Bill Syfan joins PACE Motorsports

Former Dunlop Motorsports engineer Bill Syfan has joined PACE Motorsports as their Roadrace Director. Syfan started yesterday and will work out of PACE's Fort Worth office he stated in a telephone call just moments ago. It was heavily rumored at PPIR that Syfan was considering an offer from PACE to lead their new roadrace series.

Syfan worked at American Suzuki for many years and was their roadrace support person when he left Suzuki to become Jim Allen's partner at the racetrack. He was instrumental in Aaron Yates and several others getting factory rides.
Syfan worked at Dunlop for a little more than a year. He brings a wealth of racing, engineering and managerial experience to PACE. Syfan raced Superbikes in the early 1980s, and helped win the 1986 AMA/CCS GTU championship  with Paul Smith Racing. He's also worked in civil and mechanical engineering in the non-racing world. Syfan knows what a full on body cast feels like too, because he crashed huge at Texas World in 1984 and broke his back.

Syfan stated, "It was hard to leave Dunlop; it was a tough decision. They're a fantastic group of people and I have not worked with a finer individual than Jim Allen. But opportunities like this do not come back around again." Syfan was a long time Texas resident and is now selling his home in California so he can move back to the Longhorn state.

Syfan outlined PACE's 200 plans. "We'll probably hold eight or so premier events next year at places like Road Atlanta, Homestead and Road America on dates that don't conflict with the AMA Superbike series. Our premier class will not be Superbike, it'll be more like F-USA or Formula Extreme. We don't expect that the AMA Superbike teams will contest our series, but we are talking to some of the satellite teams about running our races."

Syfan stated that PACE is not trying to compete with the AMA. "It's not easy to put on races. The AMA does many things right  and this is not going to be easy. We will have different race dates than the AMA and we're just going to give it a try our way. We'll probably know a lot more about our 2000 schedule by next Friday."

When asked if PACE has a television package in place yet and if the rumors of them buying time on network television are true, Syfan stated: "All of our races will be on television, but whether that means it will be on Speedvison or ESPN or ESPN2 or CBS, we don't know yet. We're putting that in place. There has been some talk of a network program but we're not ready to release that yet."

Syfan did not comment on the amount or kind of classes PACE will have at their roadracing events but it is heavily rumored that for the premier weekends there will only be three classes (FUSA/600/250?). -- dean adams