Soup :: Interview: DMG's Colin Frasier & Bill Syfan

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Interview: DMG's Colin Frasier & Bill Syfan
by dean adams, evan williams, susan haas
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

After the racing at Barber Motorsport Park ended and the sun was going down on the weekend, DMG's Colin Frasier and Bill Syfan sat down with 'Soup to discuss the current state of the AMA Superbike series purchase; specifically the presentation the group made to the manufacturers on Thursday in a meeting at the Barber Museum.

In this interview, Frasier and Syfan explain some of the reasoning behind the massive proposed changes.

Frasier and Syfan are both industry veterans who've held a wide variety of jobs over the past couple of decades. Frasier is a respected journalist who has also run the Canadian Superbike series the last few years. Syfan started out as a rider but has worked for Suzuki and Dunlop in addition to managing riders, teams, and also working closely with sanctioning bodies.

Q You're not supposed to start an interview with a big question, but I'm going to do it anyway. The changes that you've proposed could possibly kill the series as we know it. Are you cognizant of that?

FRASIER: Certainly we're well aware of what could occur, and certainly we've heard some - everything from general concern and uneasiness, to crazy speculation. I haven't heard anything yet that suggests we've made a complete mess of it. Certainly some people are happier than others, and some people are more cooperative and constructive than others, which is normal. I think on average, Bill, Roy, Roger and I feel like it went pretty well, and understand from what happened a little over a week ago in California, to what was announced with Roger at the museum on Thursday, there was some pretty significant changes there. And I'm not suggesting that every concern and issue was met, but we moved pretty far back in their direction in terms of what the manufacturers asked for and were concerned with. So we're pretty optimistic. But we're not finished, by any means. We've got to figure out all the rules, and unfortunately, right now the biggest concern is getting the parameters - not unfortunately, but the big issue now is not the rules or the concern of the paddock. The big issue now is to construct the parameters so the spec tire guys can get going. Because I think a lot of people - and I don't mean you, but generally - people underestimate the spec tire request and the task, and the manufacturers are all going to have concerns of their own and a lot of questions, number of units, size, all kinds of things. And of course then we have to test, and Daytona's a specific concern. There's a lot of things to do with the tires. Those guys, really, arguably needed to be serviced first. We have to tell them the parameters of the series, the classes, what sort of performance they have to expect.

SYFAN: Performance, how long are the races, that sort of thing.

Q What were the criteria for what you originally came up with? Why? What made you go in that direction for the original proposal? What led you to believe that this would be successful in motorcycle racing? 600cc Superbikes and continuing MotoST?

FRASIER: Well, I think there were sort of three things on the plate going in. There was MotoST, which is established. There was Daytona Superbike, which has been discussed within the confines of Grand-Am, and with Roger and Daytona International Speedway for quite some time, that kind of format, and with some of the track owners. And then there was the idea that probably some kind of liter bike would be necessary, because liter bike sales are very important. Ironically, one of the manufacturers today reminded us that they actually would have been okay with a more conservative liter bike choice than the one that we went with. But although Roger has said that it would be all right if not everyone participated, currently everyone participates. It would be better if everyone participated. And I think what we're going to have with the revised AMA rules for 2009 with a few tweaks, I'd be very surprised that that's so far off what they wanted, that that would be justification for pulling out. However, that doesn't mean that somebody won't do that, or pull out for a different reason and hang it on us, and we've got to be big boys about this. There's no certainty, period, with racing, particularly in terms of cost. I would say that we seem to be more concerned with cost than the primary manufacturers are. We were very worried, and continue to be so, about cost, and it will remain to be seen if we really actually achieve anything there.

SYFAN: The other point, obviously, is the bikes just keep getting faster and faster, and the tracks aren't getting any bigger. Tracks are asked to make these massive changes after every year, and it's really, really hard on the promoters. The promoters, I think, are the forgotten group in this little trilogy that is the team, the sanctioning body, and then the promoters.

FRASIER: A lot has been made about our connection with NASCAR. Hopefully, we can bring some marketing savvy, some understanding of big market behavior. Our parallel is not NASCAR. Our close relationship is not NASCAR. It's Grand American Sports Cars. That's really the people we work more with, the people I've dealt with in the last couple of years. And the way they've approached cost savings - and if you look at, if you're interested, the American LeMans series versus the Grand American prototypes, you can see some of the type thinking that we had pursued and we thought was valid. But the one thing I will say about NASCAR that is a valid comparison in terms of the people we work with, is in NASCAR if there's a problem with a venue, a superspeedway, it's a restrictor plate issue. It isn't changing the track. Now, I know an oval is not a road course. I know not all the venues here have the same issues. But a lot of the circuit owners or promoters, or concert of both, have serious concerns about the performance of the bikes. And while it's true that the manufacturers have those concerns to more or less of an extent, they are not as concerned as the venues. Of course that is the situation with the perception of safety, what is and isn't safe, cooperating with the riders, like what happened at Road Atlanta and the changes were made, and Mat was basically the leading guy on that deal. It's all very tricky. And sometimes it works remarkably well, and sometimes it's very dysfunctional. I just certainly don't know enough about it yet, but it's not a consistent process. And certainly the thing people tend to forget is the tracks do spend a lot of money, and most of them - most of them, I believe, are sincerely trying to deal with these problems. Obviously, the riders have the opportunity to speak up. They are the stars. That's what this is about. They are the people who talk to the public on our behalf. It's not interesting what Bill or I or the starter or the tech guys have to say, except to the real hard core. And we're not supposed to be the stars of the show. So when those guys are down on the track a lot in public, although they have an agenda, and we respect that agenda, it doesn't make it easier to work with the venues.

Evan Williams. That was our next question. How the venues and the promoters are taking what you're doing. When you've bounced it off them, what are their thoughts?

SYFAN: So far, it's been very positive. Very positive.

FRASIER: And if you talked to Roger right now, he'd say that is the next biggest concern, because they have - any time you change something, most of them understand how to promote this series, most of them are happy with this series. It's great to make these changes. We have to be on-side with them. But as Bill pointed out, we don't currently have any issues on that end. And again, a year from now, we still won't really know how this worked. Hopefully there'll be encouraging signs, and no major missteps. But this is not the kind of thing we're going to be able to evaluate immediately. It's a pretty significant change. And yes, it maybe isn't as big a change as we might have wished, but we want to stay in business with everybody who's in business now with us.

Q Regarding track safety and the point of the rules being formed, to a degree, so that the bikes don't outgrow the series or the tracks; the tracks are in fairly decent shape now, as compared to ten years ago. There's been a lot of progress. Does anyone really see that we're going to outgrow what we have, in terms of track safety?

FRASIER: It's difficult to predict. For instance, just going to a spec tire will probably to some degree control the performance of the motorcycles. You see it with all kinds of racing, but particularly high-profile stuff like MotoGP and Formula One in the old days, that a tire war is a terrible thing in terms of controlling speed. There's no amount of rules restrictions that can fight back a really sincere, hard-fought tire war. I don't think consistently in Superbike there is a tire war in North America right at the moment. In Canada it's a spec series. In the United States, Dunlop is by far the predominant tire in the feature class. But, having said that, consistency, we think, is really important, and everybody being able to buy the exact same product. And again, we'll have to see how that works. It's working in a number of places now. I think we've swayed some people that way. Certainly in another life I was a skeptical journalist, and probably wrote some stuff that you could dig up that wasn't totally positive about spec tires. But I think - I believe it works in World Superbike. My opinion. I'm much more confident it works in Canadian Superbike, because I'm directly involved with everybody there, and I hear all the stories. So that, going in a circle on an answer here, that should help a lot. But I think predicting track safety, performance of the motorcycles, past a year or two in the future, is an extremely risky thing. An example I'll give you is, at one point it was commonly said that the Japanese had a gentlemen's agreement that 600s would have steel frames and would be more street bikes. I don't exactly - we could probably draw a line and say we stepped over the line at that point, but that's not the case now. The 600s are arguably a more race spec than the 1000s. We could debate that. But the performance of these bikes and their ability has really ramped up, but on the flip side, emissions and noise have become much more of an issue. So we have to try and incorporate both of those factors. Much more racy production motorcycles, versus tuning issues because of the way they're prepared as OE motorcycles.

SYFAN: We're also trying to provide entertaining racing. We think that there's probably a broader base of riders that can be competitive on 600s. To be honest, these 1000s are very hard to ride very fast, and we think - we want to build teams. We want to build teams that are self-sufficient, with outside sponsorship, and we want lots of them. That's part of the spec tire deal. That's part of why we're going to focus our efforts on Daytona Superbikes.

Q Any thought on how these sponsors are going to get involved? Is Daytona Motorsports Group going to help get sponsors for these teams?

FRASIER: I would say first of all, we're nowhere near there. I wish I had to tell you we're working through some fundamental stuff. What I can tell you, is Grand-Am absolutely does help their teams. I think we have to get a plan in place, and there's some important elements that we're not prepared for. Because right now we're working on spec tire structure to present to the tire manufacturers. Figuring out electronics issues. Just over the course of the last few days there's been a lot of interesting and mostly good information, and some criticism and whatnot, but a lot of different things going on. Your question is a terrific question, and hopefully we'll address that. But the problem is I don't have a set answer. But I feel comfortable looking at Grand-Am, because our company will be built in a parallel. AMA Pro Racing roadracing will be very similar in structure to Grand American. And they have a marketing department. And they work with the teams. And the relationship is very close. And it is probably more cooperative - it is definitely more cooperative than currently exists between the AMA and these teams. Would that be better for everybody? Absolutely. You talk to the Corona guys, and you get an idea of some of the kinds of marketing they do. We should be throwing those guys a party. They're ahead of the curve. My opinion. With not a lot of knowledge of everything else that's going on, these are some people who run with the ball. That's the kind of thing, that kind of operation in car racing would really have them - people would be standing up and yelling about it.

Q Let me give you a scenario. You tell me, conceivable or not conceivable at all. A multitude of companies want to be involved in NASCAR but can't. Any thoughts on Daytona saying to these companies, "Listen, we've got this motorcycle series. If you want to build a relationship with us, why don't you get involved there, and after a couple of years, we'll evaluate, and maybe you can step up to NASCAR," which would be an entryway into getting these teams the sponsorship that you guys are talking about.

SYFAN: Kind of like the deal when you go into the Ferrari dealership, and they won't have the Ferrari you want for a couple of years, but if you buy this lesser Ferrari now, it might speed up the process.

FRASIER: First of all, I hope it wouldn't be that cut and dried. But certainly, even in the Grand American, you see people like Target and some other, Crown Royal, there are certainly sponsors who are very big players in NASCAR who are involved, because there's a lot of sharing of information. And of course when you get your real sponsorship, it's not just a name on the side of a car. It's all kinds of promotional things. It's all kinds of opportunities for advertising. In NASCAR, I think the thing that's most notable, and the reason I jumped at Corona out of the clear blue sky, is that kind of grocery store, liquor store, general merchandise store, in-store promotion. People who'd never, ever thought of seeing a stock car suddenly trip over one. The Cheerios displays the weekend of Pocono. All that stuff. You can't avoid it with NASCAR. Whether you like it or dislike it, you've got to acknowledge they've got unbelievable penetration. Formula One in Europe, I don't think, has the penetration that NASCAR has, particularly in the South. So yeah, absolutely those are the people we would like to work with. Will we have all of them? I don't think so. But do I think there's some opportunities? Yes. Because I'm pretty sure the reason a lot of these companies got involved with Grand-Am is because they were already working with those guys, and relatively, Grand-Am wasn't expensive compared to NASCAR. It may not have the exposure, but they are used to working with those companies. The Daytona 24 Hour has gone from barely surviving to having regained its status, right? And certainly the sponsors are very interested in that. It's not the Indy 500, but it is one of the higher profile motorsport races of the year. And obviously, to finish the loop, we would like to try and get the 200 back to some kind of status again.

Evan Williams: Last summer, Michael Jordan gave a pretty pointed interview to some journalists from the paddock, and basically said "I can't buy what I want to buy to win Superbike races." Did that have any effect on what you guys are doing, or is that the mindset you had in changing the rules?

SYFAN: I think Roger, that's always been his goal, is to try to - I hate the term, but level the playing field. To try to make it - to try to give hope to these teams that may not be directly connected with a factory, and be able to show up and roll in here and feel like they have an opportunity to get on the box. I'm sure Michael's comments went a long way. At the time, things were starting to roll in this direction. I'm sure it helped.

FRASIER: And Roger did go to meet with Michael, and they have spoken a couple of times. That doesn't mean that there's anything set. But certainly, his input made a difference, and I think what Jordan said was extremely polarizing. When you talk to people about those comments, they either strongly agree or strongly disagree. It's kind of interesting. You don't get very many moderate responses to the Michael Jordan suggestion. But I think everybody understands that his team has a lot of value in terms of its presentation and what it could represent in the future.

Evan Williams: There's a lot of fear. Most of the people who make a living in this paddock, it's factory money, one step or two steps beyond. Can you do anything to assuage their fears, or lessen that? Or is that just reality, that things might be changing big-time?

SYFAN: Certainly it's fear of the unknown. These are some new concepts that... We're bringing in elements that have been used before - the dyno, and spec tires - but never in this series. So of course they've got to be worried for their jobs. The better teams will always rise to the top. We know that. Going into next year, can a privateer build a bike that puts out the right horsepower, and does he have the right suspension pieces and everything? Absolutely. But the better teams have those resources that make them hit the mark more consistently. And so I think that you're still going to see the better riders on the better teams towards the front. We're hoping to compress this whole pack together, and to have - and with better results, with closer results, these smaller teams can go and hopefully find more sponsorship.

FRASIER: And I think the concept of the satellite team, or the B-team, or the one step removed team, does compare to other forms of motorsports. And we would certainly like to see them on the most stable of possible footings. And if the series were someday primarily those sorts of teams with manufacturers' support and outside sponsors, I think that model might be more sustainable, less risky, but we can't do that tomorrow. And certainly the liter bikes persisting, that's a high-maintenance, high-quality thing that's going to continue for the short term. We are going to be heading in two directions at once, you could argue.

SYFAN: For instance, today Barry Gilsenan with Celtic Racing found me out. He's excited about it. He thinks it's going to give his team a chance to be competitive. He still wants to be connected with a manufacturer so that he can get support, and he's perfectly comfortable with being the rider development team for that. But to have these riders come in to his team, he gives them - he helps support them to some level of success, and then they move on to another team. That's hard for him to sell to sponsors. So maybe we'll be able to help in that regard, too. Go ahead and set up these stair steps within these different teams, create some incentives for the manufacturers to have a direct relationship, and a long-term relationship. It's just like working with these promoters, in that we want to be able to go to them and say, "Okay, it's a three- to five-year deal, and we know that the track you have now and the package that we're bringing you is going to be consistent for the next three to five years," that gives them security.

Q Getting back to liter bikes. For some of the manufacturers, motorcycle sales are really softening by the day. I wonder if you've given any thought to perhaps the 2009 rules that they came up with, aren't mild enough - aren't cheap enough - and you should take the upper hand?

FRASIER: I can't speak on behalf of everybody who is involved, but I think if you talk to everyone who is directly involved in meeting the manufacturers, we strongly believe in something similar to Superstock. And there was some support for that, but there was some aggressive negativity. All or nothing. And to be fair, in the midst of this, there was - we actually worked together on the 2009 rules. I know we have a reputation that we don't work together, but we marched along and came up with something that we think is a significant improvement. We would like to do what we agreed to do. And given that we're allegedly going to have more open communication, transparency in rules enforcement, and all those good things, when they say we cooked this stuff up, we believe it's a step forward. We think we've controlled some elements. That was a fairly persuasive argument. However, to go back to your first question, absolutely. We would have liked to have liter bike, but at a much lower spec.

SYFAN: They said, "We worked hard on these 2009 rules," and they were all pleasantly surprised that they finally were able to come to concessions and a compromise on them, and they said, "Give us a shot at it."

Q Because there's been talk-- Mat has said, and another manufacturer who shall remain nameless has said, it's not going to change.

FRASIER: Well, let me comment on that. Around Daytona, and it may have been on your website, Mat made his comments that it won't change anything. And I think fundamentally, I would agree with him. I think we all would. That he, on a Yoshimura Suzuki, would be a favorite on a race he's taking part in. That's an excellent team, very well prepared, seem to be ahead of the curve. Today's results are as conclusive as you could possibly be. However, let me put my other hat on - and I don't want to dwell on my experience in Canada, but I'm not guessing about some of these things. In Canada, we have a 185-horsepower Superbike class that's virtually AMA Superstock, the current about-to-disappear AMA Superstock, already agreed goodbye AMA Superstock. And in Canada, more often than not, Kawasaki has succeeded lately. But they don't always win. Three manufacturers won last year, and Honda didn't have a serious program. And when you look at the races, Szoke often won, but he often won by significantly less than a second, and it was a race until the end. So I would argue in a similar situation, Mladin could be that guy. But if it was closer, more exciting, that's better entertainment, better for the fans, better for television. But also, when you close them up, then a little mistake, a slight problem, a little bit of rain. I agree with what you said, I don't remember when you wrote it, but "no one likes to stand in the rain, but man, are those races frequently really exciting and interesting." And you know what? Five years after you've forgotten the other races that year, you vividly recall that event. I think we all like surprise, and we don't want total predictability. But I want to be careful not to make it sound like this is an issue about Yoshimura Suzuki or Mat Mladin or Ben Spies. It certainly isn't. Those guys, full marks to them, they've done an excellent job.

SYFAN: They deserve everything they've done, because as you know, I worked at Suzuki in some pretty dark days. It was a tough time for them. And other manufacturers were on top.

FRASIER: So I guess the question is, is Mat supporting - what argument is Mat supporting, with his comments?

Q As you know, Colin, I came into this field out of the stands. I bought tickets and stood in line for autographs. From my fan perspective, I hate traction control. From a racing perspective it bothers me that so much of team resources now go to traction control systems. As Kenny Roberts told my friend Dennis Noyes, it's so frustrating to have traction control and data acquisition in Moto Grand Prix, because it's so expensive, and the fans basically see none of that money spent.

SYFAN: It doesn't make for better racing.

FRASIER: The argument is actually they're spending money for something you can't see, right? Because we all enjoy - I don't mean I would like to see the old two-strokes or highsides, or at times more than half the front-runners not able to ride a motorcycle.

Those glory days had a horrible downside. A lot, a lot, a lot of injuries. And of course at that point, you planned, if you were lucky, to go to two or three Grands Prix a year, the way I did. Sometimes you saw them all. Sometimes you didn't see hardly any of them, right? But having said that - and it's kind of funny, because in Canada there's a lot of ice racing and flat-track and all those things - all our guys don't like it, because they think it's fun to steer with the throttle. Which is unbelievably simplistic, but I think that kind of refers back to your street guy who thinks it's cool when he gets a little sideways, or your track-day guy. We all kind of get off on that. It doesn't mean we can ride at that level. But I think that the electronics are a dead end, and I hate to always go back or compare it to other series or car racing, but I think - and it's early to tell - that Formula One has benefited from the removal of traction control. The cars are a little more exciting to watch, but the races are less predictable, because people run into problems. Some people are nursing their tires. Some people choose to go for it. It pulls open the strategy, and it creates more suspense or more surprises later in the event. So I'm certainly not a fan of traction control, but I think when somebody like me or Bill says something like that, there's always the flip side. "Well, when was the last time I rode a 220-horsepower Superbike at the lap times those guys did?" So I don't want to make this sound like I have special knowledge, or I'm disrespectful of what those guys have accomplished, and I think it's really risky, in our position, to ever sound like we know these bikes better than the guys who build them, or can understand how to ride them. But having said that, less horsepower with less controls, in a lot of respects ...would appear to suggest more exciting racing. The thing that I - Bill and I have been talking about an awful lot of things for the last while, and particularly lately, because we've been on the road for virtually two weeks. And we talked about the glory days of 600 Supersport, when there were 16 factory bikes, and then about five laps from the end, four or five guys would clear off, and two laps for the end, the two or three guys who'd made the best decisions with their tires, and were positioned to, would duke it out. I'm trying to think - Willow Springs the year Kurtis Roberts won the championship. That's as wild and exciting a race as I've seen in my life. It wasn't a Grand Prix or Superbike race, but -

SYFAN: It didn't matter. It's entertainment.

FRASIER: - I think it measured up.

Evan Williams: The first three Superbike races of the year seem to be Exhibits A, B and C of what you're trying to do. How much of this excitement can the series take?

FRASIER: [Laughing] Well, the problem there, no matter what you say, it sounds like you're bashing Yoshimura and Suzuki. I don't blame them for being sensitive. We were laughing in tech on Friday, because when we teched the second-tier Xtreme guys, I think I've got this right, there was a Ducati twin, a Triumph triple, and a Kawasaki inline four. Now, understand, this was the other group.

SYFAN: This was the second group.

FRASIER: Yeah. But that's literally what we'd like to see for Daytona Superbike. Speaking on behalf of the series I currently run, whether it's MotoST or Canadian Superbike, what you'd always like to see is a podium of three different brands, right? Because everybody comes out of there thinking, "Hey, we're in the neighborhood." And I think the fans enjoy that, and I think that there are people here who understand what a Triumph is, and know it's different. Not everybody. Absolutely not. I'm aware of that. But there are some gearheads who, if a Triumph, for instance, could succeed in a series in North America, would enjoy that, and would be motivated about that. And the other thing, too, is some of these marques maybe can't currently afford the reality of how this plays. Hopefully, a few of them can transition to take the chance, to move up. That's what we're really hoping. Not necessarily the ten Roger suggested, but -

SYFAN: No. But as I set up this meeting here on Thursday, I invited some of the smaller manufacturers. Some could make it, some couldn't, but they were all enthusiastic about it.

Q Roll out your crystal ball, Colin, are we going back to Loudon or not?

FRASIER: I think it's way, way too early to talk about that. I think - the problem with Loudon, beyond the history and the safety and everything - is it's the neighborhood that we'd really like to be in. Obviously we'd like to be in Laconia because of the history. But just that part of the world, there's a lot of people there, and we don't service it. It's a hot-button issue if we start working that way, so I don't want to make any pronouncements there. But I would mention that, for instance, New Jersey - which should be - well, MotoST is scheduled to go there in conflict with Road Atlanta, and it's built by the people who built VIR, who certainly seem to have a general grasp of how to do this. I would say for sure that's a likely event. I think we have to see what promoters want to work with us, what venues do, and I think there's one thing that's really encouraging, is that there seem to be a number of new venues coming online. So I think we're at or close to the maximum number of events. The manufacturers are fairly comfortable about this. Are there always going to be two races at Laguna? There's room for some change. But I don't think that's a big concern if we can start working the Northeast generally. I don't know specifically about that track. So yeah, that's a "too soon to ask" question. It's certainly something we've talked about a little bit. But I think if we could go to another more appropriate venue in that neck of the woods, that would be easier.

Q In the PowerPoint presentation, there was mention that the series has already outgrown two racetracks. Loudon I assume was one.

FRASIER: I don't know that for a fact. I would assume that. And I would assume the other comment is aimed towards Daytona, because there were two changes made. The switch to the venue for the Daytona AMA races, and the switch to Formula Xtreme with the 600-based Formula Xtreme class. I think the people at Daytona International Speedway have a very clear message that nobody likes their new track, and nobody likes their feature class. That was meant to be appealing to everybody, and it was a universally disliked pair of decisions. Maybe one should've been made before the other, or wait to see how it affects the two, but it didn't help. And it's also very worrisome at Daytona that, in my opinion, Thursday was the better day of racing there. Although Saturday had an okay crowd, Thursday had zippity-doo-dah. And that's a shame, at an AMA national with good racing. And obviously I go back, as you do, to the days when they had the split qualifiers and all that stuff, and there were 25,000 people there for Superbike qualifying, and - this is something people forget - there was a purse for Superbike qualifying. If it made sense for the fans, Daytona puts up the money. They don't have a problem with spending money if it makes money. And I think everything they've done to change the Supercross, although it has no effect on us, demonstrates that they'll do different things. And this is, I think, part of the reason that Roger floated that notion of trying to run the Daytona 200 at night. Partly because of what's happened recently in the discussions of motorsports, and partly to go to the Speedway and say, "We want to do different things. We want to be creative. We want to give the people a reason to re-evaluate their choice about their time and the money." There's a lot of things you've brought up, like hotel costs, and the length of time we're in Daytona. Some of those we can deal with. We can't fix the cost of hotels. But it would appear that re-thinking the Daytona scenario wouldn't be a bad idea, and obviously we'd like to get their attention and convince them that we're going to do better.

Q Getting back to Loudon. Point of fact. I'm not sure the series outgrew the place. I'm not sure the bikes outgrew the place. Just so we're all on the same page. Bikes probably shouldn't have gone there after they bulldozed the old track. I just really want to state that and see if you had feedback, comment, or whatever.

SYFAN: I've ridden there as an instructor at a school quite a bit. I never had to race there. Never did race there.

Q You raced the old track?

SYFAN: No.

FRASIER: I raced the old track. The old track wasn't all that safe, but it was one hell of a challenge.

Evan Williams: DMG announced at Daytona that they'd bought the series. There's been a little time between now and then. Would you say it's safe to say you've been challenged in ways you wouldn't have thought, or are you pleasantly surprised with how things have turned out?

SYFAN: We've had some encouraging conversations this weekend with a couple of the OEMs. They've had enough time - it's only been a week, a week and a half, since we met with them out there, but it's been positive. And then other stuff has crept up. Things that we hadn't encountered yet. We've got a lot of work to do. That's obvious. We're going to rewrite the rulebook from top to bottom. That in itself would be a lot of work. But every element of the series needs to be reviewed. It has to be looked at. A lot of it is not broken. A lot of it's a little bent. We just need to straighten it out. They've got a lot of good people, especially on the ground. We saw that this weekend, this first weekend that we got into the trenches and really started to see what everybody does. Obviously Colin has been running roadracing for 15 years. I'm involved at a regional level. So we understand how races go off. But pro racing's different than regional racing. Like I said, it's been both encouraging and some stuff's already been brought up. "Hey, did you guys think about this?" "Not yet, but we'll put it on our list."

FRASIER: I think, too - sorry to interrupt - whether it's Jim or Tom or Roger or Roy or Bill and I, we're not young guys. It's not our first trip to the rodeo. We've all been through a lot of grief on a lot of different levels. Great ideas that didn't pan out, and disappointments, and frustrations. So we're all grown-ups, and we know there's going to be bad days. In a way, the things you can anticipate could blow up are easier than the ones that completely blindside you. Things going horribly wrong at a race weekend are a lot worse than anything that can happen in our office on a Thursday, right? So I think we have to be realistic. It's not - if we're going to make a lot of changes, no matter how careful, thoughtful and polite we are about it, it's still change, and some people... What's your line? I can't remember it.

SYFAN: Everybody wants improvement, but nobody wants change. Change is scary. Everybody's in a groove. Everybody's in a comfort zone right now, and we're shaking that up.

Evan Williams: You guys have bought a vintage Ferrari. Does it need new spark plugs and top up the gas tank and let it go, or does it need a frame-up restoration?

FRASIER: I think when you have something like a vintage Ferrari, you've got to be able to afford to run a vintage Ferrari, so I would say that the people - one of the interesting things that doesn't get spoken about much is the AMA, I believe, held the responsibility to find a caretaker who would take this seriously, that this property would be looked after. Roger was pretty clear. I think you guys were there. He said they can afford to do it. If we get it wrong, they'll figure out a new way. We'll re-do it; someone else will get our job. But to go back to your line, when you have a vintage Ferrari, you bite the bullet, you save your money, you send it back to Italy and you get it fixed right. You don't just diddle with it, it's something special. And I think, as funny as this sounds, we really believe in AMA roadracing. Most of us love it. My first AMA roadraces were in the '70s. I've been to a lot of them. Bill's - we were talking about when he raced Superbike in '83. Roger talks about going to see the Daytona 200. He's not saying that to try to fool people. He got on his bike and went with his buddies and watched the race. I think it's been written fairly commonly, including in car racing magazines, that Jim France prefers motorcycle racing, and probably prefers flat-track over any other form of racing. And even - I think somebody made light of Tom from NASCAR and his participation - Tom's a motorcyclist. I've gone riding with him. He absolutely knows about motorcycles. So this is a group of people who probably have a lot in common with the people who read your - well, we are people who read your website. We're not the same people, but we're absolutely involved. We're enthusiasts. And we take it seriously that this needs to be done right. It's a responsibility, and to take it and sink it just because we have some crazy idea that might float, is totally foreign. And that's probably why the liter bike happened, is to work to the middle. To show them that we want to be accommodating.

SYFAN: Yes. Accommodating. Find some common ground. Give some concessions and compromises. A good marriage is full of compromises.

Evan Williams: A lot of this has been about the paddock. About us, the factories, the series, promoters, the riders, the media. If you could talk directly to Joe Fan who stood over there today and watched the races, what would you say to him?

FRASIER: I would say we want to give him better racing. We want to give him better entertainment. And I think that the theme with everybody involved with the Daytona group of companies - all the different properties there associated with the Frances - is if you're not getting ahead, you're falling behind. It's almost impossible to say, "Okay, we're at this level, and we're good and we're cruising." Because there's just so much choice. There's so many great entertainment things, so many ways to spend your money, there's so much fun you can have. Plus, why leave home? Your TV's full of channels. There's almost for sure something you're going to enjoy in there. Or there's the weather network in there, telling you "don't go out today. It's going to rain." So if you don't face up to the reality that you've got to be competitive, I think that you're heading downwards even if you don't notice it. And I think that is definitely something we pick up from Grand-Am and NASCAR and that group of companies. That okay is not good enough.

ENDS

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