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/128327
no one's loo king at the big picture , and I've seen this in Australia. We all had te levision, everything was good . As soon as we lost television, rider salaries went to $ 10,000 a year. Bonus money is $500 a win. MLADIN : Ifthey keep changing them every year, it' s going downhill for sure. I have no doubt about that . BO STROM: I know that all the fans that I speak to , they all seem to attribute it to the AMA, which is interest ing, because they're not even here, but they think the same thing that I think. BUCKMASTER: A lot of people that come up to me and ask what classes I'm running and who's do ing what class? No fans really know what's going on with the rules. Everyone 's totally confused. And no one really knows what the rules are . What can you do to that bike? There're too many classes in a little direction. MLADIN : Two 600 classes and two 1000 classes is ridiculous, especially considering the 1000 classes are exactly the same except for brakes and suspe nsion. How do you fix it , given what t he m anufacturers c ho o se to sell? MLADIN : Go back to what it was . Go ba ck to 25 0s and Pro Thunder? MLADIN : We don't need to go back to two-strokes. I'm talking about the top couple of classes. I'm a firm believer that the factory guys shouldn't be racing 6005. I think it should be a class for all the good support teams for bringing on young talent and the Superbike class shou ld be where all the factory guys are and racing Superbikes . So you 've got your premier class, you've got your next class that's bringing up the young Americans or whatever. But again it comes back to the manufacturers wanting to win the 6005 and all this sort of stuff. Well, the same manufacturers are pro bably still going to win if they concentrate on the same bunch of riders. America's str uggling right now for young riders. There's a couple out there, but there's not a lot. That 's simply because guys like all of us can race the bikes that those kids should be racing. If some kid is a second and a half off the pace , he's never going to get a ride on top of Miguel. Who 's ever going to know how good he is if he's trying to race his own motorbike? Until Miguel de cides, "O kay I've had enough of racing 6oos" - not just you, I'm talking everybody; the six factory guys that race 6oos. Of course, not this year because Miguel's in the For mula Xt reme team. BOSTROM: There should be all the eggs in one basket. Go to MotoGP and you have a couple of races, and they' re the best. Everyone knows they 're the best races , on the planet right now. Here, you come here, and it's always just kind of like there's so much going on , no body eve n knows what to pay attention to . There're just bikes circulating. MLADIN : Full-o n. just circulating. And that's exact ly the word for it. The re's just 100 bikes all day going aroun d in a circle. Damon's run into a problem this year, and so have Jason and Miguel, with races back to back, PRIDMORE: All last year I was begging them, I looked at all the riders and what classes they ran last year, and I was like, "You guys can space this out; you guys know I'm running Xtreme and Supe rbike and on a 1000 both times." Now one 's o n a 600 , one' s on a 1000 . They nee d to do something. What should the weekend be like ? Should it be t he World Supe rbike mod el w ith two Su per bike races S und a y a nd a 600 in betwee n? BO STROM: That'd be perfect. MLADIN : I think a race Saturday is okay. I'm not going to complain about a race Saturday, but two races Sunday would be great. Either way, I just think we need to get all the guys into Superbike. Thousand cc Superstocks are going to rule the class. All the guys are in 1000 Superstock, not that I th ink they ever should be. Because you don't want to be racing streetbikes in a country with money as a premier class. That's not right. These facto ries spend millions and millions of dollars. We've got to at least have suspension and brakes and things like that for the class to look like something. PRIDMORE: Over in Europe they have 12S, 250 and MotoGP, and they have the BoxerCup series that floats in and out of it, and they have national races, too. W henever I we nt ove r there, even World Endurance , they always had 250 Aprilia Cu p Challenge o r something going on to where two big sem is would come in with Aprilia- tho se guys would do nothing but race that class - they 'd be done. They 'd go in; they 'd go out . That sounds like what they do w ith BoxerCup. A lot of those guys that are racing BoxerCup aren 't racing anything else on the weekend . It's a good filler, because if you have two races , they're not back to back; you can throw something in between them. And it gives you a chance. I'll be hones t - I get bored at World Supe rbike most of the time because there's just so much down time . You just sit there. DUHAMEL: It's really hard . I'm sure privateers are like, "Oh , yeah, I'd like to have the chance to try to beat Miguel or Damon." Then how can you measure them up? If we're not in there, and they 're maybe runn ing six seconds slower, well, maybe it's the bike. You do n't really get a full evaluation of the guy. MLADIN : I think [we nee d to have] all the names in one class and one class o nly. It's like you go to NASCAR. jeff Gordon doesn't race all three races on the one day. Everyone knows they' re going there to watch jeff Gord on race the 500 or whatever it is. You've got to get every body in the one class. All the facto ry and best guys in the one class before you're going to get a lot of exposure. DUHAMEL: I agree with that, although I'm happy sometimes when I'm struggling [that] there're only six factory bikes. For me , I'm a little disappointed with Yamaha. I'm like, "What are they waiting for?" They haven't been in Superbike racing for so long. They obvious ly had a good bike coming in. It's not your fault, Damon . MLADIN : They're waiting for rules stability so they don't produce something like what we did last year and then all of a sudden you've got to deve lop a whole new thing for this year. Having a set of rules that were apparently going to be the rules for who knows how long. Then all of a sudden, who knows what the reason was, Mladin's wining or whatever it was , the rules changed . All of a sudden we're devel oping something brand new now. They 're not coming back. Kawasaki decided not to do it for the same rea son . Can you give us something that we're going to be doing for the next five years so we can start developing some stuff? PRIDMORE: You can use Honda as an example this year. They built Formula Xtreme bikes, they tested them, they've been putting all their money into them . Who 's to say the rules aren't going to totally cha nge next year? So basicallythey're left out in the co ld now because they've done all this development on these bikes. All of a sudden now they're going to change the rules. Which is essentially what happened with Suzuki. They 've had to redevelop another bike after they spent all this money developing a bike. With Yamaha and I believe with Kawasaki also, the rules came out so late that they just weren't able to go to their factor ies in japan and say, "This is what we want to try to do. " I know there're some other issues in the re too , like the Daytona th ing and getting parts made for quick change stuff for the bike, because I've heard some of those arguments too. But the problem is that that is what these manufacturers need is they need to see a th reeto-four-tc-flve-year plan. MLADIN : I think when that happens , everyone's back in. That 's my honest op inion. eN