Cycle News

INTERVIEW BRITISH SUPERBIKE SERIES DIRECTOR/MOTOAMERICA RACE DIRECTOR STUART P76 constant and every weekend we come away from going "yeah, we moved it on a little bit" then I think we're going good places. How important do you think it is as far as Superbike racing goes, versus Moto 3, Moto 2, MotoGP… How important is it to have strong Superbike Champi- onships internationally? It's extremely important. I think there's an ongoing debate—who invented Superbike racing—be- tween the UK and the USA. But it's been the DNA of certainly the UK and USA racing for the best part of three decades. It can be easily explained to the public. Remember, we've got an audience that's already converted, but for the thing to grow we need to preach too and bring in a new audience. So 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. That high level of compe- tition reflecting what's out there in the market. It's the hardware that the fans can buy that's tremendously important. And it gives manufacturers a reason to go racing because there's that great saying that you guys did invent, "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday." And that underpins production based racing. There are some other classes. Obviously Moto 3 and Moto 2. Moto 2 is a very kind of Euro- pean based thing. Again we've got a 600 class with Superstock and Supersport. There's multi- manufacturers. It would be pretty illogical to suddenly move away from that and alienate four or five manufacturers just to go to a spec class. I think the same can be achieved on a Supersport bike that can be on a Moto 2. Moto 3 is perhaps an inter- esting concept for the future, getting kids on prototype ma- chinery and experience on that type of bike. But things have got to be done in the right order and I think that the best step that the championship has done is the introduction of the KTM series. We also have that in the UK. It's got a series I think in South America and other European countries. It's just easy. I think the less complicated we make it for young riders to come into racing the better. The costs have got to be very sensitively con- trolled because motor sport is an expensive business. If you burn the budget in year one or year two—that's it. The opportunity's gone forever. So it's a big triangle. Bringing people in at the entry level, hav- ing classes that also are repre- sentative of some of the regional championships because they need to feed into the system as well. And then you evolve with the system. Then at the top of the pyra- mid is the Superbike class. It has got to be special. It's where the heroes are, the best in the country. I think there's every reason for riders from the World Championship or other countries to come and do a season here… if the dates don't clash you could even see people racing in two National championships. I think that would be really interesting— seeing people jump on a plane, Rivalries and personalities make a championship, like World Superbike riders Fogerty (left) and Russell (right).

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