Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

(Left) Lester Harris has run the Suzuki squad s ince the lactory joined the WorldSuperbike championship. (Above) Neil Tuxworth (right) and team rider Aaron Slighl Tuxworth, originallytrained in accountancy, look over the Honda lactory effort In 1993. of organization, t:!nergy and time. But it now is all part of the game. Onl y in this way can we try to persuade a sponsor, and represent Suzuki in a decent way on the circuits . DB: My job consists of many different aspects, whic h are all impo rtant: organization, communication wi th Japan and Holland, the atmosphere in the team, etc. It is also my job to present the team in the best possible way. HE: I learned in the first couple of months that you cannot run a fac tory team like you do a small team: Sometimes, you would like to speed th ings up a little bit, but that is not always very easy with big companies. On the other hand, Kawasaki alJows me more and more freedom to get some of my ideas done, and they even wo rk on some of those ideas in their own workshop and thei r own bench. VF: There is only one difficult mom en t for me in this job, and that is each time when the rid er puts on his helmet to start practice or the ra ce. At th at moment, I would like to be in his place. A lso, looki ng for sponsors is quite a challenge. Sometimes you work extremely hard to get a dea l do ne an d it does not lea d to anything. And other times, yo u just mee t so mebody at a cocktail party, start to ta lk abou t yo ur job, and you can strike a deal. NT : Eve ry bo dy is relying on me that everything is right for everybody. This is no t a 9-t0-5 job. I have to take ca re that everybody gets paid on time, tha t all the costs a re covered, that travelin g and hotels are perfectly orga nized - in short, take ca re of all those auxiliary things to make the team pe rform better. Racing is the easy part; the things that surroun d it are more difficult. What a re th e s tro ng poin ts of your team, and how do the riders fit in? LH: Last year was a learning yea r for us, and for this year we have made some changes - not only as far as the riders are concerned, but also for so me of the technical staff. Which docs not mean that we were not happy about their performances; they did a good job in extremely difficult circumstances. I believe that all the factory riders racing in World Superbike are world-class riders and are an asset to your team. The guys we have no w are an absolute pleasu re to work with . James (Whitham) always gives 110 percent on the track, and off the track he is incredibl y laid ba ck. H is natura l a ttit u de is, "This is w hat I got, a nd I will d o my best on it." laps, he wiJI tell yo u exactly where he lost time and w hy. He ha s gro w n up togeth er wi th the Ducati: he knows the machine so long - as w ell as the tea m and his mechan ics. NT: The reliability of the bike is su rely a strong poin t, as w~1I as the di rec t involvem ent and su pport fro m HRC. I be lieve that we have the "most Japa nese" tea m in the paddock. And we have two excellent riders, even though they both have very different needs, in some respects. Aaron (Slight> now knows the te am inside out a nd the b ike backwards. Joh n (Kocinski), on the o ther hand, has shown in the past that he is very versatile, bu t I believe he has adjusted to the machine more quickly than anybody co u ld h a ve expected. Especially in the ra in , he ha s been Mike (Hale), on the other hand, is poss ibly a bit more objective. He wants to know every single detail and the wa y to make it better. Which is wh at I wa nt, because the information the riders give them (the mechanics) is what they work wi th. The chief engi neer has to understand exactly wha t the ri der need s to allo w further developmen t on the bike. But tha t is so mething which is not yet possible after three or four races. Th e bike is getting be tter and better now . With hindsight. we might say that we have maybe lost a bit too much time last yea r try in g to solve the high-speed problems. Now we are really starting to make progress. DB: I think that our strongest point is the fact that, since 1995, only one person has left the team. Last year, we we re thinking about a three-rider tea m, but we finally kept to a two-rider team - not only for bud get and infrastructural reasons, bu t also for reasons of efficiency. Everybody kno ws everybody, an d tha t ma kes wo rking in th is team so much more fun an d efficient. Especially, Colin Edwards II a nd Fio renzo Fanali now know eac h other very well, and know exactly wha t they can expect from each other. Working with these two riders is a joy. Colin is a very d own-to-earth and nice guy, a nd we a lso ge t alon g very well with Scott (Russe ll) - even though he might be considered a bit crazy, in a posi tive way . And he does not like losing. HE: Mayb e my ex perience as a racer helps me a bit to und erstand the rid ers. The relationship with the riders and the rest of the team is also very important. They know tha t they can cou nt on me, and they can concentrate on their job - in the garage or ou t there on the track. I do not think we could have better riders to ride the Kawasaki. Akira (Yanagawa) has a very good feeling as to what the engine is doing, whereas Simon (Crafar) is very good a t assessing the chassis properties of the bike. Judging from the data from last vea r that we use to compare our actual perfo rmances, we can see that Kawasaki has worked a lot and solved a lot of problems that had been ha unting the short-stroke engine in its maiden year. VF: I think the biggest asset to the team is earl Fogarty. More than anybody else, h e is a b le to get the best out of th e Ducati engine. Carl is no test rider, but he is abl e to mak e a good choice very quickly. You can send him out on th e trac k with tw o or three d ifferent solutions, and when he gets back after a few ~ impressive. Tim es are tough for racing . in Grands Prix as well as in World Superbike rac- ing, which is obviously still gaining momentum. What would be a good help to increase the series' popularity even more? LH: Many people regret that the grids are ge tti ng th inner, bu t tha t is almost inevitable. When you have some intense fa ctory pa r tici pa tion, the g uys a t th e botto m d rop ou t. Entering in the World Su pe rb ike cha m pionshi p is a p retty ex pensi ve activi ty . Th e G ran ds Prix have ad d ressed th is by increasing the money for the private teams significantly, but I u ndersta nd that SBK Intern ational has to try to manage with a smaller budget. DB: The last three or four years , the racing budgets have inc reased considerably. The teams have d ou bled or even tr ip led in nu mber of crew. Bu t I ha ve the impression tha t the medi a is not following. You still see the same journa lists at the tracks. The factories deserve some better cove rag e. H E: Privat e te a ms are getti ng o ut because it is ge tting too expensive to e n ter a ll th e races. May be a m ore agg ressive policy toward the race organizers - who do spend a lot mor~ money on Grands Prix • and televis ion (coverage) might bring some more money into the paddock. VF: I think it is very important for the future of this series to be live on television in as many countries as possible, Many people do not even realize what a great show is put on he re. Within the Top Teams Club, we are discussing different possible solutions to increase the fame 01 the series. NT: Things will get better if more manufacturers get in to the game. I have a lot of feeling s toward private rid e rs, because I was one for many years. But the more restricted you make the rules, the harde r it gets for the privateers. If it is more difficult to make the bikes better, the factories ,,;11 also win this game, not th e p riva tee rs . It would also be a bad idea to give factory bikes to the priva te riders. They will achieve no thing withou t the backup, the support, the Showa suspension peo ple, the gu ys who can read the telemetry, etc. It is a simp le fact of life: Factory teams w ill always hav e the best equipment a nd th e best riders. An d, as the series becomes more pro fes si o n a l, finding sponsors a lso become; easier. But the key to all this is still televisio n cove rage. I know tha t a lo t of big sponsors are looking at superbikes now. In Formula One, they can get a sticker of 8 by 4 inches for 5 million pounds a year (about $8.25 million). For that money, they can get the full livery of a World Superbike factory team . ." The cotor of mone t is very di fficult to establish how much a World Superbike cam paign costs the participating manufactur ers , due to the enormous amount of parameters that arc invo lved. First of / all, there is the resea rch-and-development work, the costs to build the obligatory (ho mclogalion) minimum number of "street" versions of the factory bikes, costs of testing by the factory riders in Japan or Italy, etc. ... On the other hand , it is just as difficult to " calcu late the image (and ens uing com mercial) benefits du e to a successful campaign on the circuits, the rev enu e s coming from the sales of the street bikes, and so on... Team managers do not have to wo rry· about that. They do not even pay for the bikes and spare parts. They do have an ope rational budget, w hich is probably somewh ere near $15 million a year. This includes, in most cases, the w ages of the team crew (wi th an average of 15 to 20 members on each factory team), hotel and travel costs, etc. It does not include the riders' fees. Some of the costs are recovered by travel .11IowanL and start money distributed by SBK "'CS Internatio nal, and by sponsoring money - even though most of the factory teams stilf must manage without major sponsoring. A l8 ~ 23

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