Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

, '" ('f) l-! Q) it wasn' t stro ng eno ug h to put any we ig ht on. If I can get it straight and I can p u t weigh t on it, then tha t'll be half the battle . I was wearing out boots every race - wearing a h ole in the side of them w her e my leg 's ben t. With the ang le on my leg, I' ve go t to mo ve my leg around more to make sure I'm ge tting my kne e on the ground . ' It doesn't hurt at all, we've just got to keep dressings on wher e the y put the pins in. This thing here - I just w ind this up, and it just straightens the leg, because the leg was bent quite a bit (pointing to the lower rings). As you can see here, they're different. Once these are straight, then it'll be straight. Like this has already come out quite a bit, at least three quarters of an inch - it's already straightened. I just wind this 'up, a few times every day. They take X-rays each week. There's a lot of swelling around the ankle. Is that from the surgery? This is where it was broken, when I broke it at Assen, and this is the skin graft here (Doohan points to several parts of his leg). That there is just a big hole in my leg where it turned bad from a lack of oxygen and whatever else. It can be cosmetically fixed up, but that's not my greatest concern. But the reason why it's swollen here is because that's where it was broken, and it was bent over. Now I'm straightening it up so, I don't know the term for it, I guess the bone would be bleeding now as we're straightening it all the time, kind of forcing it back apart. It's starting to calcify up again, so it's just swelling up . I'm not , really in pain or anything. A lot of the skin grafts down the back of my leg and a few of the other things are all because I wanted to get back and ride. ' The leg could have looked a little bit prettier had I not ,wanted to get back and ride in Brazil and South Africa last year, but I felt I was in there with a chance .for the championship. I just figured that I should 'do whatever I could to try and get back out on the track. Unfortunately it didn't payoff but I have no regrets about what I did. You were so close, you lost the 1992 500cc World Championship by only four points. Yeah, it was a disappointment and it's unfortunate that I've had to waste another year. This year has been a waste. It's been good that I've been back on the bike . Even though my foot hasn't got as much movement and I can't use the rear brake with it, I know that I can still ride with a hand-mounted rear brake. I feel 100% more confident now than I did at this time last year. What happened to your shoulder in the Laguna Seca crash at the U.S. GP? The collarbone was all right. It's the shoulder blade, I put a few cracks in the shoulder blade. I probably could have pushed at it, and worked at it real hard in order to ride the next weekend (Jarama). But as far as I'm concerned, there's only one spot to be in and Kevin Schwantz had that , wrapped up. I was going to pull out in June and get my leg fixed for next year, but I figured I'd try and do as S Q) much rid ing as I co u ld. My plan ha s always been to get my leg done and get back' into shape in the off-season. My thoughts were that when I injured my shoulder, I might as well stop and g ive myself a few extra weeks to recover. What happened in your Laguna Seca get-off? It was my rear tire. I was coming out of the Corkscrew, and the rear tire lit up real quick and threw me off the inside of the bike . I finally got back on, but I was just running out of road. By the time I noticed what I was doing, I could see that there was a wall coming up and I hung off the bike as much as I could. There was about a yard of gravel and then the hay bales, but I was just in so far that the handlebar caught one of the hay bales and laid me down. Do you think an Airfence would have prevented anything? No, not really, because I would have hit that and done exactly the same thing. When I did get off I was pretty dazed, I hit my head pretty hard - that wall could be moved back. I walked to that wall to see why it was so close to the circuit and there wasn't a great deal stopping it from being pushed back. The wall could go straight down and it would be a lot better. You know, I only needed another inch or so, but that's the way it goes . W'ere you aware of exactly where John Kocinski was when you crashed? Yeah, I kind of knew where he was. It wasn't like he was gaining a second a lap where I had to push really hard to kind of get going. I'd finally done a ' few fast laps and I figured I'd made a break after I got through the traffic. I ' w as just going to hang in there, and the back stepped out on the 15th lap, it was just one of those things. I knew he was about two and a half seconds, at least, behind me and that it would be pretty hard for him to catch me. So you weren't trying to force the pace? No, not really. I got past (Alex) Barros, and I then put my head down to try to make a bit of a break. I pulled a few high 26s and I opened up a really big gap. Once I'd opened up that gap, I knew that the lap before Barros was doing exactly 1:27s, so I backed down to finish the race. Unfortunately, it just brought me out. With Rothmans pulling out for 1994, has a replacement sponsorship deal for the Honda team been worked? Well, I'm not sure. I have a contract with Honda Racing Corporation. I'm sure they'll come up with a sponsor, but if they don't I'm sure I'll be racing with HRC. I suppose they'll tell me , who the spo nso r is wh en they feel its the right time. At the moment I haven 't heard of any. Are you going to be running MicheIins next year? Again, I'm mainly guessing but I can't imagine why we wouldn't be. Honda , has a 'p retty good relationship with Michelin, and again - that's not up to me. The Michelins have been fine and I can't see any reason to change. What is it that makes Australians such a dominant force in GP road racing? Americans are thought to have an advantage because of their flat track experience, but what about the Australians? I'm not sure. It's a similar attitude, I think, more than anything. I think we believe we can do it, and the Americans have the same sort of attitude. Australians .h av e a similar kind of background. I come from dirt bikes, not from the ovals, but I raced dirt bikes for eight years before I started road racing. Darryl Beattie (the second Rothmans Honda rider from Australia) did the same thing. Most of the guys were on dirt bikes. We have a different type of dirt racing, it's more like a race circuit on dirt, similar sort of thing to motocross. Is there a chance we may see you on a fuel-injected Honda NSR500 next season? It's really up to how we get the bike working. If everything's working fine and tha t's the way Honda wants to go, I can 't see why not. I can't see it being a secret if we are running a fuel-injected bike . Itoh actually runs a different spec engine than what I'm running at the moment anyway, but only he could really ride it. He tried my bike and said it was nice in the bottom end and nice in the midrange, but the top end wasn't enough. On his bike, the .top end is really strong. The race is not really won on the straights. It's good to have a fast bike, but you've got to be able to get off the turn. Since I d idn't get to do a lot of testing between when I crashed last year and the first Grand Prix this year, it took me three or four races to get the bike to where I could actually ride it. Before, all that power was in the wrong spot, but that's the way (Shinichi - the third Rothmans Honda rider) Itoh likes it. At the end, Daryl and I were running the same sort of spec engine. I guess Honda was go ing off in a direction and they didn't really have anyone to say that it wasn't going to work as far as lap times were concerned. It was great on the straights, but if you compared lap times ii wasn't working as well as the old stuff was. It's fast and makes more horsepower, but to actually get it down to the ground was a problem. But when you're following someone on a bike like that, he holds you up through the midd le of the turn beca use he can't get the power on. By the time he opens it, you 've held up so meo ne behind you as well. But that 's the way Itoh liked it. It's not the fuel injection tha t' s th e problem, it was th e cylind ers, exhaust pipes, and carburetors and everything that he was running on that bike that made it totally different from what we were running. He liked it tha t way because he felt th at if it came down to a last lap situation, no matter where his position was, he could always pass the guy in front of him. On a clear lap where you didn't have to slow the bike down, and you could put a lap together, it wasn't too bad. But if you get caught in traffic and have to slow it down, there's no way you can fire it off as easy as you can if it's more rideable off the bottom. He wasn't thinking about a race situation, he was thinking about what he was going to do on the last lap. Most feel it was good for the sport that you returned to race this year, despite your injuries. That's one thing, you know. The tragedy for Wayne (Rainey), to have the injuries he has, has been bad for the sport. Last year, we had Eddie Lawson and Wayne Gardner retire from Grand Prix - two kind of big name guys pulled out. Then this year, we've had Wayne, through no fault of his' own, being forced to pull out. Although, in time, other guys will get the recognition as well. But it would have been good to have kept him in there. It was a real shock to the system to see what happened to Wayne. I think everyone felt that way about it. But I felt it real bad. I guess because for the last few years he and I have been racing . He was the main guy I had to beat all the time, and I took it fairly hard. I can't really believe it's happened, although I guess I feel - like every other racer '- that it can happen. But you just don't figure it's going to happen to someone like him or yourself or whatever. It just kind of hits you real hard when it does happen to someone like him. By the same token, I congratulate Kevin (Schwantz) on winning the championship. I think he's done a great job all year, but it was a shame to see the championship finish out the way it did . Rainey's accident cast a pall over the U.S. GP . But it also seemed to bring people together. I've spoken to Wayne. He actually telephoned me when I was in hospital. We spoke about what he thinks we should do with the bikes for the future, and track safety, and whatever else . You know, he sounded real good. He's keen to get back out there, and although not ride the bike, be back involved with it . That's good. It will be good to have him back around the tracks. So what do you guys want to do with the bikes, or can you say? > o Z 25

• Cover