Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126453
o 00 0') really enjoy that kind of riding. That"s what we do for practice; go on little trails and stuff. Get ourselves down into terrain where we might be down in some little canyon for .a couple hours looking for a way out or making a trail through the woods and down through streams. I can do that forever. I love that kind of riding. I don't know if I'd make a living doing that. Maybe if I wanted to, I could probably get a job as a development rider and a racer for a company like Yamaha or something. There's other things too, like real estate. I'm just getting interested in it, buying property. I've been learning a lot about it, so I know that that's a good deal to get into. I just want to do something I'm going to enjoy. I hope that my racing caren will set me up for the rest of my life and I can do a job that maybe doesn't pay a lot of money, but I can still keep the things that I like. finished every other moto. That"s a good record. There's a lot of guys that maybe would have done better this year if they wouldn't have had, maybe a flat or grip coming off - it's the little silly things that lose the races. Something big hardly ever happens any more. Nobody throws chains on the bikes they're too well designed, Dave does a really good job. He's a nice guy; we get along really good. We're only about five months different in age, so we go riding and stuff all the time at home and do things at night. We're just good friends. A professional combination, too. Being on the same team with Bob Hannah, do you ever f«1 overshadowed? . No, not really. We don't have a totem pole system there. Everybody's their own person. If you have a bad week. you have a bad w«k. Nobody gets any equipment over anybody else. They don't make any special effort to make him happier than us, He gets nothing extra. They k«p us all at the same level. Sometimes. like if you haven't been doing good for a couple of w«ks. you get to a race and you sort of get the f«ling - you know, everybody's swarming around him in the pit area - that he's the hero. That's the only time you ever really even think about it - being any different. Bob's a really nice guy and we get along pretry good now. ('Dave (Osterman) is always complaining about me breakz'ng rearfenders off because I go right out past the seat. " 12 How is it riding for Yamaha? It's really good. It's really professional and really friendly. Yamaha is a great company. They're a race-oriented company. Everybody's interested. Every Monday morning everybody has results from the races on their desks. You walk in there at 9:00 on a Monday and everybody knows how you've done. If your name isn't on the results, "What happened?" "How come you didn't do this?" "Are you OK?" Everybody's concerned. You walk in the office and everybody says "Hi" and everything. It's really neat when everybody's k«ping enthused about it. Kenny Clark is real understanding, gets us a lot of our fringe benefits, and helps us out. All the other guys are really nice, all the departments. And on top of that, we've got the best motorcycle. That makes it nice too. How about Dave Osterman? Does he add a lot to your racing dfon? Oh yeah, he does. Every w«k, somebody comes up and asks me if I got a new bike. I've been riding the same one all year. I've only had two motorcycles all year long, yesterday I went up to the press conference, or press riding, out there at Anaheim Stadium, and a couple of guys came up and said, "Oh, you got a new bike?" "No, it's the same one I've been riding since February - the same bike." He makes them look really good and run really good. I only had one DNF all year long and lhal wasn't really his fault. There were so many things to do with only a limited amount of time to do them in. We Will you be going to J .pan to test the new bikes? I haven't gotten to go yet. We're going to do our testing here. They did testing over there before and it never came out right. The tracks and everything are really good over there. We've got to bring them over here to Carlsbad and Saddleback, tbe most rotten conditions in the world. Those are about the most miserable conditions you'll find, right here in California. AU the tracks back east are so nice and loamy and rough and everything. These are just bumpy and hard and slick and everything else. So we get a lot more done here. It's miserable, but we get a lot more done. How much time does it take to set up a new works bike? It takes probably. about five days straight, five·, six-. seven-hour days. testing. It takes a lot. When they come over we have gearboxes, different displacement sizes, different swingarm lengths, seats and handlebars and levers and everything. There's so many different things to test. Every year we do have a complete change. which is nice. I never thought they'd be any better. When I first rode them, I thought "There's no way that there can be a motorcycle better than this one." I was convinced that we were going to have to save that old one and ride it again. But every year they jusl keep amazing me. It gets better and bettc;,r and better. I mean big jumps every time. I think. "Well, they can make it just a little bit better," but it's a whole different world. When you get back on your old one, "Aw, get rid of id Destroy it." It amazes mf'. Whatever problem you had this year. we won't have that problem next year. It's really good. •