Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.INTERVIEW 500cc World Champion Michael Doohan Not stringing along guys who've been there, and... like we know the way he is. A lot of guys out there, if they finish on the rostrum, that's a great result. People like myself and, I believe, Daryl as well, second - you've lost. That's not a result. You know, take second if you've got to, but you've lost. There's only one winner. Putting Daryl aside, who do you see as next year's rivals? Obviously Luca. If he can... if he rides like he rides at the end of the season all through the year he's a definite championship threat. If there's talk of (John) Kocinski coming back, it's the same with him. If he can piece the season together then he's a definite threat. His record again is a little bit patchy, though maybe a year out will give him the motivation to carry him through a whole season. Then there's people you just don't know, like what they've been doing in the off-season. There are people who are so close, like Alex Cri ville, (Albert.o) Puig, and (Carles) Checa... Scott Russell, I believe - it'll probably go to his head.- but with an off-season of testing I think he'll be quite quick next year. He's come in and found the 500 a little bit difficult. That's normal, the same as ilie 250 guys. But he can produce the lap time. With more time on the bike, I think he's going to be a good show next year. You mightn't want to show him that until the end of next year (laughs). He seems to be quite cocky. I don't mind the guy, but he seems to get carried away with himself a little bit. Which is good for the sport, I guess. But he really has got talent. When I came into the 500 class (in 1989) it was a bit different. It was all Aand B-spec tires, and different levels of . motorcycles. Now when you get on a Honda, it's a Honda, and a Suzuki is a Suzuki, and everyone gets the same tires from Mi~elin. All the same, I remember hopping off a superbike - and I didn't have bad results on a superbike - onto a 500, and how physically harder it was to ride.on the limit, and to stay on the bike. I looked at Eddie Lawson or people like that, and thought, "how can you on it and reel off lap after lap,-time after time?" I think it's just a matter of time. Nobody's come in off a superbike and got out there winning. Superbikes do seem to be pretty good training. More so maybe even than dirt track. The best. Dirt bikes are. good for learning about the bike moving around - the basic skill of riding a motorcycle. But it's a totally different slide from a 500. It's obviously good for balance and throttle control, but it's a different slide. You've got your foot out, and the thing fully locked up. A superbike, whether or not it's flex, or whatever, it's forever moving around. It's got enough power to wheelspin. It's a heavy thing that you've got to force from side to side. It makes the best training ground for a 500. A 250 as a racing bike really does nothing wrong. So they jump on a SOO, and as soon as they push it to the point that it's starting to buck and weave they find t\:1.emselves in deep trouble. They'll try and get that out of the motorcycle, but you just don't get it out. You have to kind of go above that. That's where the superbike guys... the bike's never perfect, whether it's suspension or flexing . or twitching or whatever. That's why they adapt better. When it comes to bike development, what are you looking for in a bike? I wish I knew. That's one reason I really wanted a new teammate for next year. Somebody with a gung-ho approach, with the same sort of feeling that second isn't good enough. Basically, I feel we need it to handle a bit better. To steer a bit better mid-turn. And acceleration. Top speed's always been there. I've been asking for many years, forget about top speed. Let's get the thing to accelerate better from A to B. We haven't changed the chassis since 1991 - it's exactly the same. Alex Criville is on my bikes from last year - my 801 and 802, which are the same as this year's. Again in 1994 he had my bikes from 1993. The same chassis. The suspension's obviously been the key thing. Only small changes, just to make it a little bit better. The big improvements have been with the tires as far as corner-speed grip. You're not seeing as much sideways action. The motor, the biggest thing we've ch.anged over the years is the way the power comes -like in 1992 when we had the close-firing-order engine, then in 1993 it got peaky again, but then we brought it back. The evolution is a lot more electronic gadgets. (Honda, like The new twin-cylinder may be the future as well. So far so good, with all the reports on that. Is the two-cylinder attractive to you? If it's competitive when we go testing in November - I'll be testing it. If it's good enough, I'll be using it. Tha t may be something. It's about the same width as a 250. It may be a bit physically bigger. Again it's got 250-riders' input, so maybe we can find an improvement there. Realistically, I'm no engineer, I can only say what I feel. And I've been riding for seven seasons for Honda, so I haven't ridden another motorcycle for a long time, to see if they do something better than ours. I can only say we should try this or try that. Btit I'm no engineer and I don't pretend to be a sort of whizbang setup magician. I think I've got a fair handle on how to set this bike up, but as far as building another motorcycle to outperform this one, it's a difficult job. None of the others have matched it, have they? They're getting closer. Aside from going off the track, you were only actually beaten twice this year, by Cadalora, late in the year. Suzuki, has a sort of traction-control system to reduce wheels pin. Doohan leaves his switched off - his traction control is in his wrist.) The chassis has got to the point that every time we try to change it a bit... I don't know if you r,emember everyone used to say the single-crank syndrome. That it used to run wide all the time. . Now when we do change it it seems that we're pushing the front everywhere. I did quite a lot of testing in Japan to get it the way it is. And everyone liked the way it turned, a little bit heavier. Except Wayne Gardner, who changed the engine position to put it back the way he liked it. Obviously, it's the engine-up position. Basically he liked it down low so it fell in easier, and was also easier to flick left and right. The Honda's probably a little bit heavier, so people like Loris Capirossi, small guys, going from side to side, it seems to help that the motor's up. If you put it down, all the weight seems to push it on out. You put it higher, at least it seems to stay down and carry on round. We've played with many different things ap.d every time we've ended up going back to what we had - to the point that we wonder if it's just me, like an old hand. That's why I want someone else to come in and say, "No, to me this feels better, or my paddock scooter's better than this thing." (He was beaten again the next day, into an unaccustomed fourth; his team acknowledged a rare suspension setting error.) How strong was the element of looking after the title points? To a certain degree, especially in Rio. In Brno we just ran out of tire. We chose basically the same tires we ran the year before. At the end of that race I was saying they were good enough for the job we had to do (he won, and secured his first title), but we wouldn't want to push much harder. And this year's race time was a hell of a lot quicker than '94. We just ran out of tires, and Luca - good on him, Dunlop came through with'a better package for him. In Brazil, I think again they had the better package. But again I didn't want to make any mistakes, we weren't having a lot of grip. On the first lap I let him go - he went away a little bit. I felt like he'd come back, and Daryl I knew was a fair way back. So it was just a matter of putting the pressure on him and see if he'd make a mistake. I didn't really have that much confidence to just take strides out of him. But again I wasn't pushing to the maximum like I had to in Buenos Aires (where he came through to win race and championship) to catch the guys up. It's not the way I like to race, but after having the off-track excursions and * ,........ ~ "S Q) :> o Z 22 a few crashes earlier in the year it got to the point where we really had to preserve what we had. This winter will be your first without surgery since 1992, will it? (Knocks on wood) Touch wood. I was going to have some surgery on my toes again. I had some bone removed from them last winter, but they've started to curl back up again. So I was going to get the tendons cut just to relieve pressure when I'm walking, without shoes and so on. They're pushing down on the ground like this. I've decided to put that off until it's totally necessary. Or until I stop racing. I don't 'feel like another operation when I really don't need it. It's a little bit uncomfortable, and I am going to San Francisco the week after this to have it looked at. I don't really want to be chopped up again. This last winter I was like heavily drugged out for a couple of weeks trying to get the ankle into a better position, in such a short time period. I was just cranking it up and on pain killers and sleeping tablets, and then straight out of there. I had to go to Japan and do all sorts of things. I wouldn't like to go through that again. My leg's better for walking around now, especia.lly in shoes. Have you bought yourself a present for winning the title? No. (Laughs) You already had one - that yellow thing. (A dazzling Ferrari F355 is prominent in the paddock parking lot, with a scrape scar on its right-hand flank attracting much attention.) At the beginning of the year, yeah. I scratched it the other night, getting it out of the garage. I hadn't driven it for a while. I have a Range Rover there that I normally use. It's fairly tight with the garage space. The Range Rover's no problem. But the Ferrari's wider - it just caught the edge. It's a bit of a bummer. What's it like? Really good. Really good - a lot of fun. I drove it up to Andorra on Wednesday night. A friend of mine lives up there. That was fun heading up the mountains there. For a present - round about December I want to go back to Australia and just cruise the Barrier Reef for a couple of weeks. Send the boat up north, then jump on it and come back down to the Gold Coast on the thing, with my brother and a few friends, island-hopping. Last year Daryl and myself and a few other guys and girls jumped on it and went from the Gold Coast to Hamilton Island. I'm frying to kinda get that scheduled in, and that'll be my present. Do you have to navigate by the stars and stuff? (Laughs) We have a skipper, so we can have a drink or two on the way. Are you a happy man? Yeah, I think so. Happier because of the title? Definitely happier, yeah. It got to the point last year that it seemed no matter what I did I couldn't win the championship. So I felt if it would come, it . would come. But I really didn't want to win just one championship. That doesn't mean that now I've won two I don't want another one. I put more pressure on myself to win this championship, and that was why I was seen to be not so happy. There were different circumstances around everything that led to that. I feel a lot more relaxed now. All in all, I think I'm fairly happy. Other than that everyone could be better. tN

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