Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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C Y C L E N E W S • JULY 12, 2006 39 I will back them 100 percent. I think we have professional riders that can give me correct feedback. From there, I can go to the AMA or the track owners to try to resolve some of the issues. It seems to fall on deaf ears a lot. Miller: I think we all have complained about issues, whether it be tickets, parking, rules, safety and you get frustrated after a while. And it's not that we've ever given up. That's why, again, dealing with a superior management group and leadership would set the stage for that. Tom, what's your number-one issue? Bodenbach: It's the same as Chuck's, actually. When I was thinking about it, the first thing that came into my head, here they're talking about this major change in the beginning of the year, we're in the middle of the year now and we haven't seen anything. I know there're some peo- ple trying to work on it, but it's not getting anywhere. If this was a publicly held company, your stock would be worthless now. If HP said, "Okay, we're revamping," and waited six months before they said anything more, their stock would be in the gutter. And that's what I see right here. Again, I know there are people trying to work on it, but it doesn't seem like there's enough. Or they don't have the power we need. Mike, what's your number-one issue? Preston: I'm in agreement with the majority. And I def- initely agree with Don on safety, but I think, again, the biggest problem we have is leadership. And I've been thinking about this a lot – leadership, direction. But if you have leadership you'll have direction. So then I have to think about communication and we have very little of that. But, again, leadership relates to the problem Don said. We have no homologation, we have no say in safety. Leadership – we see a lot of conflicts in interest. The conflicts of interest can range from everything. "We're going to go to Miller Motorsports." Nobody talks to us to come here and do this, we just do that. Like Don said, we've got a track paved [Mid-Ohio], but nobody was there. Is it a conflict because it's close to [AMA] headquar- ters or whatever? It seems like everything's a conflict. Whether it goes out of our discipline to motocross, where it's fuel. Somebody made a big fit, so we changed our mind on the fuel issue. Is that a conflict of interest? I guess some- body led that decision, but it wasn't a true leadership. For sure the biggest problem we have - I can't really speak for Tom - but Chuck, Keith, and I, and Don, to a point - we work for Japanese companies. We're in a busi- ness to grow and provide recreational products for people and we're out there listening, market researchers, as a company we're trying to do things. We're used to a busi- ness. But what I've seen for the last - it's almost July - six months, it's unlawlessness. It's wide open. Who does what? Is it [based] on who bitches this day? I have no idea who's really truly leading the ship out there. It's out of con- trol. And there's no communication. We hear "that this is going to happen." We read from different things that "there's going to be this spec, that spec. Where the hell did this come up? Is that a problem?" I don't know. We've got another problem with safety or schedules or organization or "this guy needed this because it was good for my company or their company or they were close to the track." We need some leadership. Have all of you been asked to be on the rules-mak- ing committee? All: Yes. Will any of you or all of you take part? Preston: I'm going to assume or I'll speak for every- bod; I think they've been asked twice. I've been asked as ] Our roundtable discussion featured the team managers from the five factory teams: American Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Yoshimura Suzuki and Parts Unlimited Ducati. ] Keith McCarty