Q&A: American Flat Track CEO Michael Lock on eve of 2017 season - MotorSportsTalk

One of the new motorsports elements coming to NBCSN later this year is American Flat Track, which kicks off its 64th season this week at Daytona International Speedway as part of Bike Week with the Daytona TT on Thursday night. Coverage of the series begins on NBCSN in July.

As a primer for what to look for in the new season, we caught up with American Flat Track CEO Michael Lock to preview some of the key story lines.

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AMA Pro Racing CEO Michael Lock. Photo: Larry Lawrence

MotorSportsTalk: This year has seen a change to Twins vs. Singles for the series. Can you explain the process that went into that change?

Michael Lock: “First off, we’re thrilled that after all the months planning towards this season with these changes, now it’s here.

“What we’ve thought to do is create two distinct classes of races. We’ll have it where the most experienced, fastest guys riding the most technologically advanced, powerful bikes. The singles are for more of the younger up-and-comers who are racing on production, single bikes. You can buy them anywhere whereas the twins are prototypes, and exotic. We’ve created these two distinct classes, compared to what was it like before… and it was a lot more complicated!

“There was Grand National 1. Some tracks they rode twins, and some they rode singles. It depended on how long the circuit was. It’s very difficult to explain that to the outside world, versus just saying it’s the same guy and the same brand every week. We changed the organization and the class structure to make it a lot simpler. The byproduct not only simplifies it for the teams and riders, who can focus on one machine, but also attracts great interest from the manufacturers. So there’s two benefits.”

MST: Having the pending Harley-Davidson versus Indian battle must be big for the series…

ML: “It’s heaven-sent for our sport. Harley-Davidson has supported pro flat track for years. Now to have Indian come along, it’s both key brands from the Midwest since they are in Minnesota and Harley is in Wisconsin. There’s an enormous rich heritage on the street and in racing, going back over 100 years. We’re super excited.

“Harley is an iconic brand. Everyone knows Harley-Davidson whether you ride or not. It’s a lifestyle. To have Indian come along and seek to share some of the limelight will be good for everyone, for the sport, for motorcycles.”

MST: How was the series able to expand to an 18-race calendar this year?

ML: “We’ve put a lot of work into this. We’ve expanded the season to 18 dates. A year ago it was 14, and two years ago it was 11. We’ve grown the reach of the sport, and we’ve done it to become much more national rather than regional. We see these areas online but haven’t been getting them on the calendar until now. There were two new ones we found last year in Oklahoma City in Remington Park, which is a mile-long horse course, and also at Turf Paradise in Phoenix. Both of them sold out in the first year. And we’re going back because they’re so successful.

“We’re also going to Texas Motor Speedway … it’s a fantastic facility on their half mile oval. We’re looking forward to that. And having our finale in Southern California makes sense because that’s our biggest concentration of fans. We end in Perris, California, about an hour out of L.A., towards the mountains.”

Photo: Brian J. Nelson courtesy of AMA Pro Flat Track

MST: As the year progresses, what’s going to be the big challenges for the competitors?

ML: “It’s easier said than done arranging both the actual and TV schedules! A sport like Flat Track is very much up-and-coming and the goal is to increase the awareness to where it eventually becomes top billing. After Daytona, Atlanta and Charlotte is when it gets hectic for us; those three set the tone for the year.

“We go into May with three consecutive tracks. The one-mile tracks see the riders at 130 mph, just hurtling through the corners. If you’ve never seen it before, it’ll stop you breathless. We have Phoenix, Sacramento and Springfield, Ill., the ‘holy grail.’ The Springfield Mile is an incredible experience.

“We have three events in June. We have two in July, three in August, and three in September… so it’s relentless through the summer. The championship’s going to be fascinating to watch down to the finale.”

MST: How is Flat Track trying to attract the youth demographic?

ML: “It’s critical. Not only for us at the sanctioning body level but also for the manufacturers. They’re using sport as a way to market their brand. Motorcycling generally has been a baby boomer sport. It has been, how do we motivate them for potential fans into the sport.

“In a modern digital age where you can get everything immediately, you have to make a compelling argument to get them to the races. Beyond flag-to-flag, what else are you offering? There’s action before the races, in-between the races, with the family entertainment and also improved vendors and fan villages. Either Harley or Indian or both will attend all races with display bikes, and a signup. We’re working very hard on not only enhancing the racing action, but also making it a party within a race.”

MST: What piqued your interest in Flat Track to begin with?

ML: “There’s a number of touch points. Anyone in motorcycling for a while, will know the golden age o 1980s and 1990s in international Grand Prix racing. American riders totally dominated, Kenny Roberts, Kevin Schwantz, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey… I was a kid who grew up in London. And I wondered, ‘Why were the Americans so dominant?’ They learned flat track before they road raced. No one in Europe was flat tracking. They learned a set of skills, corner speed, and how to do it. They dominated MotoGP for two decades, and that’s when I first heard about Flat Track.

“Having been in the U.S. for 20 years, I went Indianapolis for the motorcycle GP… and I was working with Ducati at the time. We went to the fairgrounds and Kenny Roberts turned out there… this was in 2009 after he retired! He threw his leathers on and did a couple laps on the infamous Yamaha bike. Suddenly it all made sense.

“All these elements were brought together. With Jim France, a primary investor in AMA… when he asked me to help him to build American Flat Track, we had to leverage this history and great story telling. We mesh it with the extraordinary action. It’s not until you see it on track, inches apart you see how dynamic it is. We just had to get out of our own way!”

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(Editor’s note: This story on the Heart of Racing sports cars shootout for women is one in an occasional Motorsports Talk series focusing on women in racing during March, which is Women’s History Month.)

Heart of Racing driver and team manager Ian James says his daughter, Gabby, isn’t so interested in auto racing. But she is interested (as a New York-based journalist) in writing about the sport’s efforts and growth in gender equality

It’s a topic that also was brought up by James’ wife, Kim.

“They’re always saying, ‘Hey, you manage all these guys, and you help them, so why not a woman?’ ” Ian James told NBC Sports. “And I feel like there are a lot of women that haven’t had a fair crack at it in sports car racing.

“Our whole DNA at Heart of Racing is we give people opportunities in all types of situations where there’s been crew personnel or drivers. And I felt like we hadn’t really addressed the female driver situation. I felt like there was a void to give somebody a chance to really prove themselves.”

During the offseason, the team took a major step toward remedying that.

Heart of Racing held its first female driver shootout last November at the APEX Motor Club in Phoenix, Arizona, to select two women who will co-drive an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 in the SRO SprintX Championship.

The season will begin this weekend at Sonoma Raceway with Hannah Grisham and Rianna O’Meara-Hunt behind the wheel. The team also picked a third driver, 17-year-old Annie Rhule, for a 2023 testing program.

The Phoenix audition included 10 finalists who were selected from 130 applicants to the program, which has been fully underwritten by Heart of Racing’s sponsors.

“We didn’t want it to be someone who just comes from a socio-economic background that could afford to do it on their own course,” James said. “We can pick on pure talent. We’re committed to three years to do this and see if we can find the right person. I’m very hopeful.”

So is Grisham, a Southern California native who has been racing since she was 6 in go-karts and since has won championships in Mazda and Miata ladder series. She has several victories in the World Racing League GP2 (an amateur sports car endurance series). The last two years, Grisham has worked as a test driver for the Pirelli tire company (she lives near Pirelli’s U.S. headquarters in Rome, Georgia, and tests about 30 times a year).

Starting with the Sonoma during SprintX event weekends (which feature races Saturday and Sunday), she will split the Heart of Racing car with O’Meara-Hunt (a New Zealand native she got to know at the shootout).

“It’s huge; the biggest opportunity I’ve had in this sport,” Grisham, 23, told NBC Sports. “Now it’s up to me to perform how I know I can. But I’m super lucky to be with such an amazing team and have a good teammate. The Heart of Racing has a family vibe and energy to it that’s really amazing. It’s super exciting. It’s hard to put into words.”

Grisham is hopeful that a strong performance eventually could lead to a full-time ride with Heart of Racing. The team has full-time entries in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and won the GTD category of the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona with the No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 piloted by James, Darren Turner, Roman DeAngelis and Marco Sorensen.

James said “there’s no guarantee” of placement in an IMSA entry for Grisham and O’Meara-Hunt, but “if they prove themselves, we’ll continue to help them throughout their career and our team. The GT3 program is an obvious home for that. If they get the opportunity and don’t quite make it, we’ll be looking for the next two. The next three years, we’ll cycle through drivers until we find the right one.”

Grisham described the two-day shootout as a friendly but intense environment. After a day of getting acclimated to their cars, drivers qualified on new tires the second day and then did two 25-minute stints to simulate a race.

“Everyone was super nice,” she said. “Once everyone gets in the car, it’s a different level. A different switch gets turned on. Everyone was super nice; everyone was quick. I feel we had an adequate amount of seat time, which is definitely helpful.

“It’s always cool to meet more women in the sport because there’s not too many of us, even though there’s more and more. It’s always cool to meet really talented women, especially there were so many from all over the world.”

IMSA has celebrated female champions and race winners, notably Katherine Legge (who is running GTD full time this season with Sheena Monk for Gradient Racing). The field at Sebring and Daytona also included the Iron Dames Lamborghini (a female-dominated team).

James believes “a breakout female driver will be competing with the best of them” in the next five years as gender barriers slowly recede in motorsports.

“It’s been a male-dominated sport,” James said. “It’s still a very minute number of women drivers compared to the guys. I’m sure back in the day there were physical hurdles about it that were judged. But now the cars are not very physical to drive, and it’s more about technique and mental strength and stuff like that, and there’s no reason a girl shouldn’t do just as well as a guy. What we’re just trying to achieve is that there isn’t an obvious barrier to saying ‘Hey, I can’t hire a guy or a girl.’ We just want to put girls in front of people and our own program that are legitimate choices going forward for people.”

“There’s been some really good female drivers, but a lot of them just haven’t been able to sustain it, and a lot of that comes from sponsorship. I think (with the shootout), there’s no pressure of raising money and worrying about crash damage. We’ve taken care of all that so they can really focus on the job at hand.”

Funding always has been a hurdle for Grisham, who caught the racing bug from her father, Tom, an off-road driver who raced the Baja 1000 several times.

“I don’t come from a lot of money by any means,” she said. “So since a young age, I’ve always had to find sponsorships and get people to help me, whether it was buying tires, paying for entry fees, paying for the shipment of a car to an actual race. Literally knocking on doors of people or businesses in my town. So yeah, it’s definitely something I’ve always struggled with and held me back because the sport revolves so much around money. So again to get this opportunity is insane.”

Grisham credits racing pioneer Lyn St. James (an Indy 500 veteran and sports car champion) as a role model who has helped propel her career. She was hooked by the sights, smells and sounds of racing but also its competitive fire.

“There’s a zone you get in, that subconscious state of mind when you’re driving. It’s like addictive almost. I love it. Also I’m just a very competitive person as I think most race car drivers are.

“For sure I want to stay with the Heart of Racing. Obviously, I’m still getting to know everyone, but it’s a super family vibe. That’s how I grew up in the sport with just my dad and I wrenching on the cars. That’s what I love about this sport is all the amazing people you meet. And I think this is one of the most promising teams in this country. For sure, I want to learn as much as I can from them and hopefully continue. I feel so lucky and grateful to be one of those chosen.”