Stuart Higgs, the Series and Race Director for the British Superbike Championship, and three-time AMA Superbike Champion Doug Chandler have joined the Race Direction committee that will oversee the race operations and regulation enforcement of the new MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Road Racing Championship.

Higgs will serve as Race Director, Chandler is the MotoAmerica [Rider] Representative and the third member of the Race Direction committee at Circuit of The Americas is FIMNA Safety Officer Bill Cumbow, a long-time AMA/FIM official.

“I’ve enjoyed coming to the USA for the last two or three years in an FIM role at the MotoGP rounds,” Higgs told Roadracingworld.com. “The sanctioning body for this new series is now FIM North America, so there is an FIM link as well. The calendar works out. I was asked, and I took up the offer. There’s also Scott Smart coming on board to look after the technical side, and Scott has worked very closely on the development of the British Superbike technical rules as well.

“It’s a new beginning. I think we all recognize the pedigree of the U.S. Championship, and it does have potential, and this is almost Day One of the new order. There will be some bumps ahead I’m sure, but we have a real collaborative partnership with the teams and riders and understand their concerns. I will portray some ways of doing things differently that they will benefit from, and collectively if it makes for the re-establishment of the U.S. road racing scene to be somewhere near where we had, then it will be job well done.”

Ironically, Higgs’ British Superbike Championship, arguably the most successful domestic Superbike Championship in operation today, is not FIM-sanctioned and does not follow FIM Sporting Regulations closely, like MotoAmerica is trying to do. But Higgs put things in perspective, saying, “It’s like with anything, you can pick certain bits of certain structures and pick the best bits and modify it for local conditions. I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all scenario.

“Certainly having someone with sporting and commercial knowledge [Higgs], someone from a safety background [Cumbow] and someone with contemporary rider experience at the highest professional level [Chandler, on the Race Direction committee] is going to be a good thing.”

Scheduling conflicts will prevent Higgs from attending two MotoAmerica rounds in 2015. At those rounds, former MotoGP Race Director Paul Butler will come out of retirement to serve in Higgs’ absence.