INTERVIEW
BRITISH SUPERBIKE SERIES DIRECTOR/MOTOAMERICA RACE DIRECTOR STUART
P74
tion as being the rights holder
for the British Championship,
many of the circuits in the cham-
pionship are also owned by us
as well. Again, this is no conflict.
There's complete and utter one-
way traffic from everybody—from
the teams, the riders, the fans,
the sponsors, the suppliers,
manufacturers—all wanted to
push in the same direction. That
does make life a lot easier.
There's no real competing
interests…
No, it's probably a complete
autocracy as opposed to a de-
mocracy. But sometimes that has
to be the way. You've got to have
a very strong organizing structure
that moves the thing forward,
because sport at many levels is
very political and that's extremely
destructive. I'm not saying we
don't every now and again have
things that we need to resolve,
but it's a very, very minor itch.
What would you say then
are the key ingredients to hav-
ing a successful Superbike
Championship?
I think the quality of the prod-
uct is clear. If you're going to
attract all those parties—like
spectators, sponsors, television
and high-level teams, things have
got to be run the same way every
single weekend. There's got to
be continuity. There's got to be a
good standard. There's got to be
a lot of discipline and structure
to how the races are run. A very
strong regulatory platform so that
everyone knows that it's a level
playing field. There's no change
in decisions where one weekend
two things can happen, over two
weekends and there's a differ-
ent outcome, because there's
no consistency. That's extremely
difficult to manage.
Speaking of its
former glory... The
1991 Daytona 200:
Freddie Spencer (19),
Scott Russell (22),
Doug Polen (23),
Jamie James (2) and
Carl Fogarty (84).
"IT IS EXTREMELY
IMPORTANT TO
PROMOTE A BRAND
AND AN ACTIVITY
THAT IS ALMOST
SELF-EXPLANATORY.
AND THE WORD
'SUPERBIKE' IS JUST
THAT; IT DOES WHAT
IT SAYS ON THE
TIN."
