Cycle News

IN THE WIND P34 SUPERMOTO ON THE RISE: MATT STEWART TALKS T he 2015 AMA Supermoto National Championship is preparing to kick off with the first of seven rounds taking place in Riverside California this weekend (April 3-5). Now in the second year of its resurrection, the championship is continu- ing to regain its momentum, thanks largely to series promoter Matt Stewart. Charged with the daunting task of resurrecting the AMA Supermoto series, which had been dead for nearly five years, Stewart had his work cut out for him in 2014. But now with a year under his belt, the racer- turned-promoter is watching the sport once again progress as the new season prepares to launch. In a recent conversation with Stewart, he talked about the upcoming championship and what racers and fans can expect in the 2015 series. After last year's success, are you getting more success from racers and teams and sponsors? Yeah. I think people had doubts, but now they're seeing we've been around for a while and things are starting to turn around. It's really hard to bring back a sport from the dead, but it's been growing every day. We actually just finished our agreement today with Yamaha—they're the official generator of the series. It's just one step at a time and people are starting to come back in. You have several rounds of the series in conjunction with some pretty major events. Talk about that. We're trying to bring Super- moto to the people. From the start I always envisioned having Supermoto races in conjunction with other things. We started off somewhat small and then Robby Gordon ended up calling me [last year] and we did some partnerships with his Stadium Super Trucks series. That was good while it lasted, but it just didn't work out in the end. But we have great partnerships with racetracks and other race series. We're really excited about going to Miller with AMA Motocross and Road America with MotoAmerica. There's a lot of good things for the season coming up here. Tell me about Sturgis. That is a unique venue in itself. Sturgis is one of the bigger reasons why Supermoto was able to have a revival. 2013 was the first year we did it. Once again everybody had their doubts, but the City of Sturgis stuck behind us and it turned out really well. The first time we did it, the bars were running out of beer and it was like an hour- and-a-half to get food. It was a really big success. So the local businesses really liked it. Obvi- ously the city was happy. This year we're actually doing two races in Sturgis. One during the PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN HANSON The AMA National Supermoto Series signature event—Sturgis Supermoto—has been a big hit in downtown Sturgis, South Dakota. continued on page 36

• Cover