STUART HIGGS
VOL. 52 ISSUE 27 JULY 7, 2015 P75
So it's a lot of things coming
together. I think from what I've
seen of the paddock [MotoAmer-
ica] at the moment it's good one-
way traffic. Everyone wants the
championship to succeed. They
rightly believe, as the rest of the
world believes, that the USA has
an extremely important role to
play in the world of motorcycle
racing. It's been a pretty bar-
ren period on the international
stage for U.S. riders. When you
think back to the late '80s, early
'90s it was which American is
going to win a Grand Prix every
weekend. Now it's far from that.
There's got to be a point zero.
That's already happened. That's
the establishment of the series.
From what we've seen there's
some great tracks and I think the
USA is extremely lucky to have
access to frankly some of the
best tracks in the world. And I
really mean that. They're not de-
signed by computers, for neces-
sarily cars. They take the natural
terrain over here at Miller, which
is a great track; three miles in
length. And we had a fantastic
event at Barber, which is, I think
frankly, one of the best pre-
sented racetracks in the world.
Second of course to the Brands
Hatch in the UK [he said with a
smile]. But with the museum, its
beautifully manicured lawns. It's
a very special place.
Road America is a classic
circuit. Four miles, you just rarely
get circuits of that scale and sort
of dramatic elevation changes.
It's great.
The support bill to the World
Championship events is very
important because, again, this
championship needs to be the
stepping stone for riders to move
into World Champion competi-
tion. There's no better way to
get attention than doing it right
under the nose of the teams
and the promoter of the World
Championship.
So that combination of clas-
sic standalone events at some
of these iconic U.S. circuits
together with the World Cham-
pionship support race program
that's being instigated this year
is a great first move. I think
everyone's pretty satisfied with
what's happened. There's still
huge, huge growth potential, but
everyone's just going to be very
realistic with the expectations
that it's not an overnight job.
This is going to take some time,
but as long as the progress is
