Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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The King in front: Kenny Roberts leads Randy Mamola and Mike Baldwin at Laguna Seca. 1984. When it was time to go. Roberts left them far behind. 'formula One is ~umberQne By Paul Carruthers Kenny Roberts may be the greatest motorcycle racer in the history of the United States. He won the Grand National Championship twice, the 500cc World Road Racing Cham. pionship ~hree times. He has stood at the forefront of improving treatment and payment of ride'rs in World Champion- 36 ship road racing. And he is firmly committed to Formula One road racing in the Uni-ยท ted Stales, never mind that the recent trend. is toward emphasizing the Superbike class. "My intentions now are to help Formula One grow and if 1 have to race a Formula One motor,cycle in America to do that, then 1will do it," Roberts says. "I want Formula One to succeed because iC we lose Formula One in America, we will no longer have the worldwide dominance that we have now." Roberts thinks that Formula One, not Superbi"ke racing, is the key to success. "To bring Freddie, Randy and Eddie back to America they would have to race on a streetbike (if there was no Formula One). To send any young Americans over to Europe to race a GP bike would no longer work because.: he wouldn't know what it was to race a GP bike. "I feel Formula One is the number one class in America and it always will be the number one class. It's just like Indy cars. No matter bow big stock cars get, Indy cars are still going to be number one." Roberts is prepared to spend his time and energy promoting Formula One and his return to racing may be thecatalystofa successful series. Racing in the United States has faded since Roberts crossed the Atlantic in 1978 and his return to the race tracks of America, or even his presence, could strengthen racing. "If I have to race to see that Formula One survives, then I will do that," Roberts says. "I will do whatever it takes. including helping the riders organize themselves. I will help them sell public relations packages of the sport and themselves and I'll promote races myself if I have to." In 1985 the Daytona 200 will adopt a new program featuring the Superbike class while the Formula One event will be the support class. The news of the change brought many different opinions on the subject and Roberts has his own opinion. "I'm not too concerned with what they do at Daytona," Roberts says. "If that promoter chooses to run streetbikes then it's not my problem. The only problem I have is that I don't want to see Formula One become a Friday event. I just don't understand why they just don't drop Formula One if it's as bad as they think it is. "It looks to me like Daytona is trying to get spectators there with a shotgun. If they have motocross, 250cc road racing, Novice and sportsmen racing, enduros, Formula One, Superbikes and half miles then they have a whole conglomerate oC motorcycle enthusiasts. They'll take what they can get, whether it's 10.000 enduro fans or 30,000 motocross fans and maybe 5,000 of them will stay and watch road racing. 1 mean the whole thing is not what I would call a good promotion, but that's the way they run it. There's nothing 1can say about it, they can do whatever they want. I just can't understand why the AMA gave them the sanction to run the Formula One on Friday." Last year Roberts spoke out after winning his third Daytona 200. He vowed to never return because differences in machinery and traffic problems made the race unsafe. This year's race will be as dangerous, if not more so, according to Roberts. "Now they have 500cc GP equipment that will run about 170 mph and streetbikes that are 750cc running at about 130 mph," he said. "They are going to line the!"Jl up and race. Last year, they had lOOOccstreetbikes which were bad enough, but now it will be even w6rse. Ijust think that before some of the Formula One guys and some of the streetbike guys run into each other and kill themselves, that someone should take a serious look at Daytona. "I sat on the seat of a motorcycle last year so I got a pretty good view of what it's like to lap these guys. Some oC these guys are at Daytona to have fun or whatever, but the safety hazards are too serious to joke about. I think everyone is ignoring the problem and the problem is that it's unsafe and they're fooling themselves. I stood up and said that I wasn't racing there anymore because nobody was doing anything about the safety problem." Did Roberts' decision not to race at Daytona have any infl uence on management's choice of Superbikes over Formula One? "I don't think it .had anything to do with it," Roberts says. "Daytona promotes NASCAR and NASCAR is Daytona. They want a NASCAR in streetbikes but there is only one problem with that; if we turn motorcycle racing into NASCAR there won't be any Freddie Spencers, Randy Mamolas, Eddie Lawsons or Kenny Roberts