Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

airport. So we wat ched the race and I figured I co uld beat probably abo ut half those gu ys. I went and go t my 550 and star ted working on it, getting it ready. Then I went out and finished last in my first race. Mechanical probl em s." Dou g laughs, rememb ering his baptism into road raci ng. " It was a lo t of fun. You didn 't have to worry abou t ears pulling ou t in front of you, or coming at you, or drunks. It' s a lot harder to ride on a street than it is on a race track. Even though to the rid er on the stree t it doesn 't seem tha t way. And it's not that expensive. If you reall y want to have some fun , I mean some fun to the po int where even if you got yourself into trouble, you 're reall y not. You suddenly realize, the only thing that I could do to myself out here is what I, only myself, could reall y do to myself. We're all going the same direction at about the same speed. And if you want to go for it, you go for it. " Going for it: The idea of charging ahead reminds me of Rodney Sheldon, who is a resolute charger. And Sheldon had told me a lot about the deals . The Doug Deals. "There came a time," he had said at the hotel, " Wh en everything else seemed to fail, when these deals were still up in the air and we were into our fourth month of negotiations - and what they did was, they all advised that this guy Sheldon was basically trying to line his own pockets with outrageous demands. That got back to me and we had a good laugh. And I said to myself, in all my life no on e's ever accused me of that becau se of course you lin e your own pockets! Basically, you line your own pockets whether you 're a personal manager, or a steam fitter , or brick layer , or a boxer. That's what you do ! You make a living, you put the money in your pock et ! And I'm trying to lin e my own po ckets!? So wh en Doug Polen got married a couple of months back , and I flew to Texas for their marriage, I cou ldn' t figure out what to give Doug and Diane for a wedding present. So I just ga ve them the first year of niy manager's commissions. Boom. And one gu y in japan said, 'O h, God, now what do we do?' " Well , they knew what to do. Make the deall And they all did. They stopped fooling around and made the deal. And some friends of mine asked me, 'Wha t did you do that for?' And I said, 'Because it gives me pleasure.' That's what I'm in it for. The only reason wh y I work is to have a good time doing it. It brings a smile on my face. It's not about money." I want to hear Doug's side on the deal. The 1989 deal that Sheldon has put together for Polen to campaigo the entire 16-race japanese Formula One series on Fuj io' Yoshimura 's Suzuki. japan's prestigious version of our own Superbike championship. Says Doug, " Raci n g superbikes her e for Yoshimura R&D of America is how I got involved in the japanese deal. Because the team wasn 't doing too good in japan. So Mr. Watanabe here in California wanted me to go over there to see if I could get results forthem. Nabe called japan and said wh y don't you try this guy. Fujio knew what I had done. Everybody in japan knows what goes on in raang in the States . Fuj io was at Daytona last year when I finished second, so he knew I could probably go OK." But Polen still had to prove he was better than just OK. That he was brilliant, in fact. But! "This first tim e I went to japan, it didn 't go reall y good. Then I went over for the 8-Hour race and I did real well there with Kevin Sch wan u as a teammate. We pretty much ran similar tim es during the race, and that 's wh at we needed. That worked out well." So, Pol en' s performance was getting a lot of attent io n in japan. Significantly, from ven erabl e " Pop s" Yoshimura and his so n. "Fujio then wanted me to . come back for an FI race at Suzuka ," Dou g is saying, as we take the off-ra mp five minutes from Nabe 's shop. " I qualified on the pol e and won tha t race. Sept ember 10th! After that it was like WHOA! That right there was their first po le position all year, a nd their first win all year in the FI class. The whole deal turned around for me on that. There was all kinds of press, and things were just working good for Yoshimura again. And Polen looks on as Yoshim ura's Sueh iro Watanabe preps the Suzuki Superbike he w ill ride at Daytona . (Above) Polen and his chief mecha nic Don Sakak ura in Yoshimura 's dyno room. (Below) Polen does some pre-Daytona test ing at Willow Springs in Califo rnia. they wanted me to come bac k for every ra ce I could come back for, that didn 't conflict with my races here. So I went over and did thr ee more in j apan - a second , a thi rd, an d in the last race of the season, I won again. That did it ! They said, 'He can do it, he can ride, he can win , he can do it all!' Plus Fujio liked the developmen t aspect of my con tribu tion s. My feedback. He had never go tten feedback from anybody like he did from me." Which is a Pol en prime asset - that priceless know-how to retu rn mechanical information and ideas. T o de-brief and bu ild. Says Pol en , " Riders who can ride really good don 't usually come in with a very high rati ng on that, on cri tical feedback. Usually guys who are hotdogs , hot and fast riders, most of them never went to college. They ha ve been 'racing ever since they were kids and it's been just go, go, go. So they're not really interested in engi neeri ng and development, but only in the race. So, with me, Fuj io Yoshimura is seeing that I offer an advantage for them , and can further hi s development." We ar e just now pulling int o the Chino operation on Carter Court, where Suehiro Watanabe's 10,000 square foot Yoshimura R&D of Ameri ca cooks up the most sizzling Suzuki superbikes outside of Imperial japan. What a future br ewing for Mr. Polen. Driving back to Rodney's office in the Roll s, the happiest manager was projecting. A vision of tru e excitement . " What th is season is going to do , hopefully, is be the first leg on our pr ogram - and the program is designed to, within a short period of time, take Doug Pol en to the Formula One cha m p ionship of japan with an added coup le of 500cc Grand Prix races under his belt this year. There's reall y not much differen ce between the GP 500s and the Formula One bik e. But the japanese FI bik e is lighter than our su perbike. It 's titanium up the kazoo. It's basi call y a full-out, su per-ligh t machine that's real fast. " Sheldon took a breath from his non-stop scenario, adding, a bit triumphantly, "Then next year we want to go up aga inst Messrs. Law son , Mamola , Gardner, Schwanu, and the Kenn y Roberts Lucky Strike Team, and anybod y wh o's out there who thinks they can win. And we want to duke it out with those gu ys on the G P 500. I believe that will com e. And I believe Doug Polen will be very eligible someday soo n to compete for the World Championship. And that's the plan." At Sheldon's office, after a barrage of power calls - he manages 15 actors, I writers, directors he came back to his top joy , being Doug Polen's manager. HIS voice added a sen se of prophecy as he said, "These contracts are quite wonderful. And nobody's angry about the outcome. Everybody 's pleased. That's the mo st am azing thing about bu siness. We didn 't hold anybody up. We just basically set new parameters for racers , and parameters that the suppliers and sponsors can very well live with. And Doug Polen will do what he is supposed to. H e's going to win hi s fair share. And there's something else - something I learned from watching people here in Hollywood. You can tell wh en fame is going to go to sorneone's head. If they wh ine on the way up, then they're never ever satisfied. Doug Pol en ' s never whined, ever." Inside the Chino shop, we greet the wizard Nab e, wh o runs the show, along with racing manager Dave Wolman, Doug's crew chief Don Sakakura, and Yoshimura's mechanics. The place is stacked high with mail-order com petition equipment : exhaust systems, wheels , shoc ks, engi ne kits, race pi stons, cams , you name It. And the awesome Daytona race bikes. Doug disap pears with Nabe and Sakakura into the dyno room, while I hang out with Dave a nd shoot the bull. Seeing all the products here puts my mind on spo nsors again "a nd some more of wh at Sheldon said. "T he deal we struck with Michelin," he told me, " specifica ll y inv olves their gu arantee that the best technologies their factories hav e to offer will be given to Doug Polen. He's getting the top tires the factory has - that's guaranteed for an y place he races in the world. Including Daytona. And that's quite a deal ." , Indeed it is. There are so many

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