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/1545477
JULY 12, 2006 • C Y C L E N E W S 38 R acing in America, more than in any other national series, is dependent on the coopera- tion and participation of the manufacturers. In road racing, that's American Honda Motor Company, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Kawasaki Motors Corporation, American Suzuki Motor Corporation, and Ducati North America. For the first time ever, Cycle News gathered the team managers to take part in an extraordinary round-table discussion on the state of racing. The mandate was simple; come with solutions, not just problems. Too easily it could have devolved into a blanket condemnation of AMA Pro Racing. It didn't. The tone was respectful, but it was also strident. And there was no deny- ing that change was needed and quickly. Leadership and communication were the issues that resonated repeatedly throughout the nearly one-hour dis- cussion. The team managers, American Honda's Chuck Miller, Yamaha's Keith McCarty, Yoshimura Suzuki's Don Sakakura, Kawasaki's Mike Preston, and Parts Unlimited Ducati's Tom Bodenbach, have a wealth of experience that isn't being exploited. AMA Pro Racing would do well to tap into that wealth and soon: The rules-making committees, that were announced in February, have yet to be formed. All have taken different paths to their jobs and most have different responsibilities. American Honda's Miller and Yamaha's McCarty oversee their companies entire racing programs. Kawasaki's Preston concentrates on road racing. Sakakura runs the race team of Yoshimura Suzuki, the performance aftermarket company that runs American Suzuki's road-race effort, and he's also heavily involved in the running of the company. And Tom Bodenbach directs the Parts Unlimited Ducati team, the official factory effort of Ducati North America. Nowhere will you find a more knowledgeable group of passionate race fans. We gathered the team managers in the interview room of Miller Motorsports Park during the Saturday lunch break of the inaugural AMA Superbike National. The plan was to speak for 30-45 minutes. At the 56-minute mark we apologized and let them return to their race-weekend duties, with far too many questions left unasked and unan- swered. The following is a transcript of the first part of the dis- cussion. The second part will run next week. What's the number-one issue and how do you pro- pose to solve it? And we'll ask Chuck Miller to start off. Miller: I think there's going to be a lot of issues we could talk about, and we will talk about, but I think they all, in my opinion, stem back to the largest weakness and inconsistency we have and that's with the leadership and management of AMA. It's been inconsistent for a few years and I think if we can get that in the right position, and the right spot, all the other pieces will fall into place. That would be the top of my list. How do you fix it? Miller: Find the right people, put them in charge, empower them. Again, I think the leadership - there should be a process in place, and they've talked about this process through committees, that can empower this lead- ership or that will work alongside this leadership, and that all sounds good, but I've yet to see anything happen. McCarty: I agree. I think when you have a really good leader they don't just kind of walk in and take over. They walk in and they ask an awful lot of questions. They set up a forum to really understand what the issues are, and they put them into an order of what's the most important issues – the fundamental things. You can go back to sched- uling – that's a fundamental issue to me - that's out of con- trol. Not to have schedules a month before the race weekend is ridiculous. We've heard every reason. Myself, and I'm sure Chuck too, working in other disciplines has had just as difficult a schedule, TV time, live television, but we always seem to have a schedule and it always seems to be consistent from one week to another. I think there's a lot of things; that's just one small thing. One guy that really stood out to me in motorsports is Gary Becker. Supercross wasn't the ideal racing entity for some time. They all came under one umbrella with Clear Channel, and Gary Becker came in there and he met with all of the teams and he carved a path that really included input from all of those teams of things that needed to change. And everybody had a different viewpoint, but he made sure to encompass all of those things into the initial program. And so everybody was able to feel something that they felt was really important and we all felt like part of a team. And, I think, this is a team sport in one sense, but in a broader sense, the AMA... we're shareholders in this thing. With all of our teams and the money we spend, we are at least half of the show. So I think unless they want to look at us this way and make us this partner that we truly are, I think they're destined to fail if they don't find somebody that can enable that. Don, what's your number-one issue? Sakakura: Number-one issue I would say are the con- ditions of some of our racetracks that we attend. Year in, year out, we see the same - there's some improvement at some of the venues; there's definitely some effort there which is definitely appreciated by the teams and, more importantly, the riders – the guys who are on the track. There's still venues we go to where we don't know if we're running in the wet or the dry. So it's difficult for us to prepare for a schedule of the calendar year. This has been brought up before. It doesn't really get addressed for some reason, and I don't know why. I'm sure all of the managers in the room here have heard it from their riders that it's extremely difficult to run competitive at certain venues when you don't have them equipped in safety zones. Or if you don't have consistent pavement, for example. I know some of the venues have improved that. My solution, possibly, is a safety committee. Why not homologate some of the courses that we run on, similar to some of the other sanctioning groups? Maybe not quite as strict as some of the others, but I think all of the riders have the same opinions. You may find one rider that does- n't like this one venue for some reason, but I think every- body's pretty much unanimous as far as the thoughts on that. It's a huge investment from all the companies that are trying to push our product and, for one, I don't want to see a rider seriously injured for lack of run-off in certain areas. I think we've seen that. An example is when we were testing last week [at Mid- Ohio]. That's the first time I've been around that track in years. It was quite scary to see that. Again, do we go there again this year with the thought of "Do we run in the rain?" Nobody knows until we get rained on. Now what do we do? We need better planning and a policy from the track owners or from the AMA stating this is where we will run in the rain, this is where we won't. Daytona we know we don't run in the rain. Sears Point already made their point that we won't run in the rain, which is great. That's a thought that I had, and I think we should address that. Why haven't the manufacturers been more proac- tive in pushing safety? Sakakura: From my perspective, I totally support my riders. If they feel it's unsafe to ride in a certain condition, Road Race Team Managers: Part I WE SAT DOWN WITH THE DECISION MAKERS FROM THE MANUFACTURERS TO DISCUSS AMA ROAD RACING THE STATE OF RACING: PART I [ ] ] Chuck Miller BY PAUL CARRUTHERS & HENNY RAY ABRAMS PHOTOS BY BRIAN J. NELSON