Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

MattMladin Con~inued from page 17 Atlanta. We tried something in the race and I Screwed up and it didn't work and we did poorly. Pole position's easy, qualifying's easy. That's what all these people don't understand. You put a grippy tire on and it's easy to do. All you do is concentrate for a minute and a half. Anybod¥ can do that. Anyone can concentrate for a minute and a half. Obviously, certain times this year, I got it better than anybody else and I was willing to maybe put more on the line, or maybe I had a better feel for the qualifying tire than anybody. When the boys put a qualifying tire on, 1 turn the t)lrottle from zero to 100 percent real, real quick, and obviously quicker than anyone else, because that's what you've got to do. Q What was your best race? A-I think I did a really good job at rtBrainerd to finish second. And if I wouldn't have run a little bit wide in the third- or fourth-fastest corner at Brainerd, I might have had something for Eric (Bostrom) in the last comer toward the finish line. That's what my plan was, to stuff it in there as hard as I could and if 1 ran wid e through there, as long as he was on the outside of me, I'd finish in front of him. I couldn't be close enough to stick in it at all. 1 think I did a good job to finish second there. At Vegas, from the moment we wheeled the bike out of the truck, we were quicker than everyone. And J think we would've won tha t race by a lot more if the wind wasn't up. When it's windy, it's almost a second a lap slower. The wind was really gusting and we were doing the same lap times. It was beneficial to us in some places. Some places it hurt us. Other places it was beneficial. It sort of evened itself out. was race Q of theRoad Atlanta your worstreally year? A-Yeah, it was terrible - feel I ./"\.bad. It was the worst, resultwise. In Ohio, J had at terrible race as well. But that one had nothing to do with what the team had done to the bike, or anything. I just wasn't feeling good. J was tired. I hadn't been sleeping for a month or two before that. I just wasn't feeling good. And World Superbike caught up with me a bit. I was pissed off at World Superbike, that we broke in both races, because we should have been on the box in both races. Some guys obviously crashed and some of the fast guys were really damn slow. We should have been on the box, and I was pissed off and J was dejected because I really wanted to do good there - to try and maybe have a last go, thinking maybe I could end up at World Superbike. Obviously, I couldn't. The bike has to be better next year, clearly, even. to get to the level of the other bikes last year. Do you know that it's going to be better? No, 1 don't know it. Thave no guarantees at all, no guarantees that it's goiI)g to be better. We're working with the fuel injection now and we've got it pretty much as good as the carburetors. We've yet to make the final decision. We did a test last month and we were running very similar lap times. It's never a guarantee in any sport, especially with what we're doing. There's other areas we're working on, away from the motor. We know.we're not going to find 15 or 20 horsepower to ma tch the sort of horsepower the RC45's putting out. We've got to look to different areas to try and get what we need to do. We're pushing shit uphill trying to keep up with them. Anytime I'm in a race and I'm stuck behind one of them, I'm just pushing my ass off just to keep up. And once they slow us down in the middle of the corner, we've got no acceleration, no speed to keep up down the straight. When we get to the next corner, all we're trying to do is play catch-up again. And I said it all year - that's how it's been all year. you'd want Q towas wondering why three more do that again for years. It's a for me. It's a A lengeI challengeand and Ihavingchalfor me, I'm fun doing it. look around see all the I race teams and I'm happy that Suzuki looked after me and they believe in me and they believe I can win the championship - and I'm happy with that. And anything th!lt they tell me they're going to do for me, they do for me. If not, they don't tell me they're going to do it. They say we will try to get you stuff, but we can't guarantee it. That suits me fine. It's not like the previous year, when I was with (Eraldo) Ferracci and I had a whole lot of things that were going to happen and nothing eventuated. And I won four races. Combined, they gave me 40 minutes of happiness straight ~fter the race. Unfortunately, I can't be happy for 40 minutes of the year; I need to be happy for the whole year. As much as I would love to win every race, maybe I'm not going to. Maybe I'll never win an AMA Superbike title ... maybe I'll never win another championship again in my life, but I'm happy. I'm happy doing what I do, and I'm happy with the challenge that I've taken on. the same Q DO you have access tothat World fuel-injection system Superbike has? We can't run not homologated. They're allowed· to run a differAthrottle body. it. It's whole different ent It's a body. We run the production body that comes with the street bike, which, unfortunately, is hurting us. It's a big, big key to how this might turn out next year. Because so far, we've tested it, it's still down on horsepower a bit. The lap time's the same. It just smoothes out the whole motorcycle. The suspension problems we had went away and it just seems to smooth out the powerband. If we can get that horsepower and keep tha t smoothness and throttle - which we know we can; that's all down to electronics and getting the mapping right and if we can get that, we'll have Less problems with the setup, the suspension; we should have smoother acceleration; obviously (it will be) better on the tires. We're missing that little bit of a link there at the moment. Obviously, Suzuki's trying as hard as they can \0 do it; unfortunately, we just haven't come up with it yet. Q having Q WilI orwe'vemore races this year help hurt? A-Well, got more at the A rtmoment, but they do that every year, and come next year we'll have 12 races. Like this time last year, we had 14 races, too. Q Who's the competition this year? A-From what we hear about the r tYamaha superbike, we can count those two guys out if they get the new one. That's just, obviously, what yo!J hear at the moment. 0, there's guys like Anthony (Gobert), Miguel (DuHamel), Aaron (Yates), Ben (Bostrom) - lots of guys. Aaron on the Kawasaki - there are shitloads of people who are going to be fast. Lots and lots of people. But you never see a close superbike race. Very, very rarely do you see a close superbike race. It's because all the bikes are different and every race you go to is different, so you've got to try to do the best with what you've got. I think it's going to be the same for everyone. Obviously, championshipwise, I don't· know about Miguel, though. He's still not real healthy as far as the knee and that goes. I don't know where he's going to go with t11at. If he's not better within the next month or so and he just has enough time to get fit, he'll probably struggle for the first few races, and that could be enough to keep him out of it if a few people get a fast start. From what I hear about Anthony, he's got (a) full factory bike and that sort of stuff. And Anthony on a full factory bike, people will see how fast he can go. It's just a matter of if he's going to do the whole year and if the bike's reliable and if \1e can see out the year - keep himself on a straight line and see out the year. If he does, he's tough to beat. Everyone knows how fast he is. The guy hasn't ridden a bike for I don't know how long, and he comes here and goes fast. He's a rider - that's why. That's the only reason that happens. What the There are Q some aboutyou tracks? think are that don't worth going to. You're not alone in thal... I'm not alone in that, but I'm the only one that's got the balls to stand up and say as:ything. All these riders are a bunch of handbags, they really are. And they wonder why they keep having to go back to some of these tracks instead of just sort of saying, "Let's do something about this race track" and "We're not happy riding it." In amongst all of us talking, everyone says that, but when someone comes up to them who's Official, they don't even mention it. It's terrible. I'm sure Miguel and those guys will be mentioning it a little bit more from now on. But Miguel was a bit of a critic all the time. 1 think now that I'm disappointed at some of the comments that I've heard from the guy at Loudon, and he called me a prima donna because I said his track was dangerous - blal1, blal1, blah. Since I've been here in '96, I said that track's unbelievable. In the paper t11is year, I heard he called me a prima donna. Obviously, he hasn't opened his eyes and seen who was leading his race this year and who won it the year before and who was competitive the year before that, and that was me. Com'e Sunday, you still have to put your head down and do the best job you can. I like that type of race track. Fortunately, I've had a cushion at that race track as to how fast I could go. I can just back off a little bit and be fast enough to stay out front. I don't know why, but that race track seems to suit me really well. I can just back off a little bit and still be fast. I'm a critic of the race track - you have to be. This i our li ves. This is my life. One crash and you're hurt. Then what do I have? A Let's go backward a bil. You said recently that when you rode for Cagiva, you were a bit immature. Would you do anything different in your career? You always say you'd do things differently, but when you look back, J'm happy now - I'm making a good living, I have a beautiful wife, so I'm happy. Maybe if I changed something back then, I'd be feeling like shit right now, so who knows? Things are turning out good for me at the moment. As much as I'd like to win six or seven races a year, and I'm not, things are looking good for me. In five years, probably when I retire, everyone wi1l be happy to see the back of me - especially Q A lntcr\'icw the AMA, probably. I won't be whinging about race tracks anymore. And everyone else will probably think, "Christ, that prick's gone," and everyone will forget about me. So, essentially, I've got to look after one person, and that's me. Because when I go, nobody's gonna give a shit where I've gone. I wquldn't have changed anything. Obviously, in the short term, I would never have gone and raced a 500 so early. I was road racing for less than two years when I signed the 500 contract. I got on a 250 production bike, won the '91 250 production championship. In '92, I won the Superbike Championship,and in September of '92, before I even finished the 5uperbike Championship, I signed a 500 contract. My contract was three years. I only did one year. Basically, there was some tension on the team with the whole (John) Kocinski thing that was going on. Cagiva had liked Kocinski for years and years, and when they got the d1ance to have him, their program was going to shit. Everything was turning to crap. Everything. turned to crap for Doug (Chandler) as well. And I remember Doug wasn't happy at all about that. So, everything turned to shit in '93. And, yeal1, if the same .thing happened to me, I would've been able to handle it in a different way and I probably would've survived, but back then .... I remember driving down the road, I had a 40-foot motorhome that I leased off Wayne Gardner, and I still think back now and remember driving down the road and thinking to myself, "Man, what am I doing here? What am I doing here? Here's (Wayne) Rainey, arid (Kevin) Schwantz." 'Just the year before, I had their posters on my wall. It's the truth. I had their posters on my. wall and now I'm lining up on the grid with them? This isn't right. It shouldn't be happening. But it was. I was 20 years old. If you'd have seen this contract they put in front of me, it seems to be worth a couple of million dollars. And the first year was worth so mud1, it was unbelievable. The first year was worth a lot of money because the year before, I basically signed a contract with Kawasaki for nothing. And I'd gone and won so many races that year. Even in '92, when I won the championship, I probably made, all up, $50,000. Then, all of a sudden, they're dangling this big carrot in front of you. You say, "Shit, I'm 20-years-old, I've been swinging a hammer with the old man and arguing every day on the roof in the 110-degree heat." It's like, "Man, give me a pen, I want to sign this damn thing." And when I first went on the 500, I was actually pretty quick until I started crashing the thing. And I didn't understand why I crashed it. I never, ever high-sided a road bike until I got on a 500. And the first one I had was in Jerez - a big third-gear high-side. And I don't remember anything, until the next thing I know, I was in hospital. It just happened too quick. I was lost, totally lost. I didn't know Europe, didn't know nothing. I got hooked up with Harris Barnett, who was Wayne Gardner's manager. I didn't even meet the guy until I was in the room, signing the contract. I thought l' was this superstar. Essentially, everything I'd done was just a big [--up, everything. And I wasn't ready for it. I wa very immature. I wasn't probably as mature as what Nicky Hayden's going to be when he's 20. I was an ex-motocrosser, a hooligan, and tear-ass in cars, all that sort of bullshit, and then I come and I'm racing 500 GPs. It was just a big fat waste of time. - o N ~ ~ c .., '" 39

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