Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

GINTERVIEW Dick Maxwell By Paul Carruthers eT hose who ha ve held the position, or ones similar, in the past have failed . It happens every few years, talk of a new savior, someone ready to step in and put AMA mo torcycle racing on th e map. Dick Maxw ell is this year's model. He 's the AMA's new vice president of sports marketing - basi cally the head of the Pro Racing dep artmen t. He brings with him a wealth of experience gai ned from heading up Chrys ler's and Dodge's motors ports divisions. We had the oppo rtuni ty to sit dow n with Max well in our Lon g Beach , Cal ifornia, offices. T his is what he ha d to say about AMA mo torcycle racing - now an d in the fu ture. r------ - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - - '---- -- - - - ...., The mno hot se a nthe at ***** 26 CART, FISA , IRTA. They were all form ed to gi ve team owne rs some con tro l o n th e growth of their particular form of raci n g. Now there is AMRT (Ame rican Motor cycle Ra cin g Teams). Do you see th is as an opportunity for th e AMA, or could AMRT end up being so m ew h a t an tagonistic? I g uess we don' t know. They are so new tha t we really do n 't know wha t their goa ls are yet. We at the AMA don 't really thi nk that IRTA has been a positi ve influence necessar il y o n GP raci ng . I' m sure there are peopl e who will disagree wi th that. So i t all depe nds. We don 't know. We go t our firs t message from the m th e o the r day . We we re p lanni n g - as part of upgra ding the professional look of roa d racin g - premi ere ro w. We will take the big ri gs, like Kawasaki, Vance & Hines, Commo wealth and people like that and put them all in one area so they present a good look to peo ple com ing in. Malcolm Hill (AMRT President) gave us a list of people they thought should be involved in . th at. It 's a good id ea . It 's Roger Edmonston 's idea. It' s been som ething Roger's been wanting to do for quite a wh ile. . Critism in past years towards the AMA is that they continue to run racing with a club-like approach. Do you see Pro Racing ever becoming separate from the AMA? Yes. There is a struggle within the AMA - always betwe en the clubs, if you will , and the pro side of th e organization. I'm not saying that within our own house that's a struggle - it's a struggle in o ur membership. The strength of th e AMA in terms of membership is in the clubs. A lot of them belong to clubs. A lot of them don 't belong to clubs - the y are just peopl e who belong to the AMA because th ey think the AMA is a good thing. It 's not an internal problem but it 's something that looks that way o n the outside. There' 50 been a lot of effort in the pas t years to try and make the professio nal side of it more professional , and we're wor king very hard to do that right now. You will see mor e an d more professionalism , and less and less club influen ce, or what looks like club infl uence. . . Another critism with the current AMA road races is that too many races are cram m ed into Sunday's program, taking away from th e ma in event which is the Superbike National. I'm not sure I really agree with that. You ' have to remember that there is a star class , or a star show, but we are in sho w busin ess and the thing we are trying to do is sell tickets. Peo pl e come not to see a race, bu t to see a day's ente rtain men t. A day's enter tainment is people running arou nd the track o n their motorcycles. We're looking a lot at wh at we sh ou ld be doing a n d wh at w e shouldn't be doing in th e wh ole roa d racing scene. In some ways, th ere is too much going on in the weekend. That was our p robl em with the vintage bikes. What do we do wi th the vintage . bikes? There's a lot of hi stori cal interest in th e vintage bikes. Becau se of a ll the things on o ur schedule we finally had to move th em to th e last race on Saturday, and they didn 't feel that was what they wanted to do. That why they 're more or less off doin g their own thing this year. Everybody wants to be on Sunday. The real question is wh at do you do with the endurance ra ce. That's what eats up a lot of th e time. We feel that the enduran ce race is reall y something we ne ed to have ri gh t now. We are looking at the classes and ma y shuffle things around a little bit. This is really going to be controv ersial , but you can' t leave ' the H arley race o u t of Sunday. It's getting bi gger and it brings people to th e .race track that wouldn't ordinarily be there. We get mail from people saying, 'They 're so slo w, wh y do you put them o ut there?' T he y may be slo w, bu t it's a pretty good race. It 's an opportun ity for dealers to get in volv ed , it 's an opportu nity to try and bu ild it up. That's wh at i t's all abou t. Har ley's th e hottest th in g around in motorcycl ing these days - th ey outsell everybod y. So yo u ca n ' t walk aw ay from it. We thi nk i t shou ld be on Sunday absol u tely. Don't you feel it 's a little bit difficult to establish stars in road racing when there are so many different classes? The average guy leaves the track not really knowing who the Dale Earnhardt or Bill Elliott of motorcycle racing is. Wh at is the second largest mo torsport series in the U.S.? Drag racing. And how man y classes do the y have? Yes, but it 's a five or six-second event. It doesn 't matter. Look how many classes they have. They hav e the sam e prob lem, especially with television . So they 've taken o ut three classe s and concentrated o n them . That 's what we will probabl y have to do. We think th at one of the advantag es of coming to o ur races ra ther th an th e GP tha t used to be a t Laguna Seca, is that yo u get a fu ll day of racing. At a GP yo u have the heroes, the world's most exo tic" motorcycles, but yo u have only one race and not a lot of passing. Wh en you come to the AMA National you get several different races, people wh o are very, very fast, as we just proved at Daytona, and you get a lo t of passing. You get bett er racing. And ma ybe th ere's too much, yo u' re right, and we worry a lot about that. Wouldn't it be easier to make a few classes more professional, th an to attempt to make a lo t of classes more professional? I th ink you will see over the next couple of years a lot of sh uffling around wi th the progra m, trying to find what th e right formula is. If we cut down on the classes, th en we'd probably have to m ak e th e race s longer. There's no thing wro ng wi th that. Pi t stops are good. T hey 're good for the show . We have to sit down with th e manufacturers an d see wh at th ey're going to do, and then gear the program to that. That's what bri ngs o ut th e riders, that's wha t bri ngs o ut th e people. Is th ere life after Camel? Yes. I th ink most everybody in th e business rea li zes that one day the government may tak e th e tob acco co m panies out o f it. It 's a lrea d y happening in Europe. But yes, there will be life aft er Camel. We have a com pa ny in Detroit tha t is looking for a series sponso r for us now. .O ur pri ma ry interest is now roa d racing becau se it's a very good series and we do n ' t have a series sponsor right now. That's where we wa nt to start. You 're obviously sold on the fact th at a series sponsor is th e way to go. What about exclusivi ty? Isn't there always the fear that a seri es sp onsor will cut in to poten tiaI race team sponsors because of exclusi vity? Wh en you make your contracts wi th a series sponsor, you have to work aro und th at. Everybod y has to understand that goi ng in. You can 't put the series sponsor in th e posi tion of precluding th e team spo nso rs from being at the trac k. If you 've got a Dodge series sponso r and someo ne shows up wi th Ford o n the side of his motorcycle, then the re should be no problem with doing that. We do n't want to have a problem wi th that. . What do you see as bei ng the future for outdoor mo tocross Naiionals? Does it hav e a future? Right now we ha ve as many as we can handl e in the schedule. We have more o pportu nit ies for outdoor Na tio nals than places whe re we have outdoor Nationals. I don 't kn ow that it's going to grow particul arly, bu t I do n 't think it's going to go aw ay. Motocross is so easy to do. T he bikes are relat ively inexpensive. There are a lot of places to race th em . They make good play bikes for the kids wh en they're coming up . T hey learn to ride o n them. It 's probably the least expensive type of . mo torcycle racin g I can thi nk of. I don 't think it will grow mu ch, bu t it won't go away. Fro m the Na tio na l sta n dpo i n t i t wo n ' t grow mu ch because we've ru n out of weekends. But you 're number one priority lies in supercross. Is that correct? Supercross is the number one priority, but supercross is always going to be a limited schedule. There are only so many pl aces whe re you can do it, there are on ly certa in times of the year. It 's also physically dem anding on the riders because of the altitude. We think it beats th e riders' bodies up more than motocros s does. We think the two will live together for a long time. What about the 500cc o utdo o r Nationals? It showed a comeback last year. You used to have to get a new bike every year, but in the 50050 that isn't the case anymore. They've leveled out developmentally. Guys are now bringing out 50050 that are two or three years old, and ra cing th em. They 're just as competitive as th e new bikes. As long as people keep making them , there will be a place to race them. We often hear gripes regarding super' cross and the purse money the ride rs are paid. These riders sit at the start gate and see 50,000 people in the stands who have paid up to $20 to be there , and they wonder why they're only - being paid $5000 to win . T ha t's som ething that the AMA has no cont rol over. I thought the AMA set the minimum purse amounts. . We have a minim um p urse that's built into th e contract. At some of the sta diums they ma ke a lot of mo ney, bu t a t some of the sta diums they don 't. At T a rnpa v they had maybe 20,000 spectators - real. T ha t's prett y ma rgi nal because it costs a lo t of money to put o ne of those even ts on. Does the AMA hav e a plan on how to get dirt track racing back on its feet? We're working o n a five-year pl an to bring dirt track racing back. There are people o u t there who th ink we're

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