Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ r;;,~~.~ .( U '. ~ t ' 'l,:-- - - - - - - - -, f1iPBi~ IN R IE Rich Oliver TE V W no m tter-U-it' s burgers, they're going to'do.ahell·ma job flipping burgers because they wer e trained how to work hard. The racing part is almost kind of a secondary thing to watching them open their eyes and go:" ow I understand, now I . see that hard work results in a good track result. Hard work makes me a better person. Hard work makes me someone more interestin g to be aro und." Jason is a good example. Here's a guy who came down . to Fresno and helped me paint the floor in the trailer. At the end of an eight-hour da y, I said, "Wha t can I pa y you to do this?" and he said, "No thing, I just wanted to help out." That was a year before I hired him. That' s the kind of attitude that I like. A lot of you ng people today seem to have an attitude of, "You've got it, wh y can' t I get it?" It takes a little longer than they understand . What do you recommend, short of getting a spot on Rich's team, for getting into 250ccGrand Prix racing? 250s are really easy to get into. The bikes are so good out of the crate. The difference between a box-stock 250 and my particular bike is not that much. My bike is a little bit lighter, mak es a little bit more horsepower, but if you' re a first-year rider, a 250 is a true race bike that' s ready to race right out of the crate. You've got a Chance to be competitive right in the front. They' re easy to ride to a certain poin t, then they become harder to rid e. You can re ach a very high level o f pe rf ormance and be a novice. To go beyond that takes a few years . It's like a m otocross, bike - A lot o f peopl e can r id e a mo tocross bike fast, but there's a few that can really ride one. It lends itself to a young exuberan t ride r. H e can d o ver y well right away 'w here he mi g ht be a little more inti midated by the hea vier 600 or the su perbike. It's user-friendly. You said your bike is lighter and makes a little more power. How much technical support do you get from Yamaha ? Is it the things that you do to your bike that give you the edge in that respe ct? We get a bike in a crate like everybody else. What Yamaha does for us is they take our information and sp read it arou nd to the other 250 compe titors. In fact, if I d iscover that there's a technical point wit h the bike that can be improved, Yamah a will ask me, "Are you having problems with this? Is this causing this any difficulty?" and I say, "Yes this is," or, "No this isn' t and here's w ha t we di d to fix it." We' re actually feeding information back to them. It goes all over the world. It goes to Spain, it goes to Japan. And in return for that, if we ever have any problems we . can call Yamah a and ask, "Have th ese guys had problems anywhere else with this?" So it's a two-wa y street . As far as factory parts, we have absolutel y no factory parts except for some different gears, gear ratios, that I got three years ago for a couple different gears in the gearbox. Everything else, we take apart and we modify it if we choose to. How much of your effort is actually Rich Oliver's finances on the line? When I bought the team from Nate Lund y at the end of '93, Nate and I combined our monies and ou r experienc es and everything, and he owned the trailer and truck and canopy and Yamaha provided us with the bikes and everything. When I bou ght it from Nate I basically p aid everything cash. So righ t no w , everything with this team, if we need so me thing we buy it wi th 'cash or we have our sponsors give it to us. It's really, really good, there's no debt. The money coming in exceeds the money going out - if we are having good results. If we fall off all the time, then we start going backwards pretty fast, so ther e' s not a lot of financial security. I'm not getting a salary, Jason's not getting a salary. Ou r prize money is our salary, and our contingency money. So the money that is pu t up by, say , Yamaha, I live off that. Yamaha gives us a set bud get of equipment and we take that every year and we build that up as best we can to make three really competitive bikes. Every year it gets a lot better and every year Yamaha comes up with a little bit more for us. The thing is that all the com panies that have associat ed with us, every year we show th em th at we've d one mor e for them. In turn , they give us a little more to allow us to do an even better job. It's been a real grad ual, maybe 20 percent a year, increase in funding. It's no t like all of a sudden we have all this money. Whatever I earn, I keep, and whatever Jason earns, he kee ps . And we s p li t expenses on the things we have to pa y for . And we g o r aci ng . Yamah a has speed, and how smooth they were. And back then everybody had black leath ers , or brown leathers. It wasn't like today nobody had knee skids or anything . It was just old-time road racing. I remember watching Kenny Roberts when I started racing at Laguna Seca as a pro like the first cou ple years and wa tching Kenny Roberts come there pu t on tha t incred ible show in Formula One riding his Yama has. H e was so meone who I tried to copy his sty le. I never could, of cou rse, but he was one of my insp irations for being smoo th and fast, like he is. . The n it wa s kind of fun ny, becaus e years later I'm working for him and I got a cha nce to ask th e questions I alwa ys wa n ted to ask him when I was a kid . Kenn y made me underst and the techniques required to race. I was making it way too complicated before I met him. H e s how ed me ho w to basicall y do almost not hing and go faster than to do everything and fight the bike. Now I go on and remind myself of the things that I was taught. I go ou t in practice and I'll say to myself tha t I've got to wa tch my fundamentals or whateve r. allowed him to use Ch uck' s bike fro m last year, you know, things like that really help. What was your first moto rcycle race, and did you come from a background of racing? I'm the first one in my family to race. It started out when I was 11 years old with a minibike I used to ride con st antly in Pittsburgh, CaIifornia . I rode during summer vacatio n. I rod e from 7:30 in th e morning until it got dark or I had to come home and do my chores. Then my mother took me to Laguna Seca one year when I was probably about 14 and I wa tched road racing . That was back in the mid '70s. Wh en I was 16 I we n t to work fo r Kawasaki of Monterey as a lot boy. I emptied the trash, I washed win dows, I pushed the bikes in and out and washed them after school. I bought a Kawasaki 650, I rode that on the street, and my boss had been into racing and he saw me ridin g o n th e s tree t and im m edia tel y said,"Look, you've got to stop riding 'on th e s treet. You 're ridin g way too fast, you' re going to get hurt." He got me on a bike and I started doing races. Wh~ my mom took me to those first road races, I jus t cou ldn't believe th e It' s all fro m bein g trai ned by hi m , an d (Ra ndy) Ma m ola w as th e sa m e way. He was. a natural talen t that you could say, "Just d o this," and he tried it. A lot of it was just do nothing, just sit on the thing (the bike) and let it d o w hat it wants to do. I learn ed a few th ings on my own that really helped me in particul ar with my style. And being a litt le more mature now I still make a lot of little mistakes, but I try not to mak e th e big ones . What in particular did you find that works for you? I don't really want to say specific thing s, but I would say that the mental ou tlook of underst anding that most ev erybody out there who is a top rider is trying very, very hard . They alwa ys look so smooth . and .cont~olled and fast. They had nice bikes, and I was a privateer looking at these factory guys... I remember thinking to myself that they didn't even look like they were trying. But then I would come in and see them take of their helme ts and th e y' d be drench ed in swea t. Th en I und erstood that these gu ys were trying really hard . . That ma d e me und er s ta nd th at it wasn' t so much that they were a factory rider (that made them go fast), but it was that they were a really good rider . I tried to tell myself that if I could try as hard as they are, maybe I could be where they are someday. That's something that I also learned from Kenny. There's being natural and being smooth, but there is also trying really hard. Do you su bscribe to the dirt-track-firs t philosophy? Did Roberts put you out on dirt bikes back then? O h, yea h. The first d ay I eve r wen t to Kenny' s I had a 125 motocross bike, and l .wasn' t much of a d irt rider. I'd lose the fro nt end a ll the tim e a nd fall d own. Typical moves of a road racer trying to ride in the dirt, who doesn 't understand w ha t a fron t knobby can and can' t do wi thout a berm. Kenny wa tched me ride and kind of got a chuckle ou t of it. He ')r said , "Hey , there's this jump over here. It' s top gear, you go off this hill and fly d own over there. Maybe you want to try it. " So I spun arou nd on my 125 and nailed it, pinned it all the way over top of th is ju mp and flew way, way down there, landed. I was terrified , but I just d id it and when I ca me back he was smiling . At tha t point he rea lly started wo rking with me hard. I guess that was some so rt of little wa y he knew that I'd go for it. From that jump came a lot better tech niqu e in the d irt, a nd I ha ve the d i rt t rack experie nce now. I have a YZ2S0 tha t I ride. I think rid ing in the d irt is a n absolu te necessity if yo u want to be a good road racer . It gives you the feelin g that you need in order to control the bike that is basically slid ing both ends. The control tha t yo u ca n have in that sit ua tio n based on d rifting a motocross bike arou nd a fla t turn, a t s peed, or slid ing a dirt tracker into a comer and trying to get it to hook up and lookin g for traction and weighting the pegs and do ing ~1I the things tha t yo u need to d o in th e d ir t, th ose th ings translat e over, and when yo u rid e a road racer yo u rid e it t he sa me w a y . You' re working at a higher traction level, bu t once you ge t to the lim it it's just like riding in the dirt agai n. It' s th e sa me exact beha vior. You d on 't have as mu ch lever age on the hand lebars is the only thing. We're you sorry to see Jimm y Fil- ~ ice l eave the class, or w as it a sense o f relief for you that you wouldn't have to deal with him? . Jimmy and I are... I wou ld say he's better on tight tracks a nd I'm bett er on fast tracks. I think we would have had quite a season this year. He mad e me ride right to the limit all the time and that sort of rubbed off and I keep riding tha t way. That's what you see in that Daytona margin of victory. It's just a habit of having to hammer it all the time. Would you ever slow down to make a better race of it? I mean, I d id slow down at Daytona. On ce I had a lead I started to get conservative becau se there was no po int. But I think that the first ha lf a race it's just ingrain ed in me to just go for it. The races that Jimmy and I had were really good. It' s so mew ha t of a relief because it makes it to where I don't have to be riding around at the ragged edge all the time, but I also kind of enjoyed being on the ragged edge all the time. It's tou gh either way, but it's really • tough when he's here. There' s a list of 10 . guys you could say are fast, just becau se Jimmy' s not here, it's still tou gh . Right now Randy Ren frow has taken up the position of challenger. He's riding really good . His bike' s very fast. He' s making it great. . a

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