Cycle News

AMERICAN FLAT TRACK CEO MICHAEL LOCK: PART 2 P82 Interview the light of experience, and sometimes, to answer a question. So, one issue that has really bugged me ever since I've been involved, is that we have these set number of laps for main events, so it's 25 laps for the AFT SuperTwins, and 15 laps for the Production Twins and the AFT Singles. Which is great, except that 25 laps at the Oklahoma City Remington Park Mile, takes about 18 minutes for the Twins, whereas on the New Hampshire short track, it takes about six minutes. And that's always bugged me, I felt that we were short-changing the fans who were going to go and watch not only short tracks and TT's, but also half-miles. You know, the half-mile has been half the distance of the full mile. So, one thing that we're doing is we're changing for main events in 2020 and beyond, is that they will be timed races, so it will be X number of minutes, plus two laps. Which is a format that's quite familiar to people who watch motocross for example, and just as critically is familiar for broadcasters, too. It plays havoc with our show, as I'm sure you can imagine, if we go to a short track weekend versus going to a mile, so it will help us with scheduling for broadcasts as well. Viewed from outside, the one thing that's still disappointing in AFT is that Harley-Davidson isn't yet on the pace. And having spoken to Terry Vance, I know it's a source of great frus- tration to him, too! He's had to deal with racing a production-based SuperTwin as opposed to a modern XR 750 race bike. How do you feel about this? Look, it's a touchy issue in the sport, no ques- tion, because in 2015 Harley Davidson took a stra- tegic decision, that the replacement for the XR750 which had dominated the sport for 40 years, would be based on a street bike. And they did that to be able to marry the sport to the street bike audi- ence so as to engage dealers and to engage fans, particularly younger ones, with a brand that had a very well communicated platform of innovation and change. That was the strategic decision they made, and no one can argue with that over time. But unbeknownst to them, Indian in parallel were sion, but the silhouette of the 450cc production motocross bike is an important element in that class. Because as we've seen in the Twins class, if you want to set up a team and buy two Indians, it's $100,000 down before you do anything else—the quality and the performance level has been raised immeasurably, but with that comes cost. Flat track is traditionally a blue-collar sport in America, con- tested by kids in small towns you've never heard of, and we don't want to lose that. So, the 450 Produc- tion class ensures that we have a relatively low entry cost, and it's not only the cost, but also, it's the familiarity. There are hundreds of thousands of kids all over America who ride dirt bikes, so to ride a dirt bike in flat track makes it a relatively easy transition. Any changes for 2020 that will influence the way in which the racing is run? We tweak and modify the rulebook every year in Lock has made a number of changes to the premier class, now called SuperTwins.

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