At yesterday’s launch of the Monster Energy MX Nationals for 2012, Williams Event Management managing director Kevin Williams spoke about the future of the sport on a number of levels.

Here’s a full transcript from the press conference of his vision for the series, which is set to be the greatest on record this season. Williams is the topic of our latest The Point feature story.

I’m certainly very excited about the championship moving into 2012. It’s my 16th year involved in the championship and I’ve never seen a rider line-up like we’ve got this year.

The depth of talent this year we’ve got is fantastic – there are more international riders on factory teams than Aussies, so we’ve certainly got our work ahead of us, but have plenty of capable riders.

It’s come a long way since we first got involved in 1997 and every year we try to improve some things, so we are delighted to welcome on Monster Energy as title sponsor. We are very excited to welcome Monster Energy onboard, they’re very progressive in the way that they market and promote to the demographic and people out there.

Clearly their involvement with Kawasaki has been seen over the past couple of years and supercross, so their commitment to motorcycle sport is second to none. We thank Adrian [Hunter] and all the crew for getting onboard and will work hard to make sure the partnership is a longstanding one.

The international line-up is sensational and I think this championship expanding to 10 rounds will create a stepping-stone into the very lucrative AMA series. Certainly they’re looking back here. Ben Townley has already said in some of his statements that he’s keen to go back to the U.S. and this is the platform he’s hoping to do that from.

We’ve got representatives from six different countries entered. It’s a great international line-up and the depth is there. There are 11 guys that I look at in MX1 who are capable of probably winning motos and five that could realistically challenge for the championship.

There are clearly 11 guys in MX2 that could win races and also probably three or four that could win the championship. There are new names coming out of juniors into the Pirelli Under 19s, so all the way through we are going to see great depth.

We’re also delighted to have TAG Heuer onboard with the new timing system. For competitors, they can now go after the race and analyse every part of their race. They can look at every lap time all the way through, which they haven’t been able to do in the past.

For spectators, they can look at their iPhone, iPad, or whatever, and watch the timing live. They can click on their favourite rider, his profile will pop up with all of his sponsors, so it’s more interactive and people all around the world will be able to see what’s happening.

There are a lot of elements to this, such as when riders go on and enter now, they have to fill out a complete medical section. We use Suzuki RACESAFE at the races, so now they will have direct medical information on these riders, and before they get back to the RACESAFE truck they will be logged in looking at their medical history.

Further to that, we will be adding a function to the program, so when we get to the first round, they will receive the timing live to their trucks without having to buy any other apparatus. We have invested in a digital channel that we’ll be able to transmit out to the trucks.

We want to add more and more to it every year and the TAG partnership is certainly allowing us to do that. We’ve got brand new transponders, brand new data entry and management systems, plus the winner over the next three years in MX1 will get a really smart TAG Heuer watch to wear as the championship winner.

All of our sponsors from last year have come back onboard and it’s great to see their support. Even though we don’t have television, what we’re doing with social media, videos, access for videos, which will certainly allow for great coverage. We’re already seeing great coverage in the magazines, just because of the size of the championship this year.

We’re certainly excited to welcome Skullcandy onboard, they are the Official Sound of the MX Nationals, so at every round we’ll have an FM channel there through the PA system so people can listen to it through their headsets, through their cars, or whatever else. There will be a complete sound experience from Skullcandy and they look forward to being a bigger part of the championship.

There are plenty of other new sponsors that have come onboard, which we have put releases out about – I’m not going to mention them all, because we’ll be sitting here all day, but thank you to all of those people who are supporting the championship.

This year out of the 10 rounds, four of them will be two-day events. With the success of the final round at Coolum over two days, it attracts more people and more riders. We’ve seen the Vets in the championship and that worked well, plus we added the Pro Quads as a support class last year and they’ll now be at two rounds as a national title.

We’ve also added some amateur classes. At the third round at Wonthaggi we’ll be running two junior categories, plus a B- and C-grade support class. In Western Australia we’ll have a Rookies class, plus again the B/C support. The amateurs are part of what keeps the industry going and we want them to feel a part of it.

It is our aim in 2013 to look to create a one-off big amateur championship event, similar to the Loretta Lynns, for all the senior riders. We have so many riders in Australia who race, but don’t get to that national level, so we’re giving them the opportunity to come along.

It’s pretty much what the Thumper Nats did for the Clubman classes, giving them an opportunity to be in the paddock, be on the track and experience what the pros experience. We’re really looking forward to that.