro Road Racing Daytona SportBike Championship for his full-time job in the '13 season) on the 650R-based team.  Rob Pearson, 2012 Rookie of the Year Briar Bauman and Jethro Halbert are among a few other riders who have ridden for the team in the last two seasons.

Also seen in the shot above are two of the other machines in the Werner-Springsteen stable.  In the middle sits Stevie Bonsey's #80 Werner-Springsteen/Alpinestars/Wossner Pistons/Cometic Gasket-sponsored mount, with Robinson's back-up machine sitting in the background. 

The back-up mount is the same bike taken to the Indy and Springfield Mile wins during the 2010 season under the tutelage of team owners 13-Time AMA Grand National Championship-winning master wrench Bill Werner and 3-Time AMA Grand National Champion Jay Springsteen, with Bryan Smith at the controls.  Sammy Halbert ended up practicing the bike in the first session at Indy under an agreement he had worked out with team captain Werner, but according to the multi-time championship-winning tuner there wasn't enough time to get it dialed in to Sammy's liking in order for him to try to run the National on, and obviously that worked out to Halbert's advantage with him ultimately winning his first-ever mile event later that evening.

The podium celebrations get under way at round 10 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Lucas Oil Indy Mile on August 18.  Jared Mees #9 and Brandon Robinson #44 flank first-time mile event winner Sammy Halbert after he had beaten Robinson to the line in the National main by just .027 seconds on his #7 South East Harley/The South Ass/Mo Vaughn Transport/LZ Racing-sponsored XR750.

Robinson was celebrating his best-ever finish of his four year career as an Expert-ranked rider after taking the Werner-Springsteen Kawasaki to a 2nd-place finish, and how ironic that must have been for the Pennsylvana resident after being hurled out of the park during the Lucas Oil Indy Mile in 2009 and fighting back from injuries and surgeries to ulitmately have the best finish of his Grand National career at Indy and at the end of the season overall.

With BRob44's experience on the Kawi twin gaining ground as the year went on, his move to the USC Racing Kawasaki team for the 2013 season should bring in some added knowledge and set-up experience to one of the other great teams now campaigning the parallel twin on the AMA Pro Flat Track circuit.

We wish both USC and Brandon the best of luck for the 2013 season and are looking forward to seeing some strong results out of them in the coming year!


You can follow BRob44 here via his Twitter account:

http://twitter.com/BRob44

...and here via his official website:

http://brandonrobinson44.com/

And again a thanks goes out to Tyler Porter at Fight For Dirt Track.com for making the announcement in his Inslide Line column from late Thanksgiving Thursday.  You can check out TP's most recent columns on FFDT.com here to keep up on the 'inslide line' from one of AMA Pro Flat Track's more amusing and most informative sources:

http://www.fightfordt.com/new_site/inslide_line.php