Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Fonnula USA's Director 01 Road Racing Bill Svfan By HENNY RAY ABRAMS PHOTO BY BRIAN NELSON he debate has been raging for months. Can the AMA and Clear Channel Entertainment run competing racing series while fighting over the same talent pool, the same venues, and the same spectator base? They already do, and the AMA is the clear winner, at least in road racing. If Bill Syfan has anything to do with it, that may some day change. Syfan is the director of road racing for Clear Channel Entertainment (CCE), formerly SFX, formerly PACE. A Texas-raised civil and mechanic engineer by training, and former racer himself and national champion - he and Paul Smith won the 1986 AMA GTU Endurance Championship - Syfan has worked for the Championship Cup Series, run the Suzuki road race support program, and helped run the support side of the Dunlop road racing program, working alongside Jim Allen. In September of 1999, Syfan got wind of PACE's planned move into road racing and called PACE's Mike Kidd. The original position was director for road racing and it's a job he continues in to this day. At first, it was just a matter of getting the hang of the process and the procedures that a road race sanctioning body goes through to make events happen. It's seasonal to a point, but it's a very long race season that starts in February and ends in November. And what appears to be off-season is taken up with licensing and determining rules changes and other administrative tasks for the following season. In addition to the premier Formula USA National Road Race Series, he's also responsible for the Championship Cup Series and it's 82 races, many run through affiliates like the Loudon Road Race Series and the Central Motorcycle Road Racing Association. The highest profile part of the job is the 32 FEBRUARY 27, 2002' cue • e n e national series that needed a complete overhaul. When Syfan arrived, PACE had just bought F-USA and was in the process of retooling it. Long run as a mostly anythinggoes series, that featured everything from Yamaha YZR500s to turbocharged Suzukis to Yamaha TZ250s, Syfan and the crew of hand-picked enthusiasts who help him run road racing decided they needed to re-do the program. The took the best ideas from the North American Sport Bike Series, which they'd acquired from Roger Edmondson, and F-USA, which also was running support classes, and pulled it all together, borrowing ideas from the Canadian Superbike Championship as well. The best way to guarantee close racing was to restrict the horsepower and weight of the premier classes, Unlimited Superbike and Sportbike. It's a decision that effectively excludes factory participation at the highest levels, since such well-defined restrictions impede development. The factories take part on a support level, though nothing like what they give to the AMA series. That may some day change, and Syfan is wise enough to know that he has to be flexible when opportunities present themselves. Dyno-racing is close racing, but it's not pure racing, the purists would argue. It seemed like a good place to start a conversation. An edited transcript follows. Wh Y do you choose to use dynamometers in your premier classes? several reasons. Obviously, PACE Motorsports, SFX Entertainment, Clear Channel Entertainment, they're entertainment companies. First and foremost the dyno, it provides close racing, close on-track racing, so it provides good entertainment for the fans that are out there. Because the horsepower and the weight are controlled and it's easily understood by the competitors, we generally have full grids for most of our dyno-controlled classes - superbike and sportbike in particular. Because I think the guys feel like they can be competitive. They at least know that they're going to the grid with the same horsepower and the same weight as the guy next to them. It really comes down to a real rider series. At Pocono in 2000, you started doing the dyno runs before the podium? Was that because it was a televised race? That's one of the reasons. That's definitely one of those you could go either way and we have. I think we're going to stick now with doing the podium directly after the event. There's a tradition there that belongs, there's an adrenaline flow of everybody directly following the race. We've built in some toler- Q A Q A "" s ances for this year on the dyno and on the scales because we were seeing guys over by .02 of a horsepower. Well that seemed hardly fair to kick somebody out of a championship over .02 of a horsepower. On horsepower, between .1 and one horsepower, you'll lose three positions. If you're up to two horsepower over, you'll lose six positions. And after that, then you're completely disqualified. And there's a similar sliding scale on the weight as well. WiII you continue to run dyno-controlled classes forever? We continue to look at what the best way to do it would be. I know the dyno is not a favorite of everybody out there, particularly some people in the industry. But even they, I think, over the course of time, have realized that there are definitely some advantages to using it. Even World Superbike is now looking at restrictors. Well, that's just another form of restricting the horsepower output similar to a dyno. I think probably you'll see more limitations to horsepower and weight over the coming years as the bikes just keeping getting faster, and faster, and faster, and the tracks aren't getting bigger. When PACE got into road racing, there was talk that you were going to be the numberone series in America. I think we had that plan. I think we still have that goal. Right now, the manufacturers put their full support behind the AMA series, but in 2001 we had supported teams from almost all the manufacturers. So I think that they realized that they should be involved in our series. But right now, obviously, the lion's share of their support goes to the AMA. HOW do you get them to participate in your series with the current rules? I think part of it is just going to be the benefit of time. I think people in the industry need to come to our events. They need to come to see how the dyno works, see how fair it is and see how straightforward it is. We continue to look at the possibility of going away from the dyno. I'm sort of intrigued by World Superb ike using restrictors, because it still does allow some engineering imagination on the part or'the tuners and the builders and that sort of thing, which you actually see in our series as well. What the tuners do in our series is they modify the powerband or the power delivery of the bike to better suit the tracks or the bike that they've got. You still can't go over whatever the limit is, 115 or 145 horsepower, but they modify the power delivery to make the bikes faster where they need to be, which is coming off the corners. The level of interest from the factories seems to have changed over the years. We had some of the AMA support teams, satellite teams, come and run with us the first year. After that, it was either the cut in the purse in superbike or who knows what else, they didn't return with us. But they were replaced by other teams, either from the same manufacturer with some level of sup- Q A Q A Q A

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