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/126930
l-; v ..0 o .... u o Phil McDonald In and out of the cage By Bruce Newton Photos by Paul Carruthers and Bert Shepard After five years turning wrenches on the Camel Pro Series road race circuit, Phil McDonald thinks he knows how animals in prankster, is one of the best the zoo feel. 14 McDonald, a 30-year-old resident of southern California with the devilish eyes of a born known and best paid tuners working on the American road racing scene, holding the position of road race technician with Team Honda, the racing arm of American Honda. McDonald road raced and dirt tracked bikes and then campaigned midget sprint cars before retiring and picking up the wrenches for brother Sam in 1982, the year Sam won the Formula Two National Championship on a Yamaha, without winning a race. Phil was then signed by Team Honda to work for Mike Baldwin, wrenching on the multiple Formula One Champion's four-stroke and two-stroke machinery. Baldwin has left Team Honda and is now riding for the Kenny Robensl Lucky Strike Yamaha team in Europe. McDonald has stayed in the states. This year he tuned Wayne Rainey's Team Honda RSSOO for Camel Pro Formula One events and that is where the zoo feeling comes from. Rainey is one of the winningest and most popular riders in the country and racing fans are drawn to his pit area like bees to honey. They congregate three and four deep behind a rope fence and gaze in as McDonald works on his bike. Rainey is rarely there, except when there is business to be done, but McDonald is virtually always there, his small area bounded at the rear by the enormous Team Honda transporter and by plastic walls on either side. And of course, people at the front - a cage of sorts. This i a time when McDonald's usual quick smile and oddball humor fades from sight. He becomes intense, trying to block out the outside world, usually without complete success. "It's annoying when you're trying to do your job and people are trying to ask you questions," he says frankly. "But you've gOlto keep up the image so you've got to use diplomacy." . Image. McDonald is well aware of the problems you face when you're the big guy on the block. "Honda is a big company so youhave to put up with a lot of ridicule and a lotof people saying that Honda buys everything and that it doesn't matter who's working with it, they've 'got the money and the resources to be able to overcome anything. "That is true in one sense," he admits. "But it is basically a team e£foH. Everyone working together is what makes a team and what makes everything happen and what makes us so strong. "I don't mind putting in 12 or 15 hours a day if I have "guy who is going to put out 100%. When my rider is leadinga race I get so excited, I jump up and down and I wave him on when I'm giving him signals. It's like me being out there, the motorcycle is me and I hate to lose. I get so disappointed and upset it makes me go back and work so much harder so we can win." McDonald's competitive streak is obvious. That it would be channelled into motorcycle racing was invevitable. McDonald was born in San Bernardino, California. His father, Norm, was a successful Yamaha dealer and was a partner in K&N Manufacturing of handlebar and air filLer frames. However, by the time Phil was 16, his father had tired of the smog, taxes and growing population of southern California, had divested himself of his interests and headed of[ to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he set up another Yamaha dealership. By this time Phil was racing and being sponsored by his father: "He just enjoyed racing so much that he was always spon oring someone. At one stage we had about a IS-rider team, desert racers, road racers, you name it. It was a lot of fun." The year after their shift McDonald scored what he rates as his biggest win, beating out 10hn Long and Pat Hennon for the Ioo-mile 1 tmior race win at Daytona International Speed: way. There were other fine results, but a factory ride was not forthcoming arid the frustrations grew: "It was hard to race with a lot of people when you could go just as hard through the corners and have them leave you on the straightaways." In the latter part of his racing career McDonald and his father, who remained his major sponsor, concentrated on diFt track but still that National win eluded him and he retired in 1980 frustrated: "It just got so difficult. The desire after doing it for so long and not being able to race with the factories was gone, so it .turned into a fun thing." His memories are rich ones though, ask him who the best riders he raced against were and he reels of[ names like Roberts, Sheene, Aksland, Baldwin, Nixon and Agostini. McDonald dabbled in midget sprint cars for a season, winning a championship and then his brother Sam asked him to go to Daytona with him