Road Racing in the U.S. has found itself in a precarious position of late. But in swooped the KRAVE Group and its MotoAmerica to take the helm and try to revive the sport. A difficult task, but with guys who bleed racing like three-time 500cc World Champion Wayne Rainey and former Team Roberts manager Chuck Aksland at the forefront, there was suddenly hope.
The backing of Dorna and a growing list of members to the team with a great road racing pedigree, helped add to that encouragement. One of those key additions who sort of skipped under the radar is the MotoAmerica Series Race Director Stuart Higgs.
Maybe that’s because the operational side of a series from the outside is not super exciting. That is until it goes wrong. Rules are the backbone of a championship. If that backbone is to have any strength, there needs to be consistency in the enforcement of those rules and in the operation as a whole.
So MotoAmerica brought in Higgs, as well as Bill Cumbow as the FIM representative and former AMA Superbike Champion Doug Chandler as the rider representative to handle the less glamorous part of sport—Race Direction.
MotoAmerica is a side gig for Higgs. The Brit is more well known for being a big part of the revival of the British Superbike Championship in the UK. He’s the series/race director and is active on both the promotional and operational sides of the sport.
Higgs has a wealth of Superbike knowledge, so we sat down to tap into that knowledge and talk MotoAmerica, the evolution of the British Superbike Championship and the challenges a Superbike series faces.
Lets start with a little bit of background because I don’t think a lot of people in the U.S. know much about you. You’ve been around racetracks pretty much your whole life, right?
Yeah, my background is primarily based in the UK. Best known as being the series and race director for the British Superbike Championship. That’s where I started. I have an international set of duties—normally the chief steward for various FIM events, MotoGP and World Superbike. I’m with MotoAmerica, AMA/FIM North America sanctioned, and a brave new world. I’m pleased to be part of the new Race Direction structure.
Being a part of British Superbikes, you’ve been there for the evolution.
Basically the seat change happened in Britain in 1996, when a bit like here in the U.S. there was a lot of discontent with how things had become and those with the influence to change it got together to do just that.
In the UK it was the circuits predominantly, as the major investors in a promoted motor sport in the UK, decided that they wanted to take control of their destiny. So they formed a sanctioning body that had the commercial rights and the organizing rights to put together a package of what they wanted. And that’s remained in place ever since and it’s just grown and grown and grown. It’s been a very successful evolution.
What stands out as key moments or key things in that evolution?
The biggest single advantage the UK has obviously—it’s a relatively small geographical area to operate within. There are seven or eight circuits of a good national championship standard and many others, and there’s a big culture of racing. So it was perhaps an easier task than perhaps other countries have.
But the key thing was getting continuity of organization. It used to be very much a territorial thing. The people at one circuit would do things one way, and the people literally 50 miles down the road would do it completely different. So every weekend would be a fight between the riders and the circuits and the organizer. The standards would be very, very different, both safety and operational.
The seat change put it all under one roof with one group of people; everything was done the same every single weekend. That gave massive confidence in the people promoting the races. Rider safety evolved significantly. And the whole standard was good. When presentation and everything begins to improve people are more confident to invest in it, and the more they invest in it the better it becomes for sponsorship and television and all the things that underpin a high-level championship. So putting all those building blocks together has been the personal high spot. And we continue to go from strength to strength.
We have a very fortunate position as being the rights holder for the British Championship, many of the circuits in the championship are also owned by us as well. Again, this is no conflict. There’s complete and utter one-way traffic from everybody—from the teams, the riders, the fans, the sponsors, the suppliers, manufacturers—all wanted to push in the same direction. That does make life a lot easier.
To read the rest of the Stuart Higgs interview in issue 27 of Cycle News, click here
