Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 39 SEPTEMBER 30, 2014 P45 It hasn't really been that diffi- cult so far. Of course, we haven't flipped it on and seen MotoAmer- ica on TV yet. We've hired some top consultants who know TV pro- gramming for motorsports. They are probably the best consul- tants in the industry and we think that's what we have to do to get our sport more recognized, get it more in line and have a chance of being in position so we can accomplish that. So, yes, we are going to have TV. As far as how it is going to be shown, whether it will be live, tape-delayed, what channels… those are things we don't know yet but those are the things that are being worked on at the moment. It's important. It has to happen and it will happen. Prix teams were looking for tal- ent coming out of America. Whether that was because of our background or because we were Americans and we were competitive. For whatever rea- son, Americans dominated that landscape. And you can basi- cally say that the Europeans have taken our blueprint and adopted that – and maybe even done a better job than what we were doing because they were work- ing on the younger aged kids to get them more prepared to be racing road race bikes. As a whole, I think our goal is to get our championship competitive to where it will be seen one day in the not too distant future as a strong series again. That we can so when the opportunity comes to them to race against the best in the World Championship, they will be ready. Because our series will be more aligned with the rest of the world. What about the manufactur- ers who aren't currently in the series? You'd obviously like to have Honda and Kawasaki back in and racing… do you see that as a possibility? Has there been any dialogue? First of all without Yamaha and Suzuki, the series would be struggling even more to be where it is now. I think the industry owes a lot to those manufacturers for hanging in there and doing some- thing that wasn't really popular to do. I've had dialogue with the oth- er manufacturers when I could fi- nally make the decisions on what MotoAmerica was finally going to do. I've had them say, 'Well, that changes everything for us.' It's a late announcement and maybe they have already aligned their budgets to go do other racing series, but they are taking a very serious look at what we're doing. I think the class with the stock 1000 is a good chance for them to get back involved in an easy way. The championship needs all the manufacturers in there. It gives more chances for riders to be on competitive bikes and our goal is for our guys when they get out there is to try and be the fast- est guys on the track. I think the series is run in such a way that you really can progress through it, you're going to make sure that What do you think is the biggest change you and the group can make from how the series has been run of late? Any one thing that you think needs to be done differently? I think communication is im- portant. Stepping back and looking at where America was positioned as far as where the rest of the world was, we weren't always seen as a competitive se- ries. When I raced, the Grand get more manufacturers involved because of the way it's going to be run, the television involve- ment… we'd like to think that racers end up wanting to come back through America to get to MotoGP. I think as Americans we can do this. That's our culture. We're pretty good at what we do, especially in motorcycle racing. We just have to get those pos- sibilities more open to our riders so they can showcase their talent " What we are going to do in the immediate future is we are going to introduce a stock 1000 class to race with the Superbike class. We will put them on slicks. They will be scored separately, but will race at the same time. "

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