If ASRA/CCS sanction a 200 mile race at Daytona, is it the "Daytona 200"?

I don't want to dump on ASRA/CCS, which is a great organization, but I'm shaking my head over the announcement that this year's Daytona 200 will be sanctioned by ASRA and run according to its Sportbike class rules.

Obviously, Daytona (the speedway, not the town) gets to decide who uses the "Daytona 200" name, because they (presumably) own the trademark. So technically, the race will be "the Daytona 200". But what the fuck?..

Imagine a world where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a falling out with all the unions that control feature film production. So all the big film studios say, "We're having nothing to do with the Academy." At that point, if the Academy decides it will still produce an Academy Awards show, and they're going to give out Oscars, but they're only going to invite ultra-indy films produced by amateurs using non-union talent--at that point, is it still really the Academy Awards? Would the winners really be able to say, "I won an Oscar"?

Anyone who's followed the long decline in the 200, since the days when it attracted a truly world class field would say, even the real Daytona 200 hasn't been a real Daytona 200 since the '80s. But who does DMG DIS think it's fooling by giving the race to an amateur series?

Admittedly, the claimed $175,000 purse sounds a lot bigger than the money in ASRA/CCS races. And if enough quality riders and machines show up, DMG DIS/ASRA/CCS can make me look like a churlish old bastard for writing this. But we've heard DMG make big purse claims before, which proved to be so much bluster and hot air. It remains to be seen how DIS delivers on this promise.

As far as I'm concerned, if they're going to legitimize this incarnation of the 200 by virtue of the size of the purse, $175,000 is about $325k short. Offer $150k/$100k/$75k for the podium, and pay enough through 15th to cover all of an international team's travel costs, and you might see (for example) a bunch of the teams who race in the TT come over. Guy Martin and Michael Dunlop won't give a shit that the track's not up to FIM safety standards.

For the record, every time I write something like this, a whole bunch of whingebags leap to the defense of the aggrieved club series. So in advance, fuck off. I think ASRA/CCS is great. I'd love to race in some of your races. But you can't just run your Sportbike field for a 200 mile race at Daytona, and call it the Daytona 200, and have that mean anything in a race with the 200's heritage. Hailwood and Agostini raced in the 200; Dick Mann and Cal Rayborn; Foggy, and Russell, and Duhamel even, recently.

This isn't that.

NOTE: After I put this up, Chris Carr commented via FB that DMG has nothing to do with the 200. I'm assuming he's right, since he's better informed on it than I am. So I'm saying DIS -- the speedway -- not DMG. I'm pretty sure they're owned and controlled by the same people, so I'm letting the rest of it stand.