AMERICAN FLAT TRACK CEO MICHAEL LOCK: PART 1
P46
INTERVIEW
while very competitive, was also
kind of hokey.
And underpromoted?
Oh, not promoted at all. In fact,
worse than that, through the kind
of organic growth of the sport in
the '90s and the 2000s when
there was no money, the diehard
enthusiasts took over who had
a lot of time on their hands to
make myopic rulebooks, and
"Don't you remember, we did
that in '87?" That meant it be-
came a hobbyist sport; I'm not
critical of that, because it kept
the sport alive ready for it to be
reinvented, but it's an observa-
tion. But what this meant was that
for the general public, or for any
average motorcyclist who I knew
would love the sport, there were
too many barriers in the way. So
we had two classes of racing,
experts and pros. Which would
be the premier one there, do
you think? You could guess, and
you might even get it right. Then
you'd go to a race and you'd work
out that the pros were really the
top guys and the experts were
the guys who'd like to be pros.
So you'd expect to see the top
class racing on the most powerful
big twin-cylinder machines, and
they did—except at all the rounds
where they didn't, when they
rode 450 singles instead. So
you say, "Okay, so in the junior
class they race the 450 singles,
right?" Well, yes they do—except
all the rounds where they race
the twins!
So looking in from the outside,
I would sit in the grandstand and
have the fan experience, and
say, "I have no idea what's going
on here." And you know what, I
came here today to see the Har-
ley XR750, and all I'm seeing is
Honda CR singles in both class-
es. I feel robbed, I feel cheated.
So I knew that what we had to
do was to peel back all this stuff
that had accumulated over the
past 20 years and more, and
replace it with simplicity and
accessibility without losing the
spectacle. We had to refine it
down to two quite distinct and
separate classes—a big class
and a little class, a big money
class and an aspiring class. Big-
time racers race on big bikes,
kids race on little bikes and one
day they'll race on big bikes, just
not yet. So then the flak started:
"Oh, you can't do that!" "What
do you mean—it's the most
Lock's connection with NASCAR
played a valuable role in the
success of this year's AFT season.
