Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Steve Crevier By Henny Ray Abrams teve Crevier is th e number -t wo rider on the Smokin ' Joe's Honda team and damn happy about it. In an era wh en equa lity among teammates is often alleged and som etimes .p racticed, Crevier has the good sen se to know that he's finally realized a dream by landing on a team he 's admired for years, and one that could do no wrong in 1995 . Between their two rid ers, Miguel DuHamel and Mike Hale, the y won all bu t tw o of the AMA Superbike rac es and all o f the 600cc Super sp ort races. DuHamel won b oth titles, Hale finish ed second in both classes an d used his season as a sp ringboard to the World Su perbike wars. " I would be an ass not to con sid er m yself the number-two rid er," the cheer fully voluble Crevier said duri ng a pho ne conversation fro m his hom e in Pitt Mead ows, just ou tside of Vancouver, British Columbia. "I' d be kidding m yself, beca u se let ' s look a t wh at . Miguel did last year. He won races and I just got second. I wo uld say that would probably appoint me to the number-two posi tion. From the view of Honda and the way they run their program there is no one and two . I would say that Miguel was p rob abl y their first choice, I was probably their second choice. I believe our equipment's the same an d I believe th at if it wasn't goi ng to be th e same, but th ey wanted to test new stuff, I believe I'd be inform ed, which I hav en 't in th e past . I' m not going to mention any name s, but I don't believe tha t I've been treated 100-percen t fair, but, then ag ai n, some bo dy I kno w somewhere else wo uld p rob ably say tha t I get the . exact same stuff that the w orld team gets and it's just not so. End of story." No t quite. Last season wasn' t much fun for the Muzz y Kaw asaki team s a n d tea m owner Rob Mu zzy has taken mo re than his sha re of hits, not just from his former ride rs Pascal Picotte and Scott Russell, but al so fr om curren t ri d er Anthon y Go bert. But on the subject of Muzzy, Crevier is ambivalent. On the one hand he's gratefu l for having been given the op po rtu nity to race as a factory super bike rac er, but he do esn't feel that he alwa ys got the support he needed. "I've got grea t, great admiration for Rob," Cre vier say s emphatically. "He's done a lot in his lifetime that's quite reputabl e and cred ible. The man 's a genius. He 's Rob Mu zzy. It' s just when I rod e for him in '94, I think we had 1000 riders and 800 bikes. It jus t didn't work. There weren't enough mechanics to help the tea m, everybody was stressed a nd things were just way un organized. That was a p retty bad deal. I think even Rob Muzzy would look back and go, 'Holy Toledo, we 've got to get organized: " In fact, Muzzy admitted at the 1994 Road Atla n ta finale that he' d m ad e al most every mistake you could m ake in running a team. The hop e was tha t 1995 wou ld be S 32 be tt e r, b ut Crevi er d o esn' t feel the eq uipme n t was tip to sn uff and, like Picotte, believes that the w hole effort was torpedoed when Scott Russell left at midsea son to join the Lucky Strike Suzu ki squad . "The second th at Scott left that program, tha t to ta lly, to tally seemed to abso rb, from wh at I see, 100 pe rcent of Rob's attention, and it sho uld ," Crevier says. "Nobody can rid e these thin gs as well as Scott. Well , Anthon y (Gobe rt) can - that kid's a madman. Nobod y can rid e the bikes as well as Scott an d se t them up as well as Scott and that totally absorbed a lot of Rob' s atte n tion. And the fact that Pascal and 1 weren 't wi nning races on his equipment kind of discoura ged him. I feel th a t ma yb e h e didn' t wan t to come to wa tch the bikes "lose races. He wa nts to go watch them win races. We couldn't do that for him . We saw him at the World Superbike race (at Laguna Seca) in Ju ly and we didn't see him until the last race of the year, and he wasn' t there for Su nd ay either. Pascal and I were very, very frustrated with the lack o f Rob being aro und, bu t Rob was b usy wi th o ther things: ' Despite the frus trations, Crevier p u t together a hand ful of good finishes, including a secon d at Pomona and a th ird at Sears Point, but he w as never able to climb the final step of the pod ium. "I no ticed with m yse lf that I'm always sort of th ere a t the en d of the r aces. I defi ni tely have the ability, I have the p hysica l strength to complete a race, bu t th ere ' s always been that last ' little bi t o f com mitm en t left t hat I ha ven ' t reall y been able to produce at the end of a race. I think that's been due to a lo t of. I bl ame th at ma inl y on. a lo t o f psycholog ical prob lems, ju st too much on m y pla te to d ea l w ith, " h e says, ad d ing tha t h e too often ge ts bad sta rts an d wea rs h im se lf down too early. "I get ne ar th e en d there, bu t by the time I near the end of th e race my tires are all used up an d I'm ment ally and physically tired and there's just that one little extra little bit of com m itment that you 've go t to have to win the ra ce:' It was "me n tal distractions," Crevier says, that plagued h im. "Not havin g the access to sett ing the bike up the way I wa nt it to be set up. Just d istractions that absorb too much - I don't want to sou nd deep here - of my mental au ra . It's just d istractions. It's har d to go into a fight whe n you know you' re going to lose: ' Bu t Crevier ad mi ts th at it was well before the final lap of the nice tha t he'd actua lly fallen behind. "I was losing my races on Friday becau se of confide nce, mental problems. And not jus t men tal problems, but problems to deal with the bikes. We weren't resolving them and that's fru strating. and I think the differ en ce is that H ond a tes ts enough that we 'r e not going to have these probl ems . We should see better results fro m me right awa y:' Th at wou ldn't be h ar d . La st yea r started at Daytona wi th Crevier getting taken out by Fast by Fer racci 's Mike Sm it h while running in the to p 10 halfway through the race. He wo ul d get taken ou t tw ice mor e, non e of the three crashes his fault, he beli eves. "I haven 't been sn uffed from th e rea r in my entire career. This year I got taken out three time s," Crev ier, an agg ressive racer who's often lumped among the "c razy Canadians," say s. As aggressively as he rid es, he isn' t willing to take unnecessary risk s in the first few corners and he's equ ally unwilling to risk jumping th e start, even though he had a hard time w ith th e AMA sta rt procedures. " I don 't th in k m y sta rts are bad , I thin k it 's th e AM A's s ta rti ng syste m that's pathetic. Not jus t bad , but path etic," he says, noting the 600cc Supersport race at Gatew ay where Erion Racing's Larry Pegram "cam e fro m th e second row and hit m e on the way . It' s lik e, bef o re they even d ro p ped the dam n flag. " For 1996 Crevier sa ys that the AMA has switched to a starting light syste m , w hic h he fin ds encouraging . "Maybe this will jus t sort of cha nge my attitu de abou t the starts, cha nge my attitude 'about the wa y the AMA treats the starts, and ma ybe will help me get better starts:' Whathe also need s, an d fully expe cts to have, is machin ery th at holds up to the end. "Ha lfway through the race the bikes felt like they'd seized a pis ton or spun a bearin g or some th ing and th e bikes wou ld slow down at the halfway point," he says of the 1995 ZX7. "And I think they wen t back to wh at wo rked in '93 and '94 for motor stuff. And th at' s why, sort of at the end of the yea r, we finished better: ' The final two races netted second-place qualifying spots - first at Sears Point until it was disp uted by his teammat e Pico tte - and th ird - and fourth-place finishes . The yea r ended w ith Crevier finis hing eighth in th e final su perbike point standi ngs and seventh in 600cc Supersp ort, not terribly impressive, thou gh he credits Smokin ' Joe's Martin Adam s and Honda ' s Gary Mathers w it h see ing beyond the results. " I think Ma rt in r ea lized tha t I do h ave supe rb ik e capabilities . I d on't think he believ ed I d id before, but I believe he d oes now. And a lso Gary Mathers at H onda - I kno w for a fact that they want somebody that' s happy to ha ve a job and is going to try 100 percent for them and isn't going to try to run off to blood y Europe and leave them high and dry. If I did jump from Kawasaki to Honda this year, I did not say that I was taking a dea l un til I spoke w ith th e inv isible bo ss th at I had last . year." As ·for wanti ng to join the Honda team, Cre v ier sa id t h a t he' s known Ad ams for "as lo ng as he ' s been involved in raci ng, an d every year I offer to wash his car and clean his hou se if he'd hire me. His cars are clean now. I'd even mow his lawn if I had to. Christiane (Crevier's wife of less th an a

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