Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

waiting list. I just hu ng out and eventually started feeling better and better and be tter. Grad ua lly I just felt better - that Sort of thing. Do y ou kn ow th e exa ct nature o f the inner -ear prob lem? It's called a fistula. The hole is so minute that w hen they d o th e su rgery , sometimes the y still ca n ' t a lwa ys s pot th e hole. They go in there and scratch it and make it bleed so it starts clotting . Then ~hey take some fat out of your ear lobe to preser ve it and that eventually cover s the hole. . You made your return at the Brazilian GP. I went to Braz il and tried to ride there in pra ctice. I stru ggled there as we ll and , a t that time, I still had some bones floating in my wri st from th e sa me crash. All that together, that was it. But you raced at Catalunya towa rd the end of last year. How did you do that? " I don't know . I tried to race. I was just de termi ned to try to ride. But I knew I wasn' t right. I knew in my own mind all I really wanted to do was ride, bu t when I d id rid e, it w as a struggle . I knew I w as struggling, I knew so me thing wa s lw rong, but I just wanted to try to br eak through that. Try to beat it, basi call y. I Bu t it wasn 't in the card s. (Wh en did you test again after the sea-son? 'I didn't test again until January or February (of 199 7). Things w ere pret ty slow, bu t progressing . I test ed the first or second tes t. I wasn' t due to come back , so mething had ha ppened, somethi ng hadn ' t turned up. There were some stories about yo u poss ibly losi ng your flyi ng license or bei ng given an ultima tum abo ut choosing be tween flying and racing. Is th ere any truth to that? No , I wa s n e ve r ap proached by the CAA, which is the Australian FAA (Federa l Aviation Ad ministration). You, obviously, do get a flight medical when you get your license , and that comes up every few years. I passed all tha t and 'have never be en called in for another 'test or anything . I did fly at the end of ' the yea r, but I never flew by mys elf . I flew with friends from th e aero club, because I knew tha t I wasn't right. Obviou sly, after I had the su rgery, I wasn' t allowed to. Basicall y, I wasn't allowed to do sit-u ps, I wasn't allowed to fly. I wasn't to d o a ny thi ng that ha d to do wit h press ure or anyth ing like th at. I had the su rgery in October, November. I d id n't fly after that until the following yea r. How did your inner-ear problem manifest itself when you flew? Hying was a different sensa tion . I don't know if it's becaus e wh en yo u're in the air you d on' t feel the speed as much, thin gs don' t seem to chan ge as much. It d idn 't seem as bad. If I d id things like m or e Gs or loops , or someth ing like th at , I wo u ld find myself w a nting to black ou t, which is normal for peopl e. Bu t, for me, it hadn't been that norm al for so me thing th at basic. Afte r tha t, I 'started to feel better toward the end of tth e su rgery. I flew this yea r before I came away and did high Gs and differ' en t maneuvers and stuff. But when I do 'that sort of stuff with high Gs, my resistance isn't as goo d as w hat it used to be. For wha tever reason, I don't kn ow. It must ha ve so met h ing to d o with the m idd le ear, the fluid. Will it get better? ' I d on't know. They say yo u sho u ld ;make a full recovery . I used to be able to -j sustain a lot more G-force flyin g . And ' now, wh en I do it, I'm more susce ptible ;to blacking out. Are the sens ati ons s i mil ar on the motorcycle? O n ta keo ff, a normal tak eo ff on that thing (his Sukhoi stunt plane), is more Gs than you' d ever feel on a bike. ' N ot on a normal pla ne, but this particular plane. To me , on the bike, I don' t feel an y G-force at al l. Maybe a little on brakes, but not the sort of G-force wh ere it's positive Gs . Yo u s tarted te st in g in Janu ary and Feb ru ary of th is year. Obviously, the confidence wa s nowhere as hig h as it had been prior to the Mal ay sia cra sh. So we just came ba ck testing the new bike, and rode it an d it was a completely new bike - like nothing we'd ever had before. At that point in time I started com plain ing about the bike. I don't feel that it's right. It' s doing this and it's do ing that . Both Antho ny (Gobert) and I were com plai ning about similar things, but Anthony hadn 't been rid ing th e bike before, so he cou ldn' t com pare it to th e o n e b efore. And throug h that time, as it's come out now, they've sa id to me that I'd been away for a yea r and that I just need ed time on the bike to get myself back u p to speed and get the feel for wha t it's like. And I never, eve r really clid get along with the bike. What didn't it do that you wanted itto? We thought it was a new engi ne. We' d go ne to a bi g, big triple-ba ng engine wit h real close firing order. And off the turns, it wanted to stand up all the time. It w ould s ta n d u p a nd it wanted to dri ve itsel f out , p ick the front up a nd th e time and be re all y u n sta ble. An d through all that I just never ever came to like it, or felt comfortable on it or ga ined confidence wi th it . Antho ny always stayed with that bike. He' s been on similar times, or basically the same times that I did in '95, which were quite competitive times for th at time. A nd h e stayed wit h that bike and felt quite comfortab le. I was always a second off w ha t he was doin g a nd just got frust ra ted and said I need som ethi ng that I'm used to. Gradually, it came back to more toward my oId bike and that' s what' s sor t of been happenin g throu gh this year. Now I'm basically on my oid bike except for the en gine, whi ch is a lot smaller, and ligh ter to fit in to that new bike, w hich wa s a lot narrow er. We came back to that old bike, starting in Jap an. We just progressed with that, really. Since th en we've done some piv ot work with th e ' 95. O u r ' 95 bi ke has a lways ha d a rea l flat swingarm; it's a lways been su p ported by the spring, never so rt of mec ha nically su p po r ted it self. An d th at's alway s so me th ing we 've known we had to do: do somethin g with the pivot and the link - and that's w hat we' ve bee n doi ng now, basi- cally. We received a new link a couple of races ago . Antho ny'S always st aye d w ith w ha t h e' s stayed with . Th ey ' ve obviously do ne a lot wi th that bike. I'm not being close to working with that link and pivot. I'm still not ma kin g a lot of progress. You're go ing to test next week, Any- drive away. And I just never, ever got thing in particular? any confidence or any grea t feel fro m wha t I could remem ber. I basically complained abou t it throug hout the whole testing. We came back with a more normal firin g engine and then back to the engine which I ran now, the same that I ran in '95, and that hasn' t helped it. So we thought, "Obvio usly, it's the sort of the p ivot that had been lifted extreme.to wha t the bike used to be ." Every thing had been chan ged - geometry, the bike was a lot higher, a lot di fferen t. Obvious ly, it was that. So we trie d thi ngs there. Like it tended to shake its head all We've go t nothing new to test. It's just basica lly to try to find ourselves a base with this new link an d th e p ivot and every th ing like th at. We' ve a lso recei v ed , a few races ago, a new bike w hich is longer in the chassis, tryin g to ga in so me sta bility and stu ff. Ant ho ny only got a coup le of laps in Aus tria and the day was over. I did the race in Paul Ricard, I raced on-it, and stru ggled wit h it in the race. Basically, we've had a d ifferent bik e at each race this year. We're scratching, tryi ng to find things. But seeing what he' s (Gobert) d oing this week- end (in Imola, where Gobert qualified th ird ) is good . May be the re ' s so m e progr ess w ith tha t. Maybe I might get a chance to ride that next week now , since th e wo rk t hey' ve d one on it . At the moment we're just going through wha t we've got. Do you see any th ing on that bike that . he's riding that would favor this track in particular? To be honest, it's hard to say. My bike has a little bit of pivot ang le on it now . Obviously, a complete new lin k whi ch, for Kay aba and us , is just totally new grou nd. Anthony' s running the old link with just a much bigger pivot angle - a totally different bik e than w ha t we've go t. It 's ha rd for me to sit b ack and think what on that bike could be favoring here. It's hard to say . It could be th at pivot angle; with a lot of pivot angle it's riding the bumps really good on it. So it's more forgivi ng. Whereas on the old bike we had an angle where we sat on the spring all the time. That's why we struggled a lot. Sometimes we 'd turn on exits, but it was always silting down. I can' t really think on it, to be honest. I'm feeling lost at the moment. What's going to change that? Th e Cz ec ho test is basi cally ou r la st sched uled test for this year - unless we can mak e some gro und there wit h the bike I'm ridi ng at the mom ent, with this link an d pivot. We'll see how Anthon y goes there with h is bike compared to thi s circui t - we' ll see if it was rea lly s u ited here or if it's working there as well. I'll probabl y ride that and then just work from there. If it's as good there as it is here, obvio usly they've come across something that's picked the game up a lot. Why did the design change so much for thi s year? That I ca n' t tell you , becau se I wa sn 't really there in '96. So I knew that there was a new bike coming , but normall y w hen you hear there's a new bike coming , it comes w itho ut paint and it's a few more horsepower and a littl e bit differe n t. Kev in (Street, a Luc ky Strike m e chanic) h ad seen it a few weeks before me in Japan and he h ad com- 25

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