Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

know all the way through if we were going to have sponsorship. We were talking weekly too. So they started throwing (Jean-Michel) Bayle's name around with me and a proposal with Bayle at the beginning of January. I didn't like that so much because I thought that was Kenny's only leverage he had to keep his sponsorship. So I refused to speak to Bayle about it. When they made the decision, Kenny didn't know either if he was going to have it or not. I think Yamaha coming on board just shows that they're serious about Grand Prix racing. It was a big push on their part to keep the team going and just get on with it. Was there any chance that they could have just said, 'No, we can't afford it." They cou ld ha ve very easily, I think, if they would have had some more teams to choose from. We had never ever geared up for NO from Marlboro. We just kept planning like the Marlboro thing was going to happen. And when it didn't happen they were pretty much in a comer. It was either do it or we have to stay home. Within 15 minutes of me being there they did it. When did you decide on the second rider? About half an hour after that meeting. I had told them, being so late, we need a second rider. And they weren't really gung-ho on a second rider. And then I told them the problem that I've been having for the last couple of years is having one rider and not having a backup for the riders to have some kind of rivalry in the team to push each other. And I aid. the only guy I'd really want to put in there would be Sete (Gibemau) because of the job he did for us on the 250, and he's a good-size kid and he speaks very good English and we'll bring him on to test. They agreed with . that philo ophyand so far it works well. Did your money last year come from Marlboro Italy? Loris's (Capirossi) money did, not Harada's. Harada's came from Lausanne, which was (Norick) Abe's budget. What do you think the team has to offer to Marlboro? The Yamaha factory effort. Abe, myself. It's a good image. What is it they get by sponsoring you? Do they want to win races or do they want to sell cigarettes? I don't know. I think when [ raced for them they wanted to be on TV. Okay, after my accident they haven't been on TV much and I think that's the philosophy behind Phillip Morris, they want to be racing for the top three and that's what we were hoping to do with Abe this year is to get him up on the podium because thi is his third year. Abe's a young kid, he's flashy, he's fun to watch, he's exciting. If you look at Mick Doohan, he's not real exciting, but he wins. But you can pretty much write down what he's going to say each time and with these young guys coming up it's exciting and it's a good imag~ for Marlboro to get in behind. You've got the factory effort and you've got my experience and you have these young guys. [ think there was quite a lot to offer. I don't know what else you can offer. Maybe someone who speaks English? (Abe) does speak English. In Malaysia we did a Marlboro press conference and he spoke English there. I told him if you're going to do this thing, if you want to have a better chance for your career, you have to speak English. He did it. He was nervous. When I asked him, his first comments were in Japanese, then he changed them to English. He's making an effort at it. There was also a story that Marlboro carne back to you at some point. Well, it wasn't Lausanne, it wasn't Switzerland that came back. They've always been in charge of sponsorship, they've always been the center of the world. It's getting a bit tougher for the Europeans now. The Asian people came back, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan. They still wanted to keep the relationship with Yamaha and myself and Norick. So we did a deal with them. But it wasn't for fuJI sponsorship for this year. Lausanne didn't want to sponsor the whole team for this year and next? 1 don't know where Lausanne stood on the whole thing. All I know is that I said no to them because they came to us two weeks before the first race. They made a decision January 20th and I haven't looked back. I've gotten trucks painted, everything's done. What did they offer you two weeks before the first race? It didn't work out as well as everyone had hoped. What went wrong? I think there was a variety of things. One, Loris, he was World Champion in his first two years. He went from being a working man every day to being World Champion status and he missed a few years of labor, what the real world's really like, and the team catered to him before and pretty much took care of everything. Coming to my team, being with me, I was used to doing my own program. [ trained my way, I developed a certain way, and it made me really strong. And when he came to my team it all worked really good, he understood the whole thing. But then he had a few accidents. I think he fell off nine times and some weren't his fault, some were. I think when he went home the star status wasn't as strong as it used to be and he started lashing out. I wasn't used to that. I was used to bearing down and reaching inside myself to find a little extra to pull out, but one thing that it was run as what he felt he needed out of the team as far as bike setup. He didn't really lash out at me so much. Every time I was hearing rumors about him being unhappy, he'd say, 'No Wayne, everything is fine.' But he was afraid to confront me, I guess. And then we'd read in the press, especially after he left, that the team didn't do what he wanted. It's hard to get the team to do what you want if you don't tell the guy who can make the changes. So, he wasn't honest with me at all. What did he want? Anything specific? All I know is that he wasn't happy with his mechanics. [ went over each guy and he said, 0 problem, no problem.' I didn't know at that time that he'd already made a decision to leave. This was a couple of races towards the end of the year. I'd seen that there was a change and I was trying to get ou t of him what he needed. He had a deal with Aprilia that was a certain amount of money for three years and he want- It was the Asian group that came to us. And they said, 'Hey, we want you.' You guys were involved in the decision. They were? That's what I thought. They didn't know about it. Not at all. They still want to keep that going. They're enthusiastic, they want me to work on their indonesian program. Right now they like what they're hearing and they like what we're doing. So that's why they're sponsoring you in Indonesia and Malaysia. Right. Any reason why they're not here (at 5uzuka)? Japan is its own market. There's a European branch that does worldwide spon~ sorship. And so then Malaysia and Indonesia are out of Hong Kong and they wanted that relationship. They didn't say no, they wanted it. And Japan is its own market. It's not part of anything else. It's like a third party. Let's go back to last year. When the year started it was full of promise. You . spent the winter with Loris Capirossi. I've learned since my accident is that 1 did it my way and nobody else does and I see why I was successful. Most of these young guys come up, they get paid a lot of money and they don't want to work at it. And he had to reach inside to go find out what was wrong, and that's something I'm not going to push. [want a guy that's going to come to the team and wants to work at it. And that's what I've got with my two riders now - [ feel that they're working hard. I think Loris just...he was worried about his career. Second or third year not thinking that he was going to be as sought out after as he was before. The beginning of the year was great, everything was on a roll. We had some good results. But in the end you could just see the fire going down. I wasn't used to that. I didn't really know how to respond to that because me being a racer was always wide open or nothing. It was completely different for me to do this. He wasn't happy with the way the team was run? I don't know if it was so much the way ed to go back to doing it his way, I guess. Would you do anything differently? No. How about with Tetsuya Harada? With Harada I could sense the frustration in him because of the fue problem. Yamaha didn't push that 250 thing real hard and [ saw that. I could understand that, but I didn't understand some of the things he was doing on the race track by just riding around. I've been in those situations and [ pushed hard, no matter how bad it was. And there were times that I rode my stuff that it was just impossible. But that's me. I can't expect that out of everybody. Especially the results that 1 had, from the outside they probably look like Wayne's thing was pretty good most of the time. But a lot of the times on Sunday morning, man, I had to suck it up and go after it. Do you think that since Harada wasn't in the championship he wasn't willing to try as hard? I was explaining to Harada, we could have a tire advantage and we could real-

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