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/127812
INTERVIEW Scott Russell By Paolo Goul cott Russell wasn't satisfied with winning the World Superbike Championship in his first attempt in 1993, proving to be the only rider· in recent times to have defeated the seemingly unbeatable Ducatis with a four-eylinder bike. He wasn't satisfied with almost repeating this incredible performance the following year, losing out to sworn enemy Carl Fogarty only at the final round due to a faulty tire. He wasn't satisfied with heading the Kawasaki attack in road racing competition and winning the 1993 Suzuka 8Hour, the first-ever victory for the Akashi manufacturer in this important race. He wasn't satisfied with a milliondollar contract and being one of the leading riders in World Superbike. Scott Russell wanted more. His ambition was to become the hero of two worlds and win both the 500cc World Championship anll, the World Superbike Championship. In May, 1995, the American left all hi former success behind and went off to ride the Suzuki left vacant by. Kevin Schwantz. Russell had accepted the tremendous challenge of replacing a two-wh legend. He wanted to prove that superbike racing wasn't a second-string category, as some people had suggested, and that the big names of the half-liter bikes could be beaten by a superbike rider. As Russell was making his GP debut at the age of 31, he had no time to lose and couldn't afford a couple of seasons learning the ropes, like the new generation of talent such as Norifumi Abe or Loris Capirossi. He wanted everything immediately, despite the fact that he had never ridden a two-stroke machine in his career - or even a 190 bhp SOOcc bike. Ambi tion and courage, however, are not enough to tame a 500cc GP machine. You need preparation and, above all, a solid background of knowledge to set the bike up in the best possible way - in a word, experience. Russell, however, had to learn rapidly, and last year he found himself in the dirt more often than he expected - and in any case, more often than he ever was in superbike racing. As a result, his confidence suffered a major setback, and so did the team's confidence in the American. The relative capa bi lity of the Suzuki RGv?OO compared to the top machines af the class did the rest; the result was that in 1996, Russell failed to score any victories. A pair of third-place finishes, one at Suzuka and the other at Brno, were his best resul ts, and he finished sixth overall in the championship. These results, on the surface, appear poor, but only to a certain point if we consider that, with the same bike this year, Daryl Beattie injured him- self badly, his young replacement Takeshi Fujiwara crashed after just one qualifying season in Malaysia, and the team's "reserve" rider, Terry Rymer, failed to do anything worthy of mention. Maybe it was impossible to do any better with the RGv, but the fact remains that in 18 months, Russell failed to arouse much excitement in an environment with which he never once managed to get along well. Despite everything, the man from Georgia had a number of possibilities for 1997. He could have taken up the Suzuki option, or, mOre realistically, he could have accepted the healthy offer from Elf to ride its new GP bike with its sidecar-derived engine. Russell, who celebrated his 32nd birthday October 2 , could even have finished his career as a well-paid rider for a second-rate team. But none of these options were what he wanted. "To win, that's what I want," Russell declares. "I couldn't have done that if I had stayed in 500, because one of the most important things I've learned over the past few months is that you're never going to win anything in 500 unless you have a competitive bike." So he decided to return to the fold superbike - accepting the excellent offer from Yamaha, which for some time had