Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

he DeCoster-CZ association was already in its final days when Roger made his fourth return to the motocross winter series (now called the TransAMA) herd annually. in the U.S. during the GP off-season. In the T 10 course of the traditional European-American motocross struggle that fall, his switch to Suzuki was not official - nothing had been signed. But the rapidly flying rumors had it that the agreement tying DeCoster to Suzuki was being held up only by a few , small details that still needed resolving, In fact, Roger's motocross campaigning in Suzuki's yellow and black colors officially dates from January 17,1971. That day he received the final contract from Suzuki's company. headquarters in Harnamatsu , Japan and returned a signed copy to them a few hours after reading it. He was designated as the sole Suzuki-mounted rider contesting the 500cc World Championship Grands Prix. The factory didn't waste any time in telling newly-signed rider what they expected, Accompanying the contract was a letter from Japan , in English which read as follows: "We, Suzuki Motor, are now in large anticipation of conquering all the GP races of 1971 by you with machine of Suzuki." Pretty confident , whether justified or not , for their first year in 500cc World Championship. But then, Suzuki had just won their first 250cc World Championship with Joel Robert on one of their machines. Roger read and re -read the letter. He couldn't . help but corne to the conclusion that Suzuki's optimism was somewhat exaggerated. For one thing , Roger had not until that moment been positive that he should race the 500cc class. After testing , he had corne away with only minimal confidence in Suzuki's new 367cc bike. When they asked. him which class he preferred to ride, he answered without the slightest hesitation: "250. " "For one whole season , I wanted to get a chance to pilot those remarkable machines which Joel and Sylvain used to contest the Grands Prix, " said Roger. Now, during the 1970 American motocross season , that same 370 that Roger had been offered was given to Sylvain Geboers for testing. Rumors immediately started that Sylvain would move into the 500 class. That transfer seemed plausible because it appeared that it would be unthinkable for Suzuki to start the next World Championship season with Joel and Sylvain both still racing in the same displacement class. All during the preceding season, Joel and Sylvain were at each other's throats, with the final explosion in that bitter and unrelenting rivalry taking place on the track at Wohlen , Switzerland. A crash involving t,he two Belgian racers ended in a knockdown fistfight. The antagonism that brewed between the two Suzuki teammates reached such a high level that there was excellent reason to fear that they would face off and end up r~cing fiercely only against : each other. That was a prospect guaranteed not to charm Suzuki Motor. Co. - as th ey sat around waiting for the next explosive interaction between . the hot -tempered Belgians. _ Nevertheless, in 1970, the Suzuki factory heads never called either Joel or Sylvain before them to lay down their responsibliries . obligations , or their expected behavior out on the track , No doubt , the Beg lians escaped such remonstration only because, at the end , of tlie season, the World Championship belongedjo Suzuki. But the fact remained that the fratricidal battle pitting Joel against Sylvain had reached the point of their deliberately handing the overall victory in some of the Grands Prix to Heikki Mikkola in order to deny the win to the other Suzuki rider. Mikkola , a Finnish rider for the Husqvarna factory. took advantage of the opportunity. The Suzuki racing department could not afford to minimize the impact of this kind of behavior - and its net negative result for Suzuki . Therefore : it seemed that the Japanese would find the solution by having Sylvain entering the 1971 motocross wars at the handlebars of the new 370. In truth , he was under no obligation nor any ' constraint : Sylvain was free to choose what Grand Prix class he wanted to ride. Sylvain later chose the 250cc class - against everybody's prediction and Suzuki's wishes. There were to main reasons : I) Sylvain didn't have as much confidence in the 370 as in the 250cc bike which he had ridden in 1970 and which had ended up being the best machine of all 250' GP bikes. He was also afraid of the bugs inherent in the new, unproven 370cc machine and , while working them out , of losing an entire season . 2) Sylvain . a racer as ambitious as he was afflicted with bar! luck , also saw Suzuki 's proposition from the angle of the rivalry th at mat cher! him against Joel Robert . To accept the offer from Suzuki to take over the new 370 could be con strued as shirking direct competition with Joel , to whose World Championship hegemony he had been wanting to put an end for a very long time . Sylvain wanted to be 250 World Champion through defeating joel. So it was that, after a few weeks' consideration, Sylvain Geboers refused Suzuki's proposition. It was a decision which, as it turned out , marked the first unsuspected step in Roger DcCoster's progress upward - leading him to the 500cc world title . For Roger, then , there wasn't much leeway for bargaining in the offer Suzuki made him following Sylvain's decision : . . "If you join us , you will ride the 370 . . ." There is no evidence that would support talk of any actual deception by Suzuki, but Roger made it well-known that he wasn't especially pleased , since he had expressed a desire to ride the 250 . The brief discussion described above occurred on a Monday, November 16 , 1970, at the corporate headquarters of U.S . Suzuki located in the Los Angeles industrial suburb of Santa Fe Springs, California. Sylvain Geboers and Swede Olle Peuersson had JUSt put their signatures on new contracts with Suzuki . Joel Robert asked that his contract be re written , incorporating some ..new conditions he would spell out for Suzuki . His World Champion status gave him added clout. Roger DeCoster finally got back to Suzuki later that week with an answer to their' proposition . "Around mid -October , I went to the U.S , via Japan ," Roger remembered years later. "Suzuki invited me to their headquarters at Harnamatsu for the first preliminary contract talks. They also wanted me to test the machines . It was clear that I rode better on ' the 250 . Just to be polite, but . without much real interest, ( also tried the 367cc bike. I hadn 't realized before this that Suzuki was already very seriously planning their entry into the Grands Prix for the 500cc World Championship. The factory had decided to go the whole route toward the 500 Championship, just like they had done when they decided to enter 250cc p1otocross racing. . "But, it didn't matter. I meant to give priority to job security. In other words, it wasn't playing smart poker to bet on the ~70. " Then , just after Roger had finished the American winter motocross series and was staying in Los Angeles as a guest of Bud Ekins, he received a telephone call from U .S. Suzuki home office in Santa Fe Springs. He was asked to test -ride the 370 , seriously , one more time , A meeting place and time were agreed on: Monday , December 7, the day after the final race of the Trans·AMA winter series at Saddleback Park in Orange County , Calif. on that same course . This would allow comparison of the lap times on the Suzuki 370 with the times that Roger had turned 24 hours earlier in actual competition on the Saddleback track , " T ha t test, for m e as well as the people from Suzuki , surpassed all expectations. However , it wasn 't until after signing that contract that I learned thetimes for all the' laps du ':,ing the test at Saddleback would have made me the easy overall winner if th ey'd been achieved during the race the day before ." After that test , Roger, though still ignorant of th e comparative times turned on the CZ and the Suzuki, madea quick reassessrn- 1ll of all sides of .. his problem arid made an agreement in principle - an agreement not influenced by the results of his most recent ride on the 370 as much as by other , negative factors. "Before I kept that rendezvous with Suzuki at Saddleback , I went over one more time the mental list of slights and petty miseries that I'd had with CZ all during the season . Contrasted with that was t he exceptionally ·good Suzuki competition organization and the extensive 'su p po rt and help they gave all their riders. Joel and Sylvain had bent my ear many times extolling the quality of the Suzuki effort and its considerable merits . I didn't need to be reminded , I'd already witnessed that for a whole racing season. Week after week , I had lived and raced in the long shadow of Suzuki's excellent competition services department. I had been in a very good position to realize the considera ble advantages that a rider could rely on with that incredibly well -organized Suzuki • . support: I had been right behind Joel and Sylvain all season and there was no better viewpoint for getting the messag!' . Even though, from the other side of the argument, lowed a large debt of

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