Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

much control do you ha ve over the riders? If Je remy McG ra th wants to ge t hi s eyebrows pierced , for example ... Well, is there some po int when Honda steps in and says that' s enough? That' s atough question, Well, we have our contracts. And those contracts have clauses in them that cover damn near every thing .. They cover things like image, and there's escape clauses from bo th sides. Th er e is written control in th e contracts. The problem with tha t is the only way you "an control something is to can cel the contract. Nobody wants to do tha t and everybo dy knows that. It's a give-and- take thing. I think if it was a problem, there's way more acceptance fr om th at crowd (superc ross/ motocross) to those kinds of things than there used to be. If it were 10 years ago we 'd be get ting a lot of ma il abo ut it but we haven't got a .single letter ye t. That's just the way it is now . We're wi lling to go along w ith that. There's times w he n we w ish it wasn't th at way, but he's wh o he is and he' s famo us . You just roll with the punches. Cycle News was inundated with letters about McGrath's move to Can yon Lake. Have you received a similar outcry? And what's your opinion on the subject? We haven' t received any letters on it. I'm sure his folks p robably have. In San Diego at the supercross there were some guys ragging on hi m about Canyon Lake from the fence and he wasn't even' around. There's some definite feelings out there. My personal opinion is that it isn 't any of their business. It's none of our business. Had I been him I would have thou ght twice about that, but he . chose to do it and it's really none of our business. That ' s my opinion, not Hondas. I do n' t know what Honda's official opinion is. Hey, it's his deaL I don't dea l one-o n-one with Jeremy very often , but he's always been a perfect gentleman wi th me. I've never had a bad instance w ith Jere my. I jus t read about him in Cycle News (laughs). In all your years of doing th is, who has been the most difficult rider for you to dea l with? Who was the easiest? Man, this goes back a long ways. I can't answer with one rider. I think probably the most di fficult rider I ever dealt with, starting ou t, was Eddie Lawson, but before Edd ie left (Kawasaki) that all turned around . The most consistently difficul t was (Iean -Michel] Bayle. That started out difficult and it never got any better. But you've got to put yourself in those guys' shoes. If you could do what they do , make the money they do, you might be that way too. The easiest we ever dealt with was George Holland. He was the nicest guy in the world. Wayne Rainey is in that mix. (jeff] Stanton was great. There's a bunch of them that fall into that group. You always have to ca ution yo urself before you pass judgment - you've got to walk a mile in their shoes . You've got to te mper all th a t st uff. Law so n is a good example. He an d I used to bu tt hea ds like you wo uldn' t believe, but it got better before he left our team. And we 've come to be pretty good friends: It all wo r ks o u t an d I' ve go t a ton o f respect for all those guys. Bubba Shobert was grea t and I should have menti oned h im right away. We use d to send him to parts-d ivision con ventions to pl ay volley ball with th e boys who'd won the parts-sales contest, stuff that those guys never want ed to do . He'd go, do the job an d then send us a th ank- you let ter at the end. Abso lutely outstanding. Let's talk about rider talent. Is there one rider who stands out as having more natural talent than an y of the oth- ers yo u've wor ked w ith ? What about work ethic? I think Jeff Stanton probably worked the hardest to get to where he was. He really worked hard. Bayle has to be on the list for natural talent. Shobert has a lot of natural talent, Rainey, Lawson... whoever I leave out is going to be mad at me forever. What was the worst day you've expe rienced in all of your years in racing? The worst day had to be in snowmobile racing . A cou ple of drivers were killed one d ay wh en I was with Polaris. That was wi tho u t a d ou bt the worst. That ~ould have been in 1965 or so. I was the team man ager w ith Polari s. Nei the r of the two d rivers were mine, bu t we knew th em all . In moto rcycle racing it was when Shober t was hurt. We didn 't know anyt hing when he left. I didn' t get to go with him in the helicopter bu t it looked pret ty bad wh en he left . It was suc h a s hock because it happened a fte r th e checkered flag. What about you r be st day in racing? When I was at Polaris, my first real racing job, we won the World Championship as a real un derd og. We were .the smallest company; Bomb ard ier Ski-Doo were very big and Arctic Cat was a dominant force in racing. I didn't have much confidence since it was my first racing job, but we won that first World Championship. That was about the best da y in my life. . Since then, it was probably 1986. It was my second year at Honda and we won all 10 championships we were involved in . That was a really happy day, but the company didn't really recognize it. It was kind of like a high and a low . Does it concern you as a team manager to see yo ur riders doing th ings li ke nac-nacs and other stuff the rest of us think is crazy? We haven't talked much about it as a man agement group, but my own opinion when I see him (McGrath) do it in practice or a heat race or something, I think to myself, "Damn, I wish he wouldn't do that." But I've got to think again that he's got so mu ch talen t, so much ability, that it's easy for him. It's like me breathing. I don't think anybody has ever cautioned hi m not to . do it . When you 're in administration, you hire somebody you think can do the job. Then you stand back an d let him do the job. If that's part of wha t he does, then I guess that' s okay. But it' s concerning, for sure - only becau se yo u and I wouldn' t do it because we' re not capa ble of doing it. Who in your opinion is going to be the next great American road racer? Oh, man (laughs). I su ppose Mike Hale . If we're talking in the near futu re. We thought when we hired him th at he had every chance of going all the way. We knew he was going to do well. We had high expectations. He was a di rt tracker and d irt trackers h a ve a n advan tage over the res t of th em . If we were out looking for a rider, I wo ul dn't even consider a non -dirt tracker - unless it was a known guy. There are a lot of good guys that aren't dirt trackers, but if you're goingout looking for a guy that you' re going to groom, I wouldn't even look anywhere else. They've just got so much more experience at a younger age. Some of them have 800-900 starts. ' That leads us to Ben Bostrom. Is he in the future plan s for the road ra cing tea m? We're in the process of try ing to finalize a deal right now, but it's not done yet. And we mayor may not do it. We're just in the process of maybe loaning him a few bikes for him to use wherever he's going to race. We wouldn't have any control over it. In fact, our ag reement would stipulate that we want no control over it. He's got potential for sure. But it go es b ey ond potential, doesn't it? Yes, we're looking for other th in g s besides talent. We're looking for somebody that has a good appearance, tha t can do interviews - a person that has the potential of becoming a spokesman. We have to consider all those things after we've foun d somebody to get the job done, but there' s a lot m ore to it than just racing. Ther e' s a lot of guys who can go fast racing, but you don't necessarily want them on your team for two or three years. There's a gut feel there. Size, physical size has a lot to do with it. We have this picture we like to paint everybody in. He' s got to be fairly good-looking, he's got to be able to talk . If he doesn't have a good smi le h e has to have enough tee th that we can make a good smile. All o f those th ings co me it to it at so me point. The figures that Mike Hale was reportedl y asking fo r to return to the Smokin' Joe 's team for 1996 - any truth to those high numbers? I do n' t know wha t figure you're talking about, but I do think his demands were unreasonable. I think for the stage in his career, he was asking for a lot. That's not saying that he won't be a World Champion, and for sure he's going to make way more than that - but for that time in his career we thought it was pretty high. There have also been numbers thrown out that the lease cost of a Honda RC45 from the factory is 5300,000. Are those numbers accurate? No, that's incorrect. The number printed was correct, but not for each bike. The 5300,000 is for the whole program. That's for everything we get, plus parts. It sounds like a lot, but we get a lot. We get an engineer, a full compliment of parts - and if you have a bad year you can use up $300,000 worth of parts. 23

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