Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Ducati North America General Manager Michael Lock says Ducati becoming more involved in AMA Superbike racing is a top priority for him, but that rule changes are needed to bring parity between 1000cc four cylinders and 1000cc V-Twins.

“I really intend to make it a top priority over the next two or three years,” said Lock when asked about Ducati’s involvement in AMA Superbike racing during the North American press launch of the Multistrada 1000DS in Dana Point, California. “So we’re starting a dialogue on Ducati North America’s side, because commercially, involvement in AMA Superbike racing is very important to us. If I can get dealers behind what we’re doing – we can win on Sunday we can get people excited on Monday – we can do a whole bunch of promotion, which we’re not doing at the moment.

“I was up at Road America, apart from our beautiful trailers in the paddock, we’re not really there, and a quarter of the bikes in the parking lot are red and Italian. And we’ve got to balance that out, we’ve got to get involved because this is our heritage, this is what we do well. And struggling to finish fifth or seventh in not what Ducati is about. We’re looking at balancing that out, and we will get much more involved from corporate in California, much more.”

Lock said he spent the June 6-8 weekend at Road America with Ducati Austin and Dream Team Ducati “looking at the problems they were encountering, feeding that information to the people in Bologna. This year, it’s very difficult to do anything to dramatically change the situation.

“As I’m sure you well know, Anthony Gobert and Team Austin have parted the ways. It just wasn’t working out, and I think everyone would agree that was the best decision for all.

“We had a series of discussions with Larry (Pegram) and the (Dream Team Racing) guys when we were up at Road America. We were overjoyed to see the result (Pegram’s third place) in the second Superbike race at Road America. We were all jumping up and down in the paddock because they were going so well.

“I don’t know the details of their financial situation at the moment. I know that things are tight, but I don’t know what is going on at the moment. And there were some discussion directly between Bologna and the (Dream Team) guys over here, and I don’t know what the outcome is at the moment. I’m not really involved in that directly. We’ve been concentrating on trying to get things going for next year.

“We’re involved in almost daily conversations with the AMA about the rules settings for next year, which is critical to the level of commitment I can get from Bologna,” said Lock. “They don’t want to keep developing lots of different motorcycles for World Superbike, for AMA Superbike and British Superbike. We’re the smallest major team involved and cutting the cake so many different ways is very difficult for me to get the support I need to do it properly over here.”

According to Lock, traditionally all discussions between Ducati and AMA Pro Racing have been held directly between the two entity’s headquarters – Bologna, Italy and Pickerington, Ohio. But Lock has started to talk to “AMA Pro Racing Director of Competition Merril Vanderslice” and “various people in the rules committee” and “anyone who’ll listen” trying “to see if what we can do is we can come to some sort of understanding, both between the needs of the AMA and the needs of a small factory like our own so that we can get a commonality of rules so that we can step up to the plate and be involved. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Lock and some “heavyweights” from Bologna hope to have meetings with the powers that be in AMA Pro Racing and with the World Superbike series at the Laguna Seca event in July.

“I think there are discussions to be had concerning intakes (restrictors),” said Lock. “There are discussions to be had concerning weight. There are discussion to be had concerning the tunability of the two- and four-cylinder engines. I think it’s all on the table, and I think all of the players involved understand all the variables are. It’s a question of which ones you tweak to make everybody happy.

“We’re not looking for a situation where the big Japanese teams with four cylinders feel that they’re disadvantaged, because this will go on forever. It’ll probably go on forever anyway.

“But nonetheless, we’re looking for a compromise that will allow us to compete. You can see from worldwide racing, we can compete. We can compete, we just need a variation of the rules here that as much as possible are common with World Superbike. That would really help us out, and ultimately, I think it would help out all of the teams. The development of several different specifications of bike for the same class of racing in different parts of the world doesn’t really suit anybody.

“We’re not looking for any special favors. We’re looking for an understandings of our position of being a small team with small resources, so that we can compete equally with all of the big guys and do what we do in Europe.”

Asked what Ducati North America’s ideal for the 2004 season would be – how many teams, how many riders, which classes – Lock said, “That’s a level of detail I’ve not really looked at yet because we want to get the principals established. Because if we’re going to be involved I’m going to need the people in Bologna to stop doing other things and start doing work specifically for us, which they’ve not done for a while.

“So we need to see a kind of thumbs-up that there’s going to be the possibility to be involved. Once we get there, we can talk about teams, we can talk about whether it’s direct support, whether it’s private team support, we can talk about Supersport class as well as Superbike. There’s a whole bunch of things we can do if we feel we’re on the same page.

“The grids in Supersport and Superbike without Ducati will look at bit two dimensional. Whether we’re winning or not, we need to be there. I think it’s in everybody’s interest, not only ours, to have a full, three-dimensional grid with Italian bikes, Japanese bikes, everybody there who wants to be there. It’s a priority for me, so we’ll do what we can.

“I would like to see Ducati North America much more involved, not just in racing activities with the AMA but everything,” said Lock. “We’ve been kind of remote, I think, the last two or three years. I see no sense in that. So I’m looking at building a much stronger relationship with the AMA.”

Locke added that he was investigating what it would take for Ducati to become a corporate member of the AMA for the first time in the company’s history.