Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ INTERVIEW Mastertuner Erv Kanemoto humanly possible. " I know I have a problem with my own makeup," Erv admits. "It's hard to tell people how much I expect. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings because I respect and like them. There were a couple of cases 0') where I was afraid of always pushing 0') people to the limit. Sometimes I feel _ like a hypocrite. Sometimes I'm not ... able to do that. As soon as ' I get a ~ negative feeling about someone, we're _ all going to lose. Sometimes you feel • ~ like you 're going to get the rider into 0.. trouble. I felt like he might be in over ~ his head. You say something that ......... might hurt his feelings. At a certain point he did all this, he had to know these things. You say a few things to reestablish it in his mind." Mackenzie believes that Erv had two ' choices at the end of 1988. "One was if HRC told him to do his own thing. I think the other option was to pack. " e o Once he puts on his helmet, Lawson's concentration is so intense it borders on surliness. There is an economy of motion: No energy wasted on wheelies or showing off for the photographers. Just business as usual. Erv's the sam e way. He often gets lost so deeply in thought that he doesn't see what's in front of him. At Suzuka last year he was staring straight at Freddie Spencer, but didn't see him. "I felt pretty bad about it once I realized what I'd done," Erv said. "I hope he doesn't think I was trying to ignore him." Neither man has much time Cor the peripherals. If he could, Erv would race without sponsors or TV or the attendant hoopla. Just man and machine on a track against the others. He doesn't much like talking to the media, not because he's bad at it, but simply because he's not comfortable with the notion of possibly offending someone season's end before switching back to Yamaha for 1990., The void was filled by former World Champion Wayne Gardner. Gardner had broken his leg at the U.S. GP last April and never fully recovered. His team lacked the experience and leadership to deliver a championship so it was only natural that Honda would blend their top technical person with their number one rider. If Honda is to win a title this year, it's up to Wayne and Erv. And ' Erv knows it won't be easy. Gardner has already been written off as a spent force, the belief being that you need more than grim determination and perseverance to win the titie these days. If there was a time when you could take the championship by just beating your head against the wall, those days are gone and with it Gardner's chance, the belief goes . The danger Erv faces with Gardner is (Lef t) Eddie Lawson an d Kanemoto teamed up in 1989 wi th the end result being the fourth World Champion. ship title for both. (Below) Wi th Lawson having switched to . Yamaha for 1990, Kanemoto has teamed up with former World Champ ion Wayne Gardner, of whom he says, "Some 'peop le are counting him out. They'll be surprised." 26 Fortunately for, Honda, they gave him the chance to set up his own team and he was able to hire Lawson, who'd approached him midseason about the possiblity of riding for him. The offseason was shrouded in secrecy with all parties denying anything had happened. Honda was especially sensitive to the prevailing belief that . they'd stolen Lawson from Yamaha when, in fact, that was clearly not the case. . Erv spoke at the time of a "new challenge and opportunity to work with Eddie. Maybe I wouldn't have gone ahead without him. It was like fate. I was unsure, struggling a little bit. Everything was fed in slowly. This is the direction I could go. Hopefully I can give them (Honda) a World , Championship." Less than a year la ter Erv had delivered Honda their fourth 500cc World Championship of the decade, tieing them with Yamaha. That they won the World Championship should come as no surprjsev -What is impressive is that Erv did it in his first year as team owner and all the various headaches that entails. Theirs was the perfect working relationship. Both are consummate professionals with a level of concentration that most can only dream of. o r saying the wrong thing. In this business, lying is an accepted ingredient and Erv, by his own admission, isn't smart enough to lie. " I know if I did, I'd , get trapped later." When Honda was having a discussion about when they should say Lawson approached Erv, Erv suggested the truth, which, up to that point, wasn't among the options. Lawson had said before their first test that Erv would be surprised at how easy he'd be to work with. Erv was, but he wasn't. After all, he'd been watching Lawson race for the last six years and had some idea what made him a champion. The question for Erv would be, how would a rider this mature react to his input, input he needed to make an entirely foreign motorcycle work for 'him? He found out quickly. " H e's a rea l professional," Erv said early in the season. "There's a certain pattern that I try to work at in laying the thing out and learning something. I'm sure sometimes he's excited, but he always controls himself." "Neither one of us gets excited," agrees Lawson. "Nobody gets revved up. Nobody gets upset. We only try to make things better. You just try that much harder. " I never thought we couldn't win the championship," Lawson said at that he's extremely impressionable and that worries Erv. " I have to be careful there. I better back up everything I say. If he believes it, you have to make sure everything works," Erv says. " In the past you could see hini getting in there riding harder and harder. I'm not sure if he's not a little bit smarter now. In the past watching him . . . it's like a person goes around the track so fast. Say I:28 is the track record. If you're going 1:30 you have to change your line. When you do fast laps you have to use more of the race track. When he was leaned over he'd get on the gas earlier and go wider and wider and wider like he was on a string and eventually go off the track." That's exactly what everyone saw. A rider fighting a motorcycle all the way around the track wobbling viciously off the corners and halfway down the straights. Lawson was asked if riding like that would shorten a career. "It would mine," he said. The problem, though, may have been that no one was willing to tell Gardner what he was doing wrong. He was never asked to change his style, whether out of fear of the unknown or that the strength of his personality intimidated those around him. He has always functioned better with a strong father figure around whether it be exHonda Britain boss Barry Symmons or the recently rehired Yoichi Oguma o£ HRC. Without someon e there, Gardner seemed to lack direction. For Erv, that's all part of the job and if he was looking for a new challenge, he's found one. "Some people are counting him out," Erv knows. " T hey'll be surprised. " If there's one thing that Erv doesn't lack it's a quiet self-confidence. Otherwise he couldn't put the machine on the track. ' " Erv told me one time he'd like to build a bike in his workshop and race it against anyone Cor a million dollars ' at Daytona," Spencer says. " Build a motorcycle from the ground up in his garage. Put half a 750 on his li ttle dyno. He would be happy with that. Him building the bike and whoever ' has the fastest motorcycle wins." A million bucks, one shot at Daytona, the old Freddie in the saddle. It , doesn't get much better than that. t:N

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