Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Is the bike good enough to win on? It is, but one of the problems with our bike is that our bike has to be 100 percent on. Suspension, tires, engine. Everything has to be 100 percent. And in turn with the bike being 100 percent, I have to be 110 percent for the thing to win. If the bike's 95 percent and I've got to ride that extra five percent, it's tough and the chances of it happening are slim and none. But the Ducatis just have so much on us. Honda goes good, Aaron (Slight) rides the shit out of the Honda. Goey (Anthony Gobert) and the Kawi, they go good on the shorter tracks. But for our bike to win, he 11, the bike's 10 years old, the engine design. For it to win, everything has to be perfect. Our best shot is winning here (Hockenheim) and Monza. That's our two really best shots, and maybe Indonesia. It's still a problem. It doesn't matter what tracks we're on, we've still got to get this thing around a comer. It goes fine in a straight line. We know that. If all we had to do was drag race, we'd be fine. But getting this thing around the comer, that's the toughest part. We're working on it, it's getting better and it's a lot better than it has been. But everybody else is making the same jump we're making. How much of that is your learning what it takes to tell the mechanics? I'll tell you it works out good. If I jump off the bike I can't tell them it's doing this, doing this, doing this, and just rattle on for five minutes. It takes me a good five, 10 minutes to maybe 'relax, take off my leathers, and go a lap in my head and think about it. Then I can say it did that. Firenze's really good about it because he'll ask, "What about acceleration and what about gear shifting," and he's good about reminding me about parts of the track that might not be so good and might be good. He's been to all these places and he knows where the bumps are as well as I do, if not better. Last year, whatever I felt, I told them. But this year I have a little more of a grasp on telling them what I think should happen. Did it hurt the team last year after Yamaha pulled out following Nagai's crash in Assen? I wasn't definitely locked into Yamaha. And at the end of the year Yamaha wanted me to stay and I was wanting to slay, but I still would have liked to have gone to those other two races to see what I could have done. We talked with p lot of people about a lot of different things and Yamaha just treats me the best. They know that I've got the ability to win and they know that their bike's not the bike out there. They're talking about II new bike and I can't say when or how, but they're talking about it. When it comes along I'll be a happy camper. What finally convinced you to stay with them? I won't get treated any better than they treat me. They're really nice and they do everything they can. They know that I've got the ability to win. . Who else did you talk to? Nothing serious, Suzuki. They just )N'anted to know what was going on. Whenever Yamaha and I and my dad got together, I had agreed pretty quickly after the last race. Because I missed the last two races, Yamaha made up for that. They weren't going to just leave me out in the cold. They made up for it. 'They knew they had to, really, because it was unfair to me. So they thought, "Well, it'll work out all right." Did you ask for anything different as a condition of returning? One of the things that I stressed more than anything, before I signed with them, was that we need loads more testing. A lot of riders don't want to test because they think they'll get hurt, but for us, we've got to know. We've got to have it. If we don't test then we're losing time, valuable time. We've got the tracks and we've got the time. We've got to find it. It doesn't matter if we go test at a track we don't race at just to get time on the bike to learn the bike. Because the bike's not totally figured out yet. And I don't think it ever will be. Are the Ducatis better this year? Yeah, they're loads better. The Dueatis are so easy to ride. That was the real problem. They're the easiest bike to ride. You can see anybody out there riding them, just like Hale, he's trying to ride it like his Honda and that's why he's going nowhere. But if you look at Corser and you look at Fogarty last year. Kocinski or Corser or Chili or anybody on the Ducati, one of them is always giving 110 percent. Like Kocinski was at Misano. Troy was at Donington. It always works out that way. There's never a time that I can remember that all of them have been back in the pack. There's always one of them. And we come out here and we're giving every weekend 110 percent and we're still second, third, fourth, fifth. Hell, I can't help it. John doesn't want to give 110 -percent at Donington, or Troy doesn't want to give 110 percent at Misano. They should be giving that much every weekend. Have you been surprised at Cad Fogarty's results? No, I haven't been surprised at all. I knew he was slow. It's so funny because in this week's Motor Cycle News in England, they've got him in there saying that the Ducatis don't have an advantage. He knows that if he admits that a Ducati has an advantage, those two World Championships he just won aren't worth the paper they're written on. He knows that. So he's got to tell it to his ego, and say, 'Yeah, I'm the best in the world: which he's full of shit. If you look at the double wins and all the wins that Ducatis have, look at the ones Hondas had, look at the ones Yamaha's had. Or Kawasaki for that matter. Russell's the only one that ever won races for Kawasaki. Gobert a couple. If the Dueati doesn't win, like in Misano, they tear the shit out of the four-cylinder, they tear them down, find something going on. You talk to (series organizers) Flammini and he wants even racing, he wants the racing to be even, but if the Dueati doesn't win, the stuff gets tom down to the frame. That's bullshit. Like (Aaron) Slight said (in Motor Cycle News), Corser's not the best rider in the world. He's winning the championship, he's definitely not the best rider in the world. He's on the best bike, that's for sure. How do you go to Donington on a Superbike and break the 500cc lap record? That doesn't make any sense, does it? What's it going to take to get you on a SOOcc? I don't know. The timing's got to be right. Everything's got to be right about it. I don't want to go over there on something that's not going to win races. The good thing about what I'm doing is that I really like the position I'm in because I'm learning. Okay, I'm not winning races, but I'm learning how to cope with not winning and when I do win it'll be all that much more great. And I'm getting so much experience. Like last year, was really, really tough, because I'd just come out of the AMA series and had won those races and I was pumped up. I came over here on a new bike with a new team and I was shot down in flames, I really was. It was hard to deal with and I was so pissed off with myself because I was always wanting to do better. There was nothing I could do about it. I wasn't going to do any better. We couldn't. We didn't have the experience. I didn't know the tracks, they didn't know the tracks. It frustrated the team, the tires, everything. Everything revolved around me doing shitty last year. I tried to learn the tracks as quick as I could and rode my tires off at every one and couldn't do any better. This year I'm much more relaxed and I know last year I was just upsetting myself saying: "Man, I blew my career. My career is going down the tubes." But then I stepped back in the winter and said, 'Man, that's not right: Look at the year (Wayne) Rainey had whenever he came over here and went back to the states. Everybody's got their problems. Nobody's career just went perfect. I'm not saying that last year was bad. Last year was good. I liked last year and I learned a lot. The more experience I can get, the better. It's helped out for this year. Last year I would have been happy with fourth and sixth like I got at Donington. This year I wasn't happy with it. Just wasn't happy. That's as fast as the bikes go, but I still wasn't happy with it. I'm out here to win. People ask me, "What are you going to do this weekend?" I'm going to win. "Well, what's your realistic goal?" I tell you my realistic goal, that's my goal, to win. What do they want me to say, that I come here to get second or third or fourth or fifth? C'

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