Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1031651
A M E R I CA N F L AT T R AC K C E O M I C H A E L LO C K P112 INTERVIEW every now and then to do some- thing on other NBC products. So she's been interviewed in studio on the NASCAR America Show, talking about how flat track and NASCAR have similarities or differ- ences, and what the fans should look out for. She's becoming a bit of a celebrity, and she seems to have a natural gift for being ar- ticulate in public, in spite of being so unassuming. And she's a nice person, as well as a winning racer, which always helps! Some might say that's pos- sibly her problem, because you mustn't be a nice person in TT racing, and being only five feet tall, she can't throw her weight around! I think you're right, because what separated Shayna from actu- ally winning the Singles champi- onship last year, were the three TTs in which she didn't make the main event and scored zero points—just like here at Peoria, where she came off the bike in practice, and didn't make the main. TT racing is very physically intimidating—you have to push people out of the way in a turn, whereas her skill and her advan- tage is in drafting on straights at high speed, where her lack of weight gives her an edge, and her lack of height makes her more aerodynamic. But she weighs just 98 pounds and that hurts her on the starts, where you need that rear-wheel traction. But you have a lot more miles now, where small stat- ure becomes advantageous. Half the series are miles, for a couple of reasons. One is the sheer drama of the miles, just listening to the grandstand as the bikes come out of turn two along the back straight and are getting up to top speed. The second reason is the venues, which are increasingly horse tracks. They're all over America, and they're generally in cities, not two hours' travel away from one, and Lock says running a race series makes you into a politician... "hopefully a good one." they have modern amenities, with air conditioning and restrooms your wife won't beat you over the head for making her use. Has it been problematic that Indian has been so dominant after you succeeded in persuad- ing them to return to racing? Since coming back in they've been wildly successful, and now it's almost impossible to win a race unless you're on an Indian. If that situation remains for five years I've got a problem—but it won't. Quite apart from Harley- Davidson, which isn't going to put up with getting its face wiped by Indian race on race, year on year, we have an Austrian manu- facturer coming in next year, which doesn't go racing except to win. KTM has absolutely no intention of just making up the numbers here. Their approach is, "We like the sport, we like the di- rection, we like the demographic of your audience, we like what it could say about our brand, so we're going to come in and beat everybody. And by the way, here we have a perfect platform in the form of our middleweight 790 Duke street bike that's built to The two classes have developed very distinct characters. The best thing I can liken the Singles class to is, Moto3 on dirt—and anyone who watches Moto3 will know exactly what I mean."