Roadracing World’s John Ulrich recently met with newly elected FIM President Vito Ippolito at Ippolito’s office in Caracas, Venezuela. Prior to his election as the leader of the FIM, which sanctions World Championship motorcycle racing, Ippolito served as the President of the FMV, the Venezuelan equivalent of the AMA. Part of their discussion follows: Roadracing World: There is interest in having unified rules for Superbike racing around the world. But World Superbike allows a much higher technical specification than, for example, AMA Superbike. The problem that the AMA and other National Federations face is that the bikes are too fast for many of the racetracks, so they want to slow the bikes down. There is now some discussion about moving the specifications closer to Superstock instead of continuing to use existing National Superbike rules. What do you see as the future structure of Superbike racing in the world? Vito Ippolito: I think the question is very interesting because one of the problems is to harmonize the rules. But there are of course various people involved, the federations, promoters, the factories, teams, and so on. And the job of the FIM in the immediate future will be to arrange meetings with all the persons involved in this matter. In principal, the main goal of the FIM is to maintain a structure so that this kind of bike is very close to production, series production. This is the main goal. And we hope to convince everybody that we are in the same ship and that we have to go in the same direction together.
© , Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.