Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

championship, and that's what I'm aftfi. o 00 0') ~ • 32 How are they helping you? In every way they can. More than the help I was getting from Ho~da. It's .a full factory ride, but I'm saymg that It seems that they're putting 100 Pfic~nt more effon into it than I was (getung from Honda). What did HODda _t do for you? They never kept in touch with me and they hardly developed their bikes at all until around '78 or '79, when they staned to do a little developing. But in '78 they hardly did any developing. There was a lot of testing, but nothing evfi got done. How come they didn't work on their bikes like the ocher factories? I have no idea. That was their downfall. Nancy: Dennis McKay, the latest te~ manager, wasn't he the one who saJd that they couldn't budget it? Marty: Yeah. They were always wor· ried about their budget. Honda!? Yeah. But everybody's always thought that they had unlimited ~ucb. T~at's heeD a big pan of then reputanon. Uh·uh. Not the way they talk. They always talk like they're hurting. y'see, last yrar we got the 450 works bikes in and they Wfie almost identical to the '78 works bikes. So we tested them and they didn't work out good. All of a sudden, my mechanic sees a telex on the desk in an office that says that they (Honda Japan) had new works bikes that were completely dif· ferent, and European Honda was going to buy them. Did American Honda want to buy them for their rid· ers? As it turned out, American Honda didn't want to buy the bikes because it wasn't in the budget. So European Honda got the new 450 bikes, which Graham Noyce and Andre Malherbe got to ride. And nobody in the United States cou1d figure out why the Hondas in Europe were doing so good and why nobody here could ride 'em. We were riding junkl What was WMDg with the bikes that you were ridiDg? They had too much horsepower and not enough suspension. The frames wfie geometrized (sic) wrong, and it just didn't work. When I found that out, it totally let me down. When HODda came out with their EIaiDOres about seveD or eight years ago, they were aD top of everybody ebe aDd aU the other JapaDelIe bike makers, because up uDtil then their bikes were junk. Honda did that for a little while but stopped advancing until the past couple of years. How come? Do you know? No, I couldn't figure it out. A lot of other people still can't figure it out, either. They'd come out with some· thing good one yrar, let it win and dominate, then they'd just lay back for a couple of yran. They nevfi tried to improve. Now, with Suzuki, they improve week after week, not year after year. But is it piDg to be tough, haviDg a bike that's always being changed under you? They're not like that. We test com· pletely different bikes than what we race. We'll race a bike for one complete series: then we'll make the changes during that week, but we don't ride theMe changes until the season's over. So you ride reaUy two sets of bikes, right? Right. What IOn of thiDgs do you test? Lots of people think that when you're a factory rider, yOD have it easy. But what do you han to reaUy put up with? You have to do testing. You have to ltay after the race for two extra days when you really don't want to, and you want to go home and relax.·Or you might have to go to a race a couple of days early and test before the race. But that's the way it is. It's my job and I have to do it. "You meet the nicest people on a Suzuki. " When you first started ridiDg for Honda, did you know much about bikes? Did you know aDything about aU the engineering that goes iDto a bike and how it wor"'? I didn't know then and I stiU don't know too much about engineering. But I know about the basil: mechanics, though. I know motor mechanics and changing swingarms and forks and stuff. Other than that, you just go out there aDd ride 'em. So how does all the vital information about a bike When you were ligaed up by HODda, you were complefely unkDOWD. But today you have to have lOme kiDd of trad record to get a ride. You got signed on the strength of one race (HaDgtowa) that HODda saw. Were youjDlt lucky? I think that I was in the right place at lhe right time. But nobody since Bob Hannah has received the kiDd of rewards and beDefiu that you've had from racing. By the time you were fiDished with Honda, you were making about $120,000 to $llIO,OOO indudiDg salary and boDuses. Did HODda ever give you anything besides moDey for a boDus? Yeah. They gave me one of their can one year. I gave it to my parents. But Yamaha gave Bob Hannah a FfiTarioDe year. Well, that's the difference between the two companies: Yamaha gave Bob Hannah a Ferrari; Honda gave me a I tried real hard, but I DNF about three races over there. I won Denmark; I was winning in Belgium. but I broke a frame. I was winning in France, but I broke a chain in the same place in both motos when I was leading. Would you have liked to have kept on racing in Europe then? Probably nol. Why? I was young at the time, and I didn'l like it there. I liked being home much better. Think you could try it DOW? Yeah. If 1 got paid good enough to race over there I'd do it. With Suzuki? Yeah. Since they've already got guys racing over there already, it doesn't look like they'd do it. The money is here in the U.S., for me and the company. So a World Championship doesD't mean that much 10 you, does it? No. A National Championship means almost as much. Haven't you always wanted to be the best in the world? Yeah. BUI the competition in motocross in the States today is lhe fiercest of any sport, I think. There's more good riders here. It's kind of crazy 10 go somewhere else and race - lhe world title would be good, but all the money's over here. "When you're out there racing, yOu're not out there thinking about how much money you're go'ing to be mak'ing, you're thinking a bout . . wznnzng. " get accurately coDveyed 10 a mechanic or eDgineer from a rider? I found out that Suzuki sends a factory mechanic to every test session. As soon as anything's decided that needs to be changM, a telex is sent to Japan. Within that week you get an answer, and within two weeks they get the modification, and we're able to try it out. By the time you left Honda, did you get aDY responses from any of the other factories? I had been negotiating with Honda for so long, that by the time I called everybody else it was too late. They al· ready had their teams picked. Would you have sat out the season, or would you have IpoIIIOred yourself? No, I probably wouldn't have been riding, period. What would've you done? I don't know. I didn't want to quit, because I want 10 go out and win a cham· pionship and prove everybody wrong. I wouldn't have privateered it, DO way. Honda car. But they were still good to me for six yean. How come Brad Lackey quit HODda? Probably for the same reason I did. But he was doing real weU on Honda. And wheD he went back to Kawasaki he hasn't heeD doing that good. When you weDt to Europe hack in 1976, I read that you weren't very happy about the mODey, travel or anything. ID fact, Gaston Rahier said that you had a fUDDY attitude about racing iD Europe that he couldn't uackrstand. Howevfi, while you were raciDg the 125cc MX GPs, you were just about the oDly guy who was aDY threat to him, How come Europe didn't work out? I don't know. I got third in the world that year, and I rode less than half the races. . It ~ed like you wereD't trying very hard. But look at Roger DeCoster. He was champ for five yean, aDd he did real good. If you're World Champion, then you get paid really good in Europe. How come the u.s. has Dever had a World MX ChampioD? It's because nobody has ever concen· trated enough on it in Europe. I think if the factories sent their two best riders to Europe, we would have a World Champion in two or three years. But then they have their own guys there. Well, American riders are completely different from European riden. The tracks are completely different in Europe. Some of them are rougher over there, but some of the tracks here are rougher, too. I've always heard that the Europeans are pretty smooth OD the trad. I wouldn't say that. When I rode in Europe, they seemed as crazy as hell to me. Would they just hold OD and gassit? I don't know. They'd go fast, but it seemed that there's a lot of squirrelly riden over there. They seemed like they weren't under control all the time. Were they as bad as the average suppon clau rider? For sure. How come? It seems like there are some radical riden over there. Then how is it that they caD wiD World Championships? Is it just numbers, or what? Maybe. They can get used to riding crazy, but I like to be under control at least 50 percent of the time. I>eCo8ter's a1IO a reaUy big star in Europe, too, I hear. Just like Reggie

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