Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

were days when everything went right and 1 just didn't ride well. There were days when I was riding well enough to win, but it rained at Road America, which everybody had to ride in the rain. By the end of the race I was running the same times as the guy who won, but at the beginning of the race I was way off. That was really where I learned how to ride in the rain. Like I said, Brainerd, I thought 1 could have won. We had some problems at Las Vegas, too. 1 felt good about the season. 1 leamed a lot. I can't say anything bad about the season, other than we'just never had a good day. And I didn't need a day when I got lucky, I just needed a day when I didn't have bad luck. Were you surprised that you were able to run at the front right from the start? rve been racing for a long time and I've always been up front. Racing amateur, I won a lot of amateur titles and when I started road racing I knew it was going to take me a little while. Then I got two years with the Bridgestone tires and that really hurt my confidence level because I couldn't run up front with them. And 1 know the guys, they were trying and they've improved their tires. But at that point they were pretty bad. At first I just said, "Yeah, it's the tires." After running on them for two years, you just start losing confidence in yourself and I did that. And then once I jumped on the Ducati with the Michelins, I knew right away. 1 said, "You know, I'm still a good rider." It was just something was holding me back. They had really good bikes, but the tires weren't very good. At the beginning of last year everybody said I wasn't going to go that good on that bike. I went out and I feel like I proved pretty much everybody wrong. We didn't win a race, but I think we showed we were capable of winning a race. This year I think everybody's saying: "He's jumping on,that Suzuki. He's not going to do near as good as he did on that Ducati." So I've got another goal - to go out and prove all these pE."Ople wrong again. That's what I'm going to do. Was it hard to get used to the Michelins after two years on Bridgestones? They weren't hard for me to get used to at all because I came from what I felt was a tire that didn't have much grip to a tire that was just, to me, phenomenal. I can't say they did anything worse than what the Bridgestones did, but they're definitely different than the Dunlops. I can't tell you yet which ones I like better, but they're. definitely different, the characteristics of them. I think those two tires (Michelin and Dunlop) are pretty much on the same level where the Bridgestones weren't. Last year when I jumped on them, I was happy to be on something that I could really push. I'm happy so far. This test with the Dunlops:.. I'm really impressed with them. And they have a real wide selection of tires to try. Are you spending your time here getting used to the new bike or testing tires, or both? I'm really not testing tires. They're just giving me some pretty standardized tires. I'm just trying to learn the bike. Trying a few different things to get the bike set up. I'm mainly just concentrating on the superbike. I'm going to do some more on the 600, but mainly I want to get down to doing some good times on the superbike and then the 600 can come after that. We've got some more testing to do before we get to the first race. Can you compare the Honda 600, which you rode two years ago, and the new Suzuki? It's been a long time. I know they feel slow compared to a superbike. I forgot how much different a 600 was than a superbike. This Suzuki 600 feels really good. It feels, I would have to say, better than the Honda that I rode two years ago, but it's hard to compare them since it's been so long since I rode one. After racing against the Suzuki GSXR750s, are they how you expected them to be? Actually, it's a lot more ridable than 1 thought it was from watching tapes. I mainly watched Aaron (Yates) and (Mat) Mladin. The bike looked really loose and really hard to ride. From just these t~o days or day and a half that we've had so far, I feel really comfortable on it. I feel the thing is going to be pretty good for me all year. 1 feel like 1 can ride the thing pretty hard and I'm already starting to get more comfortable and slide it around. Oid you slide the Oucati much? The Ducati, with the Michelin tires, didn't like to slide. It was more of a corner-speed type of bike. I don't know if that really suited my style or not. 1 feel more comfortable with the bike sliding, with my dirt track background. I adapted to that. You can go just as fast that way as you can sliding them. So if you've got something that doesn't slide, that's good too. These are different and I'm getting used to them. Which tracks do you think will favor the Suzuki over the Oucati? Everybody seems to think that the Ducati works better on really tight tracks. But I think that these things worked better last year at someplace like Loudon. Sears, they obviously worked really well. But they tested there too. 1 think it depends a lot on the rider. 1 think there are certain race tracks that favor one tire more than another one. I know last year when we ran those Michelins with brand-new pavement, boy, they worked great. But someplace with old pavement, they didn't work near as well. Like Sears or Daytona or Loudon they didn't work as well. But 'someplace with new pavement they worked really well, and those tires are pretty much developed for World Superbike and GP guys, which are almost always on brand-new pavement. So I think that was part of it. I think a track with a lot of grip suits the Michelin tires because it doesn't like to slide. Where on a track that's kind of grainy and slippery, the tires want to slide, the Michelin doesn't want to slide. So it's hard to ride on those kinds of tracks. The Yoshimura Suzuki team structure is considerably different than any you've been on. They have a lot more guys here working on the bikes. And I don't think it makes a great difference, but it definitely takes a load off. When you've got one guy working on the bike, it's hard for that guy to do it. I had Phillip working on my bikes last year and he did a great job all year long. But, boy, he had to work his ass off to do it and he never got a break. I can't say at any time that there was something he didn't do that he should've done. But, boy that guy worked his ass off to do it. When you've got three guys it makes it a little more, obviously, easier and they can delegate a little bit of the little stuff to another guy and it makes it better. It definitely makes it better for the mechanics and a little bit better for the rider to know that you've got three guys working on it instead of one. Il seemed like at the beginning of the season there was a problem with stability on the Oucati. . We had a lot of trouble with the thing wobbling last spring. It definitely wore you out. I don't know if they got that fixed or not. I think it was in the tire, it wasn't in the motorcycle. This is definitely a lot more stable on the banking. Through the infield it's different, but similar. I feel really good on it. I went out yesterday and rode eight laps and. I came in and 1 said: "1 like this thing. I'm going to do good on it." Like I said,' 1 was nervous. I watched the guys ride it last year and I thought, "That thing looks hard to ride and they're really having to ride on the edge to go fast on ito" I think that's just their riding styles coming through. Supposedly, they've made some great improvements. 1 have the stuff that they ran last year right now: The suspension, I have the new stuff, and the frame and stuff. But the motor I have is what they ran the latter part of the year. And Pascal and Aaron have the motor for '97. And when 1 was running with Pascal, it's really fast. I'm real- ly looking forward to it. . They're going to have one of those motors for me real soon. I'm really looking forward to getting on that, too. I know that these things were a little bit slower than what I was on. From when 1 was riding with Pascal, I think now they're on par. 1 know a lot of the guys are just going to hang it out. [ know from all the years I raced in dirt track, I know when you're sideways you're not going forward. I'll let the thing slide a little bit, but then I'll baby the throttle to let the thing go forward. Everybody says, "Why does a dirt tracker do so good on road racing?" They always say that's because we feel comfortable sliding it. But you can look at Pascal and Miguel - they didn't do dirt track and they've got the thing stepped out to the lock. We're comfortaole sliding the thing because we're able to give it throttle control to get it right to where it's sbding, but going forward at the same time. It takes years to learn that. From racing on the dirt, when you're slidin.g, you've got to have the thing going forward too. What was the most important thing that you learned last year? Eraldo taught me a lot of stuff about self-confidence at the race track and stuff. Just learning how to race with the guys again. It was a lot of little things that I learned. One of the things I learned was a lot of the times you go out and make your fastest lap, a lot of guys will come in right after that. I learned that if 1 make my fastest lap and then go a couple more laps I would go even quicker. That was one thing Ferracci always said: "Don't come in after you do your fastest lap. Stay out two more laps at least because you're going to go even quicker:' I've been racing since I was 5 years old. One thing I definitely learned last year was how to ride in the rain. 1 rode in the rain, but on DOT tires, which was way different than running on rain tires. You seemed to learn tucks quickly. I think I learn the tracks faster than most of the guys, too. When we went to Las Vegas, the first day I was like three seconds faster than anybody. Everybody caught up to me by the end of the weekend. Homestead, I was fast right away there too. Third in the race, but we got a terrible start. That was the only race all year that I really got a bad start - Ilth on the first lap. And then we worked our way up to third, almost second. And then we caught up to Doug (Chandler) and then Doug caught Miguel and I thought I wasn't too far be.hind. Vegas we were second there and we had some kind of problem with the fuel pump there' cause Doug passed me on the front straightaway and so did Miguel. And all year, nobody could pass me on the straightaway. And then with two laps to go, something went totally wrong. 1 went down on one cylinder. We ended up sixth. We were second· with like a 14-second lead over third with two laps·to go and we ended up in sixth place. I really thought I was going to win that race. From the times we were doing the day before, which we could never get back to on race day because of that problem with that fuel pump. I v,ras pretty upset that day. [ felt really confident that day that nobody was going to beat me. 0 29

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