George Bruggenthies, GM of Road America in Elkhart Lake Wisconsin brings a unique perspective to the Superbike race promotions game as he is not only a huge racing enthusiast but he also owns and races motorcycles (and cars) himself. When the Superbike race is running at Elkhart you won't find him in his office or on a golf cart clearly waiting for the event to end as you will other Midwest promoters, Bruggenthies will either be inches away from a television monitor showing the race or he'll be on-course watching the action first-person.

Bruggenthies attended the promoter meetings with DMG and MIC last week in California and he gave us a statement late yesterday on how the meetings went from his perspective.

"We had all-day meetings with Roger Edmondson a couple of times and also Tim Buche of the MIC. It was nice to sit down face to face with Roger and be able to ask questions and get clarifications on everything that has been printed. Because as promoters we talk to him and then we read stuff and the whole thing was just moving around so much it was very confusing ... the whole thing about what Roger was defining as the series rules would be. It was hard to keep up and understand what was the latest.

And, then, of course, we saw the latest, which was there would be no factory Superbike, and that the manufacturers would be excluded, essentially.

Our goal as promoters ... it was very important to have manufacturer involvement for a number of reasons. A lot of us have relationships that we rely on, and we also see the manufacturers as bringing a lot of glitz, money, name brand, names, riders, all that stuff, so our goal as promoters was to have the manufacturers involved in Roger's vision.

I know that still hasn't happened. But we are hopeful that it may. There's more that needs to be done.

What we tried to do with the MIC is (discern) just what exactly were the issues. What were the stumbling points of their participation? And the proposals that DMG had put forth. We just saw the goal posts just kind of moving around a bit (laughs) and we wanted confirmation from both Roger and Tim and that's what we really identified, that it really was moving around.

We've asked Tim to identify what the manufacturers--in a very timely basis--like, today or tomorrow, if they could possibly, what would it take for the manufacturers to be involved? And that is where we are trying to go.

(This is) important for the sport. Just for the sport in general; for it to change that drastically in one season... I don't think that the fans would have an understanding of why.

We're hoping to hear something shortly."