Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

can feel for yourself wh en yo u' ve full y recovered. It's not gonna be a problem. "I know a lot of people hav e been sceptical a bo u t m y last three years . For my part, I feel as th ough that is a chap ter of my life that ended wi th my retirement at th e start ' of 1988. I feel quite different than I did th en, a nd I'm grateful to Agostini and to Marlboro for giving me this chance. I won 't lei them down. ' 'I'm satisfied with my decision, and with my approach. It feels right - and that is such a big key to success. I feel as though I' m going on a mission." After the main conference was over, I had some time with Freddie alone. I asked him if 1988 had been boring for him. He smiled a weary smile, and nodded. " When yo u do something all of your life, you tak e it for granted. It was only after leaving racing that I realiz ed how much I mis sed different thin gs abo ut it." And wh at had he mi ssed th e most? H old on, here comes that confidence again. " Win ning rac es. That's a real specia l feeling that you don 't ge t in normal life." Can he reall y be expectin g to co me back and win, after hi s rival s have had three year s to master th e very techniques that h e (a n d Kenny Rob erts ) introduced to the sport? The answer is yes, but Fredd ie isn 't only dreaming, He looked the facts straight in the eye, and didn't feel th e need to flinch . Like the touchy questi on of hi s physical condition. ' " I' ve always ' believed in natural healing rather than surgery. Wh en I had wri st problems before th e start of th e 1988 season, doctors told me th ey could operate, and ma ybe I'd be fit to race in six to 10 weeks. Maybe. I'd heard that word before, and I didn 't want to go through all that disap pointment again. Earlier I'd tried electro therapy with Dean Mill er (fu ll-time physio to Lawson a n d Tea m Roberts ). Tha t made things worse, causing internal hemorrhaging and J bad swelling. "Announcing my retirement was the only thing I could do. I wasn 't phys ically up to racing, and th at is dangerous for myself and the other competitors. But if I'd been ab le to do it wi th one hand, then I'd have gone out and won it. After that, I needed to get to full strength to go car racing. The most significant thing was that I changed doctors in April, and started a more aggressive physiotherapy regime. Later in the year I began to feel fully 'r ecovered, and two ' separate hand specialists gave me tests and passed me fit. " Doctors also found a trapped nerve in my spine, which ma y have contributed to my right hand a nd arm problems - but it is -ano ther thing that heals by itself. " You know, when I was planning to put together my own team for 1988, I always considered myself as one of the riders. That hasn 't worked out, and if Eddi e hadn 't moved to Honda, then the cir cu m sta n ces wouldn't have ari sen that I'd be riding for Marlboro Yamaha. But I was ready to ride whatever happened." Spencer admits to being a touch overweight, but foresees no problems in trimming that off. " I h ave a deal with Ago that if he loses three kil os (6.6 pounds ), I'll lose six (13 .2 pounds)," he says with a grin. "But I don 't want to be as light as I was in '85, when I was racing the 250 as well." Freddie's move .to Yam aha was perhaps even mo re surprising than his return to racing. H e has been a H onda man ever since he started hitting th e big tim e in the U.S. at the end of th e seventies. One reason is the failure of h is own proposed team . . . it is ru mored tha t HRC declined to supp ly him bikes. "T hey were very surprised at what I did , but they had plenty of opportunities to keep me with th em. T he' problem was th at with HRC's new management during 1988, it was real hard to get a firm yes or no answer from them. I believe that will change now that Mr. Fukui (former HRC head ) has returned - but as far as me going to Yamaha, HRC had lots of chances to prevent tha t. ' The switch also invol ves technicalities as well as politics. O f course, Yamaha's '89 bike is still secret, and ma y well turn out to be a H ondastyle single-crankshaft V-4 (the 250 Yamaha is said to be a single cra n k V). But H onda and Yam aha each have di stinct and fairly consistent characteristics of perf ormance and handling - fast and twitch in the case of H onda, steady a nd smooth for Yama ha. Freddie, free from th e obligation to be n ice abo u t Honda, has enth us ias tically swi tc hed to beat ing Yama ha' s drum. " I' ve never ridde n a Yama ha improved state of th e competitio n. The reactio n of the likes of Gardner and La wso n to hi s return has been al most moc king, like, " He'll get a surprise wh en he sees how much faster we're go ing nowadays ." Freddie acknowledges this is partly true, but is unworried. " I followed th e wh ol e of the '88 seaso n , and yeah, o ther riders have im proved. Co mpeti tio n breed s co mpe ti tio n , -a n d th ey're going faster . Bu t th ey'r e far from unbeatable. " T he difference may be th at in 1985 it was mu ch easier. As a wh ol e, riders are now going very aggressively from the start of th e race on cold tires and full of fuel. T hat's how I used to ride - often- times my best lap would be th e second or third. In 1989, th e wi nner is gonna be th e one wh o is the most aggressive, and th e sma rtest. " But if they're all going so m uch faster, how come Christian Saaron set five (actually seven) fastest laps th rou gh th e year? H ow come Christian is still th ere?" Freddie is quite clear tha t his major riva ls will be the p air who do minated '88, bo th now on su p posedl y iden tical Hondas . " What happens with Eddie and Wayne will Marlboro Yamaha ,Team Agostini With 18 World Championships betWeen them. M arlboro Yamaha's Freddie Spe ncer (left) and Giacomo Agostini are a potent pairing. (500cc GP bike), but of course I've seen a lot of them during races, and I'm really looking forward to it." In Japan, he told a journalist that he was accustomed to underpowered bik es with good handling, from his successes , aboard the three-cylinder Honda. . This , applied to the Yam aha, sounded much like th e ba sis for a series of " no hors epower" excuses if the season doesn't go well , but wh en I tax ed him with thi s he was determinedly dipl om ati c. " I gu ess I was reall y referring to the Yamaha's better handling. I've always seen how it can change line mid-corner, whereas with the Honda you were reall y committed to one line, and to getting off the corn er fast. A good -handling bike allows you to use more of your .riding ab ility th en th e lim it is more th e best yo u can do than th e best th e bike can do . "T he Yamaha power al so seems smoo ther. Som e people believed I like a peak y engine. I'drather have a soft engine, bu t my style needs to have good power from the middle th rough th e top of th e rev ran ge. To get th at ,' yo u hav e to lose power somewhere else, and Honda too k it from th e bo tto m of th e rev ra nge, which made the engines peaky." One ma jor question co ncerns ' th e depend on wh at HRC does to th e bike. If th ey don 't change it much , it'll favor Gardner. Eddie will find , it hard to ada pt to the twitch y bike, because he's a real smo oth rider. With the Honda, it 's sort of con trolled out-of-control. But if th ey change the Honda a lot for 1989, I'd favor Eddie. Gardner 's fast , but hi s . style lacks some finesse. "There seems to ' be a lot of an imosity betw een them. Maybe I'll be abl e to use th at to my advant age." Of th e rest, the n am e Kev in Schwantz is th e o ne th at comes up th e most often, but Freddie is all too aware of th e what- ifs th at pr evail : wh at if Dunlop co mes up with some good tires for Rainey and Magee of T eam Roberts; wh at if H onda comes up with a real ro cketship for '89; what if the SuzukiiSchwantz combinat ion hits a high spot. What ; indeed, if Freddie himself loses interest in th e racing before the season is half way through? H e is read y to gi ve th e stro ngest assurances th at hi s comebac k is fuel ed 'by the desire to win, and no o ther reason. " It can' t be money. T hat doesn 't last. I started racing when I was six, and I di dn 't thi n k abo ut money then . You have to care abou t it to do it, and I mean to be ag gressive and to establish a do minant position from the first ra ce. " Maybe I'll find it 'll take a while to get into the groove. But I'm dedica ted to it. I ro de a H onda superbike at a track near 'my home several months back, and it felt good. I certain ly had no problems with my wrist. I mean to get a lot of testing with th e Yam ah a to be read y for th e first GP (the Japanese, at th e end of Mar ch ). One of my assets was always th e way I was pr epared 'for races, so I co uld ride hard from the very beginning. I'll have to be more aggressive than ever in 1989." The big switch from Honda to Yamaha means that Spencer has also left his long-time technical guru Erv Kanemoto, who iro nicall y eno ugh will now prepare Lawson's Rothmans H onda. It was Kan em oto's co nsp iracy with Laws on, indeed, that left a vacant perch on th e Marlboro Yamaha team . Now Freddi e will be deal ing with form er World Champion Kel Carruthers, th e mechanical architec t of three Yama ha World Cham pionship titl es each for Roberts and Lawson. " In the 21 years I've been racing, my bi kes have always been p repared . by my father or Erv. Sure, wit h Kel it'll be different at first.rBu t all a rider needs to do is to comm unicate wh at chan ges he needs ma de to the bik e. What was so good about me and Erv was tha t we co mm unicated so well. " I had already spoke a lot with Kel before I signed wi th Agostin i. (In fact, Carr ut hers was an importa nt inte rmediary in establish ing con tact betw een Ago stin i a n d Spencer , altho ugh Freddie revealed th at he had personally been in touch wit h Marlboro even before the jigsaw puzzl e fell in to pl ace.)'I respect his ac h ievements and h is ability, and we're both looking forward to the seaso n a whole lo t. , " ETv is first and foremost a friend, and my feeling about him signing Eddi e u p is no problem. H e had to get the best rider he co uld. But I kn ow he's su pportive, and that he 'll be pl eased if I do well." Freddie's surprise ret urn to bikes has interr u pted a somewhat fitful switch to car racing. Alt hou gh a fou rth p lace in one of th e few races he did was no mean ach ievement, he ' reall y made no impact on the fourwh eel wo rld. H e sees i t a little differently. " I enj oyed th e cars very much, and I went pretty well. But first, . I felt that bike racing was unfinished. I went testing a bit with ' Mario Andretti. He 's 50, and is still racing car s successfu lly, so . . . He told me he 'd like to race bikes now. I told him h e's too old, but it doesn 't work like that th e o ther wa y arou nd." And just how long does he feel he will co ntin ue motorcycl e ' racin g, given tha t his curren t Ma rlboro contrac t is for just one year. "Yeah . I'm ta king it one year at a time. For sure, I'd have to feel abo u t the sam e way I feel now if I' m going to race .bikes aga in in 1990. But wh o kn ows what'Il happen, or how I will feel." Wh o indeed can know what th e fu ture will hold. The return of The Fred does mean, however, that th e 1989 seaso n ca n be viewed with even more eager anticipation th an already prevailed. And if his confidence is anything to go by, La wson, Gardner, Rainey and th e rest should be aware th at th e genius of modern raci ng is out to teach them a lesson. In th e cold light of day, some scep ticism has return ed. We have heard it all before. Freddie's q u ote before tendi n itis ruled h im out of the Sp anish GP was: " I feel 100-percen t fit." H e didn 't. Let us hope that the re is no such prevaricatio n th is time. _ 7

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