Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

INTERVIEW Kenny AoberI8 Group building rwldea In B8nbury, England, the '-11 of Brltaln'. Fonnula One CIIrof'llClng Induetry. 1be _ Why do you do this? I do it because I enjoy it. But to enjoy this you have to do it and you have to be successful and you have to make money on it. And if all three of those things don't work, then I don't do it. And it got to the point that I could have made a lot more money doing the Yamaha deal. Well, not now, because I've got more sponsorship than I knew. But, a week ago, before the Modenas thing came along, sure. With the Yamaha deal, I could've played golf and showed up at the races. I never enjoyed that and I've never been able to do that. And they hired me, years ago, to win races. And then they got me into their team to win World Champienships. Just to kind of put you to sleep in the company after a while, wasn't my idea of the right way to do it. I wasn't going to do it that way. There's basically two philosophies in the team. It's run Yamaha's team the way they want you to, which is with no engineering. Or do it the way I wanted to, which is mostly engineering.lt's just a different philosophy. For a long time you've said that motorcycle racing should do someth ing like this. 'It one can ever accuse Kenny Roberts of not putting his money where his mouth is. After a long and mutually successful partnership with Yamaha, which bore a large part of the high cost of racing, Roberts decided to leave them for 1997. That meant 0 raising enough money to pay aU the biDs himself. It wasn't until January that he knew he had the money to keep going beyond the first year, despite being far enough along in the development process to have a running prototype. Once Modenas and Marlboro committed - Modenas for three years, Marlboro, as always, for one - Roberts could relax, only slightly. Roberts said in a press release that the cost was about the same as leasing machines from Honda for three years. That, he later said, isn't entirely accurate. The cost of leasing - not buying - a pair of 1996 Honda SR500s was about $15 million, with a front-line team using about $800,000 in parts. The Roberts team will involve two riders, so all of the costs are doubled. "It's not as cheap as that," Roberts admits. '1£ a private team spread the cost out over three years, it would be about the same. My team, and my cost, doesn't have anything to do with a private team. No team makes their own engine, their own carbs, because the total concept is of a Formula One race team, not a motorcycle race team. If you were to lease this motor you could build four bikes and go racing much cheaper." But since Roberts is developing all of the parts, the motor and chassis, his costs are much higher. One example is the carburetors. Instead of using production units, Roberts designed his own. "There was nothing in existence that worked," Roberts said. "Some things on the carbs are from our experience with Mikuni, but mostly Keihin racing carbs. Other features are ours. It worked the first time out. It was a big worry for me." Separate from the running costs are the fixed cOsts of racing, air fares, hotels, rental cars, meals and support for the team, which is the biggest in the racing and employed nearly 50 people last year. In addition, Roberts hopes to have a separate European-based test leam, using both his riders and longtime Roberts test rider Randy Mamola. Racing is not done in a vacuum and Roberts' enterprises in support of the sport are global. In the entrance of his race headquarters in Banbury, a small town about 70 miles northwest of London, a row of clocks keeps track of the local time at the various Roberts concerns. In time zones around the world, someone is working for, and with, Kenny Roberts. Banbury is in the heart of Formula One country. Nearly 60 percent of all Formula One teams are located there. The shop is bright, modern and airy, and, despite the fact that it's not completely outfitted yet, Roberts said they've already outgrown it. The dyno isn't in and the CAOCAM system isn't up and running. "We're thinking that if we run the bikes outside every morning at nine we can drive the guy next door out," Roberts jokes. Banbury is where Roberts lives these days, in a rented house, after moving his European base from the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. When he lived in Spain he'd commute to the GPs in a twin-engine plane he shared with Wayne Rainey. TOW that he's in the UK he'll likely have to get a plane of his own to get his engineers to and from the races as quickly and easily as possible. He owns homes in Hickman and Carmel, California, and Lake Tahoe, a well as two homes in Sitges, just south of Barcelona in Spain. Kurtis Robert' PH Racing OiJs..backed Aprilia 250cc GP squad will be headquartered there, with Sparky Edmondson in charge. North of Barcelona, next to the Circuito de Montmelo, site of the Catalunyan GP, is the Kenny Roberts Training Ranch, the facility where riders from all over the world come to learn the intricacies of dirt-track racing. Many of the students are from Asia, but Yoshimura Suzuki's Pascal Picotte spent nearly a week there in February and is anxious to return. Bud Aksland runs the Roberts single-cylinder test facility in Manteca, California, doing much of the cylinder, exhaust pipe and ignition development. He began Single-cylinder testing of the new Modenas KR3 in October. Roberts has a cooperative agreement with Orbital R&D, one of the largest two-stroke development companies in the world in Perth, Australia. Modenas, his sponsor, is a diversified conglomerate headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malay ia, where his three-rider team which contests the Marlboro Asia Pacific Road Racing Championship will be based. The series features 250cc production races in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and either Taiwan or China and the team will use Yamaha TZR250s. It was at the final race of the 1996 Pacific series that Roberts made his first significant contact with senior management at Modenas. Roberts' team is run by Zimbabwean Robbie Peterson, who raced a Yamaha YZRSOO for Roberts in the F-USA Series. There will also be a race shop set up in Japan this year. I tried to talk Wayne

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