Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Muzzy Kawasaki's Doug Chandler 60 acing, when it's done right, borders on alchemy. Throw in on!! part fast motorcycle, one part c!ever technical team, one part committed team owner, and one part hungry rider and you will, if you keep at it long enough, enjoy success. Rob Muzzy discovered that with Doug Chandler in 1990, the pair teaming to win the AMA Superb ike title. Muzzy found it again with Scott Russell in 1992 and 1993. Chandler, meanwhile, has spent the time since then chasing the Holy Grail. And now he's back to the home of his greatest success, the Muzzy Kawasaki squad. With all the pieces in place, and Chandler having tried the new ZX-7R, the quest begins anew, and Chandler, for one, has fallen into his old habits. "The first day 1 was really surprised," the 30-year-old father of three says about the three-day Dunlop tire test. "It makes a difference when you get on something that's like that, everything comes easy. You don't think you're putting any more effort into it, but I'm sure you are, because the feeling you're getting is that it's just easier." The last time Chandler felt this way on a racing motorcycle was at the Argentine Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the 1993 SOOcc World Championship. "That was the last time 1 actually enjoyed a race." othing about racing is easy and Chandler knows it. His success aboard the Muzzy Kawasaki in 1990 was a springboard to his first Grand Prix ride on a low-profile team owned by Kenny Roberts. It was the perfect low-pressure entry into the high-pressure world of Grand Prix racing. A year later he moved forward, yet again, as Kevin Schwantz's teammate on the frontline Lucky Strike Suzuki team. From there an offer came from the Cagiva factory. that was beyond anything he'd been paid before to race a motorcycle, and the excessively generous offer was for two years. "[ didn't really want to go, didn't want Suzuki to come up with that much money, but at least improve on where 1 was at. But there was really nothing there. So 1 kind of ended up with no place. 1 wanted to stay, but the money' was just too good going so [ just went ahead and did it. They (the oth.er riders) all tried to talk me out of it, they were sure the bike wasn't that good. But after the first race, they all come. back and said, 'Hey, that thing runs fast.'" After that came problems with the throttle sticking, suspension troubles, and, finally, the late-season hiring of John Kocinski, late of the Lucky Strike Suzuki 250 team. "When they brought John in, it discouraged me. It felt like they abandoned me. It was kind of hard to put your heart in to it. 1 wan ted to improve myself, but it was so hard to kind of get myself up to speed mentally. "The second year wasn't so bad. Working with Kel (Carruthers) was great. The start wasn't so good, because 1 kind of carried over the bad part of the year before with me. We were up front and led a few races. It was kind of frustrating because when we finally started going good, we started breaking." The rest of the second year was up and down and, finally, the rumors began that Cagiva was dropping the program and Chandler was unemployed. "1 don't regret any of it. It was disappointing since we started out the season Chandler's retum to the good the first year. 1 mean, we raced with Kevin (Schwantz) and Wayne (Rainey) in Australia. 1 didn't really expect that was going to happen." The downside is that toward the end there was a lack of support from the top and his Grand Prix career was, at least temporarily, over. He would corne horne to the most American of all teams, Harley-Davidson, and suffer through his most frustrating season ever as a professional, a year that was peppered with injuries, mechanical problems, and lack of progress. If he was to return to the ranks of the elite, now would be the time, this would be the team. When he rolled the lime-green ZX-7R onto the race track at Daytona on the first day of the test he rediscovered something which had been missing for more than a year: He was having fun again and it was obvious. How did 1 know? For one, he was smiling, and secondly, he was telling anyone who would listen. "It was good to be able to go out there with the guys and kind of do what you want with them and be right there," Chandler said after the second day of the test. "1 was surprised. 1 wanted to try to get in there good, but 1 didn't think 1'd be the fastest guy on my first day. 1 wanted to give myself all three days to ride and ride and ride and get comfortable with everyting. 1 guess when you get on something that works that good it's easy, and so you just go with it and when you go with it you end up going good." This was not a sentiment he would have expressed last year. After the 1994 season Chandler and his manager, Gary Howard, were entertaining a number of offers. They were negotiating to ride the Smokin' Joe's Honda in the AMA Superbike series and they had discussed racing the Fast by Ferracci Ducati in the States also. A third option was the Ducati WorLd Superbike team. As a favor to the Cagi- va factory, Chandler had tested the Ducati Superbikes to see if he could help them out with a handling problem. "The first time 1 rode a Ducati 1 rode (Fabrizio) Pirovano's. The second time 1 rode (Giancarlo) Falappa's bike and that was with Fogarty. That was supposed to be a full-on, two-day test. 1 ended up testing three hours and (team manager) Virginio (Ferrari) took me off the thing because he said 1was messing his driver (Fogarty) up. That kind of pissed me off a bit because 1 went all the way down there to do this test for them and they take me off the thing. 1 guess, at the time, we were a second and a half quicker than Fogarty and he didn't like it." The Honda offer was nearly completed when they were told that Miguel DuHamel had signed. "Right before, the day before we got the okay on some stuff we were questioning, they called up and said Miguel had done the deal and that he had done it not with Martin (Adams) or (Gary) Mathers, but with someone else there and they didn't really know what wa going on there. 1 don't believe that. I think ¢ey knew all along." The Ducati test came around the time that the factory was well on their way to ending their SOOcc Grand Prix program. Chandler isn't sure of the exact timing, whether he tested before or after they'd found out. "1 would have done that for them regardless," he says. But then the World Superbike deal fell through and the Ferracci deal never came together. " Ferracci said that if 1 rode for him Ducati wanted him to buy a new truck and have it all done up," he says, somewhat skeptically. "You. just don't know." The final choice came down to sitting Muzzy Kawasekl aquad proved ImpressIve during testing at Daytona. out and waiting to replace an injured rider on a factory team, a ghoulish decision, or going with Harley-Davidson. "1 don't want to say that 1 didn't want to ride the Harley. 1 just would rather have ridden something else. 1 didn't think it was good to say, 'No, I'm not going to ride: It was kind of a crazy year last year," he admits. And the notion of pinch-hitting for a fallen rider was considered, but "you can't count on that. If we had done that it would have been the year no one got hurt." At the first race of the year he would find himself among the wounded and the condition would linger for half the season. Chandler was taken out of the Daytona 200 on the fourth lap by Englishman Roger Bennett as they exited turn six toward the banking. The damage would be a broken collarbone that needed plating, and it'was followed by a prolonged absence. The next time he got on the bike, for a private test at Laguna Seca, he crashed again, rebreaking the same collarbone. By the time he finally got on track he'd missed the first third of the year and was too sore to work himself into shape. His first finish was at Mid-Ohio, a 15th in the fourth race of the year. A non-finish at Elkhart Lake, a ninth at Loudon, and an 11th at Brainerd followed before he moved on to the sweltering heat at Gateway Park in East St. Louis. "At St. Louis, it seemed like 1 finally started feeling pretty good. It took me a while to get going again because we missed pretty much half the season. St. Louis was next, and for the next two 1

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