Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

:INTERVIEW AMA 250cc Grand Prix National Champion Rich Oliver By Henny Ray Abrams 32 ich Oliver has been racing long enough to know better. To know better ways to win races, to know better ways to run a team, to know beter ways to promote new talent, to know better ways to run a race series. But instead of just whining about what's wrong, and not offering any solutions, Oliver is open to the dialogue that is necessary for the sport of road racing to grow . And he has come to many of these realizations after a lifelong pursuit of excellence which culminated in this year's AMA 250cc Grand Prix championship, which he won rather handily. Before the year is out he'll likely add another WERA Formula II crown to his resume as well. It all began for Oliver as a lot boy at a Kawasaki dealership in Monterey, California. A benevolent boss saw him riding his Yamaha RD400 on the street and encouraged him onto a race track. In 1978, in only his second year of racing, he won his first title, the Amateur Sears Point Box Stock Championship aboard a box-stock Kawasaki KZ650 . There would be more championships, the AFM F-l crowns in 1981 and '82, that he would use as a springboard to the world of AMA superbike racing. His best result was a fourth overall, and first Kawasaki, in 1984. After one more year on the big four-strokes, Oliver was convinced to move to the 250 class and he 's been there ever since, except for 1991. That was the year he raced a Kenny Roberts Marlboro Yamaha YZRSOO to the WERA F-USA title that was to be the catalyst to a stronger assault the following year. For a number of reasons beyond his control, it never happened and he moved back into the 2505, riding for Wayne Rainey in 1992, then for Nate Lundy and the Performance SOuth Racing team in 1993. Because of Lundy's WERA background, Oliver concentrated on winning the WERA F-II title, which he did, and did selected AMA events, winning at Elkhart Lake. This year, Oliver bought the team from Lundy and won every race except Daytona, where he finished second to Jimmy Filice, and Brainerd, where he crashed after encountering tire problems. The way he won the title looked effortless, but it was the end result of relentless hard work over an entire career. Are you surprised by your results this year? If the truth be known, I was very, very disappointed in Daytona because I thought I should have won that race. My bike was fast and I was riding it really well and I felt I'd do a little better against Jimmy (Filice). I thought that we had a real legitimate shot at that race. And looking back on it, we go so much faster now than we did then, I think I wish we could turn back the clock and try again. But the rest of the season kind of built up on me. As far as the results and the winning, it turned into the situation where I was happy and thankful to win the race. Then I wanted to.win the race, and expected to win the race, not in an egotistical way, but that I was going to do whatever it took to win the race as far as getting my bike set up properly. And now I've kind of evolved from that to where now I don't really think much about the result. I just think about the performance I'm putting in and hope that nets me a good result. I've gotten to a point now where I can have a little strategy in my races where before I had to go as fast as I could go just to be in the top few guys. Now I'm able to run at their pace and decide if I want to take the lead or not. It's something I always admired in a guy like Doug Polen, he did that in America. He was a very, very smart guy. He only went fast enough to win. It was because he was on a very good motorcycle and he was a very good rider. He didn't have to hang it out for any reason other than just at the end. Early in the season you ran away with a lot of these races. Early on I was just getting better and better every weekend. I don't need to run away so badly any more. Some times it's easier for me to just ride and not think about .w here I'm at and just ride as hard as I can. And if that results in a big lead then sometimes, in the middle of the race, I'll just snap out of it and I'll look at the pit board and I'll know that I don't need to do any more . Sometimes I think it's just the result of intense concentration. And time just goes by so . fast that before I know it we're threequarters of the way done. It's not like I go out,there and say I'm going to blow these guys off. I have no feelings like that. In fact, I respect the riders in the 250 class more than any other riders that I've raced with in the AMA. They're very, very talented. Yes, but you beat them every week. So what's the challenge? We didn't think of it that way in the beginning of the season. The goal is to win the championship. The goal had nothing to do with lap records or winning races or a streak of wins in a row or pole positions in a row. It was just get more points than anyone else and win the championship. And it's evolved into this thing that people think that we have to keep the streak going. I mean , I expect to get beat every weekend. By whom? By the top guys . By my teammate Chuck.ie (Sorenson) . He's learning more and more every week. I think the worst thing you can possibly do is feel you're unbeatable. Because if do that, if you feel that you're unbeatable, you're surely going to get beat by someone who starts working harder than you. To me, winning in America is very important. A lot of people are going to Say, "Oh, sure, you win over here, who cares? Why don't you race GPs or whatever?" Well, you know, I would love to race GPs and I would love to have a career like Kevin Schwantz, who I started racing with at Sears Point. Or, of course, Wayne (Rainey), or some of the other guys who started racing in California and have gone on to fantastic careers. But I never had the opportunity to do that. I never had the lucky break or the shot. I thought I had my shot on the 500 and it petered out. It turned into a oneyear deal. So what am I going to do? Am I going to cry about never making it in my sport in Europe? Am I going to cry about not making a lot of money? No, I'm just going to do my best. If all I can do is race in America and win ,250 races, that's not too bad, I really enjoy it. And, sure, I'd like to have gone further . in my career, but I'm getting to the point now where maybe I can win a couple championships and maybe I can be winningest 250 rider in America. Maybe I won't be World Champion, but being a National Champion is great. Have you thought about going back to the superbike class? You know, I think I might go back to the superbikes in '96. If I'm still racing competitively at that point I might look for another challenge. My age doesn't seem to be affecting me in a way that I would start to put a limit on when I would stop riding. So, I think maybe one more year of riding 2505 and try to develop Chuckie Sorensen into being the best thing he can possibly be on 25Os. Or possibly I may run a 125 tearn and start up another young rider, maybe a young rider and his dad, something like that, and build him a really good bike. And build this team into something that's marketable. And then it's possible that I might jump into superbike racing. But I'll tell you, I need to go with a factory team because I don't see any way that I could build one of those 'things competitively. I don't know anything about it any more. It's possible. I've raced a lot of big bikes, a lot of four-strokes. But they've changed some in the 10 years since you rode one. Apparently they handle better, they stop, and they don't flex and wobble as bad. But they still look a little shaky to me. Doesn't owning your own team affect your racing? Sure it affects it. I think about the team, I think about how much money the team has to go to the next event. I think about my own personal finances, whether I'm going to survive for another year. I think about Chuckie and how he's doing and try to teach him the tricks of the trade. I think about how his bike's running, how my bike's running. How the engines are working. Whether I'm going to have to grind any more cylinders during the season. I think about a million things and I wish I didn't have to. I wish I could think about just one thing and that was racing . But unfortunately, or fortunately, I'm responsible for this whole thing. So I try to delegate my authority down to the people around me, and when I'm at the races I , can think about my racing mostly and the team a little bit. At home it's a fulltime job thinking about motors and everything else. It's a lot going on, but I'm sure a lot of other racers who are running their own deal are doing as much or more than I am. Is it hard to get enough sponsorship to get the team going? It's hard to get the big s pons o r. The industry has backed us 100%. You haven't gone outside the industry? We've tried and, as I mentioned before, we have people trying really hard. First you need the industry behind you, you need the results, you need the kind of image that somebody can just fall right into as a sponsor. What we've done is build this team into a mini-superbike team . We don't have a semi, but we have a nice trailer. We don't have a huge crew, but the crew we havelooks good and does a great job, and we try to present the package to a sponsor to where they can say these guys have got their act together now, and they don't have a sponsor. Just think how they'd do with our promotion and our money. And we've kept track of all of our publicity, our press - our newspaper, our industry press - and our TV. We've done a tremendous amount of publicity in marketing dollars and we're going to take that information and really sell it hard at the end of the year. And try to get someone involved, even if it's on a small scale to start au t. Probably our biggest sponsor is Yamaha. They back us 100%, they back us 1000% and Tom Halverson and Yamaha is really happy for us and this championship. He's wanted this for me for a long time and I've wanted it as well . Getting it for Yamaha in our first shot here is pretty good, along with our WERA championship last year. Yamaha, Dunlop, Silkolene, and EBC are our four biggest sponsors. Without them there's no way. Absolutely, no way. Because I don't make anything but prize money and Chuckie just makes prize money. And out of that prize money has to come everything else. So if the results are good we move right along and if the results aren't good we have to be careful. If we can take Performance South Racing and instead of naming it Rich Oliver Racing or Oliver Motorsports next year we name it Team Pepsi, or something like that, that's what we're shooting for. Then everything gets a lot simpler. . How do you measure the publicity value you can provide a sponsor? . There is a company back east, ' in Atlanta, called Joyce Julius & Associates. What they do is monitor the media exposure that a racing team receives. They view the tapes of the race and they tell you down to the second how much

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