Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127782
250 cha m pion an d the 750 Supersp ort cham pion. I think if they were winning in every venue, they wouldn' t put so much em phasis on the ones who are (already wi nning). But we've d one a really good job for them over the last four years. As far as the future plans, they would like to see me take up a new challenge and the way I interpret that is in su perbike, but they're ar e still focused on their team at the moment and we really haven't talked about w hat migh t happen next year. There has also been talk abo ut me runni ng a sa tellite team for Yamaha th a t wo uld either be a 600 or 750 supersport ยท team. . It would seem like a pretty natural transition for you to run a team. You already " do all this yourself, arranging the sponsorship, pretty much everything. Yeah , I pret ty m uch do it all. We have media aud its done (to measure sponsorshi p exposure from racing and publicity efforts) . We do what we can on ou r smaIl scale. I would say that out of all the teams in racing; the companies that have been with me, I have sho w n th em th e most loyalty.of any team they'v e ever had . I've been with most of my sponsors for 15 yea rs. We have a really good relationship with industry companies and a very good relationship wi th Yamaha. Basically, there's the team-ownership thing, t he team -man a gem e nt th in g , there's rid er tr a in ing, th ere' s ma ybe ... spe ndi ng the last couple of my seasons on a superbike, giving them maximum effort on their superbike team and then going into being a team mana ger or a consultant or running another d ivision, or ma ybe even wo rking for Yamaha in the office in the upper management of racing with my experience. I'm kind of at a crossroads point in my career righ t now where I'm getting a lot of a dvice from all d iffe re nt a ng les on w hat to d o and almost everything has been suggested except rid e w it h Bradshaw on the supercTOss team . I' m hoping tha t things will kind of gel and lead me in a dir ection tha t I can go . If they d on 't gel, th en I' d feel foolish to quit doing something I'm successful a t jus t because so me peo ple find it boring to wa tch. You mentioned rider training, which you already have a history of doing, like with Chuck ., Sorensen, but now he's jumped over to four- strokes. The situation with Chuck is kind of interesting because Chuck came from an absolute background of zero experience and we turned him into the second-best 250 rider in the country. He raced with Jimmy Filice, he raced wi th Rich Oliver, he raced with everyb od y out there and did very very well. I feel that I get about half the credit and Chuck gets the rest. I mean, Chuck did an unbelievable job of coming from nothing to being a very fine Grand Prix rider. . The problem is that for Chuck Sorensen, t here wasn't a lot of opportunities with Yamaha, so he had to look elsewhere. I had done everything I could poss ibly do with Chuckle, a t this poin t, on a 250 team . I wanted to ge t somebody li ke Jason (Ro th) w ho is w he re Chuck was two years ago. Because it was no more of a challenge to me anymore. I mean, he was d one, he was finished , he didn't have an y.bad habits. He had a fine understanding of the machine and race technique, and it's, "Okay, it' s time to move on." Was that his decision? It wa s both o ur decisi o ns . We bot h believed that he needed to prove himself on a four-stroke machine, and Kevin Erion and myself are friends. When we couldn't work out anything with Yamaha, we approached Kevin. He was very . ent husiastic about getting Chuck. Unfortunately he's off to a slow start by getting injured (broken arm at Daytona), but he's shown a lot of speed righ t off. And we plan to d o th at with Jaso n as well , altho ug h I'd like to keep Jason in 250s a couple seasons before he goes any where. Jason 's only 21 yea rs old , so we' ve got plen ty of time with him. Wh at ab ou t Formul a USA? Are you going to do any more rou nds with that series? Well, Formula USA was a great opening for our season. After, I felt, being bullied aro und by the officials in Formu la USA, I felt that they thought I was a detrim ent to their series and that really hurt my feeling because I had done a tremendous amount of PR work for them. I had shown up at races wh en nobody else would show up. I was always there su pporting it an d then I get a call that says, "We may not wa nt you back. Don't come, because you don' t look like one of ou r bikes." And that hurt my feelings mor e than I let on. I think going to Willow when they changed their mind and let me in, and wi nning Willow, it was like destiny for me to win that race. To show everybody it's not so much the 250 that won that race, but it's my team tha t wo n tha t race and that if we'd had an 1100 we mig ht have won that race, or if we'd had a 1300 we migh t have won that race. It di dn' t mat ter - we were a good Form ula USA team. It was a great sta rt for the season. It was the first wi n for the 1996 (lZ) 250. Then we went to Daytona , we showed up, we go t stuc k ou t in the d irt . We could n' t even make it int o the pits. We did n't have a pit spot. We were treated like garbage. And Colin Fraser, who is probably one of the best officials in all of racing, listened to us, said, "We can't ha ve the points leader out in th e dirt," rearranged everything, helped me out, smoo thed everything out and we had a great Daytona. We qualified fifth. I mean, look at this way: If I can win Willow, a nd then go to Daytona where I shouldn't even be in the first 20 rows and qua lify fifth on a 250, I d eserve to be in there. We'd love to race more of them but the schedule, the way it lays ou t, we can only be in one place at one time so it' s very d ifficult to race all of them . Bu t goi ng back to th e 250 class and everything, if people just sit down for a second and look at it from my poi nt of view, I feel tha t I'm giving back to the class as much as I'm taking from it. I'm bringin g in new riders, I've got a twobik e team that I feel is one of the most professional teams in the AMA, dollar for dollar, than any top superbike team and I've got a lot of sponso rs involved in 250 racing, I do a lot of PR for the AMA, for Yama ha . We're just trying our best as a team . We' re here to d o a job, we go d o our job. If we get criticized for it, we ll, that's maybe a compliment in disgu ise. Yeah, I haven't heard anyone telling Jeremy McGrath to quit. What' s Jeremy McGrath doing for supercross? I think it's great. I pick up Cycle News every week going, "Did he w in again? He did again. Incredible!" I wish Yamaha was winning th em all. On the other hand , I ad mire a guy who can put together that kin d of consiste n t performance. Yama ha will put together that kind of consisten t performance. It's just not their time right now. Everybody goes through cycles. I' m goi ng thro ugh m y good cycle, McGra th's going thr ough his good cycle. We try to keep these cycles of excellence lasting as long as we can. We getinjured, make a few mistakes , and they go away. I don't see it as from now until forever more, I see it as, "Well, I'm going to try to win Pom ona, I was lucky enough to win Daytona." I don't look at it like I'm going to try to win all 10. I'm just going to go a da y at a tim e. Just like McGrath says: "I'm trying. It's working out." You can't overanalyze it. How much training do you do? With the team, there have to be a lot of other demands besides just the riding. The team is somewha t hard for me to run, mai ntain the bikes and train , along wi th the phone calls. What I do is dedicate a couple days a week to wo rking on motorcycles and a couple days a week to riding off-roa d at Kenny' s (Roberts) ra nch and abo ut three days a week wo rking on my training routine in the gym . I answer the phone in the morning. How much wo rk do you do yourself on the bik es? Jeff Myers, my crew ch ief, wo rks on Jason's bikes at his house and prepares that one for him, and I work on my own tw o bikes at home. But a lot of times Jeff will come down and help me out. Gener. a lly speakin g , myself an d Ja son ' s mechanic, Mark, who li ves in Fresno, both of us get everything pr epared every week mechanically, tru ck included - trailer, brakes, washin g things, cha nging oil, ge ne ra to rs , it' s a milli on little things. That's my job an d I wo rk at it 12 hours a day. We broke one of ou r motor s yes terday. I crashed this morning. Peop le think that it just goes like clockwo rk for us but it's not the case. We work hard, w e go through adversity a lmost every day. Something always goes wrong. The key is having it all read y by Sunday. Would you take a world superbike ride? I'd like to thi nk I wo u ld . Of cou rse it' s hard to speculate. I do n' t have any recen t superbike ex perience . If som e one ca me a lo ng a nd said , "Rich, we' ve got a world cham pi, onship 250 team ," boy, I'd be licking my lips over that one. I think I have su ch a good relations hip with Yamaha that I wou ld do everything p ossible to work with th em firs t and I wo uld run the idea by them. But yeah, I'm open to all kinds of p o ssibili tie s. You have to b e because there's just not that many jobsavailable. What motivates you to bring up the younger riders? Is it bringing people up into the class and keep- . ing the racing going, so rt of like job security? I don't know, I d on 't have kids, maybe that' s it (laughs). It's a fathering in stinct in me. I guess since I've been through it I like to watch a younger person experience all the highs and lows with racing an d see them improve. Ta ki ng them from a weak, untrained , poo r mental attitude and changing them into a strong, tough-minded competitor w ho will do anything to ma ke his bike better and his rid ing bett er an d to see that tra nsfo rmation in somebody. It's to know tha t I' ve chan ged them for the res t of their life. No ma tter what they do, fl tJ ~