France family’s march toward motorsports monopoly

Don't think for one short moment that the France family does not only want to monopolize auto racing in North America. Now they are branching out and are starting a motorcycle racing series to be managed by Grand-Am. In this interview Grand-Am President Roger Edmondson dropped the bombshell very nonchalantly – "We have the Rolex Series, but we're also going to be introducing our new MOTO-ST motorcycle championship."

When questioned further about it, he said, "Well, actually my background before I got the call, as we call it, to come down here and start Grand-Am was in motorcycle road racing. I was able to bring to Grand-Am some of the things that had worked well in the World Superbike and the AMA Superbike Championship, some of the things I had a hand in bringing into those sports. We tried them in car racing and It worked out.

"At the same time, this is a business where there's no book on how to do it. You learn something every event and every year. We think that there are some things in our Grand-Am program, in our car racing program, that would enhance motorcycle racing. We've announced and are working with a couple of other groups, our involvement in a new endurance championship for twin-cylinder motorcycles only, the BMWs, the Harleys, Ducatis, and certain Suzukis and Kawasakis, so forth. We're real excited about it. The first event comes up in about three weeks at Daytona, the 8 Hours At Daytona. It's interesting to see the entry list build, some of the old names coming back."

Don't for one moment think that the France family will do this half-heartedly. They don't do anything that way, and if we were the AMA, we would start to worry whether this is another divide and conquer motorsports effort because motorcycle racing was getting too popular for them not to have their fingers all over it.