VOL. 51 ISSUE 39 SEPTEMBER 30, 2014 P41
in a few years. That's how that re-
lationship started.
And that led to this?
Well talking with those people
in the industry got me thinking
about motorcycles again. And I
started thinking about what Car-
melo [Ezpeleta, the Dorna boss]
had asked me some time before.
I had an idea for a reality show
where we would be working with
some young American kids or
other nationalities and they would
come to this camp and that
would be an opportunity to find
some new talent. I ran this idea
by my partners and they liked
it. I had to continue on calling
industry people because I had
to build about 20 bikes for this
show. I didn't really know where
to go, so I went to my good friend
Chuck Aksland, who at the time
was working at CoTA [Circuit of
the Americas]. I told him what
I'd been thinking about and what
I wanted to do and asked if he
could help me with the project.
As time went on, I found myself
calling Chuck more and more
because he knew exactly where
to go to get all of these things
that I wanted to build. I told my
partners that we really needed
to bring Chuck in on this project
because of how he could short
cut the programs were were try-
ing to put together. We put a busi-
ness plan together and met with
Dorna with my idea on the show.
That was at the last Laguna Mo-
toGP race. We pitched it to them.
They kinda got the concept, but
it wasn't like, 'Why didn't I think of
that?' I got the feeling like, 'yeah,
we'll get back to ya.'
Well the next day at the race
Carmelo called me and said,
'let's do this.' Part of the show
was that we would have to put
these young riders in a series so
they could compete. We had to
build bikes for it… and they would
be based on Moto3, Moto2. We
figured we could race in the three
MotoGP races, which at the time
were Laguna, COTA and Indy.
We could race on a Saturday and
a Sunday so we could have about
eight races using that class. But
we figured it would need about 10
races ...we were thinking 'should
we go to AMA, should we go to
Spain?' We didn't really know. I re-
member on that Sunday Carmelo
said, 'maybe there is something
you can do with the AMA series.'
That got us thinking. A few days
later, Gill Campbell [general man-
ager of Mazda Raceway Laguna
