Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127978
·Kurtis Roberts By Paul Carruthers Photos by Henny Ray Abrams e's the youngest son of the King, and the younger brother of 500cc Grand Prix road . racer Kenny Roberts Jr. He' the Robert you may n ver have heard of. He's also the Robert who may end up bringing his famous surname to the forefront of AMA road racing - a place it hasn't been since his father headed for the Grands Prix in 1978. Coincidentally, that was the year that Kurtis Roberts was born. Kurtis missed the first of his father's three 500cc World Championships, but he was there for the other two, illbeit as an infant getting his diaper changed in such famous race places as Silverstone and PaulRicard. From those days as an infant to his current stature as a factory-backed road racer, Roberts. has been immersed in racing. As a youngster, he had the opportunity to ride and train on a daily basis alongside not only his famous father and brother, but also Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski - and whoever else happened to be training at the Roberts ranch on any given day. Naturally, his racing career hasn't followed the normal path of a beginning road racer. There was no club racing. [nstead, he was thrown straight into 250cc GP racing, first taking on the European 250cc Championship and then the 250cc World Championship. But in Europe he was more often than not underexperienced, underpowered and somewhat overmatched. In 1998, however, he seemed to find a home in AMA 250cc Grand Prix racing while also tackling the 600cc Supersport cla (and four-strokes!) for the first time in his career. Riding an Erion Racing RS250, he finished second to Roland Sands in the AMA 250cc Grand Prix Series, winning three races along the way (and becoming the first Roberts·to win an AMA race since his father). He also learned to ride a four-stroke, ending the sea n in 11 th in the point standings, but impressing many with his lateseason outings. . For 1999, Roberts will abandon the 250cc class, concentrating his efforts entirely on four-stroke racing. He'll again ride for Erion Racing, this time adding the CBR900RR Formula Xtreme bike to his CBR600F4. He's confident of his abiJities and he plans to win an AMA title or two before ultimately returning to Europe. - We caught up with the 20-year-old during the recent DunJop tire tests at Daytona International Speedway. H You now have a year's experience with the 600, and you're also going to be racing FomlUla treme - but no 250s. Are you looking forward to the new challenge? I think the Xtreme will be much better than riding the 250. Just because they're.both fourstrokes, they're both heavy. The bikes are similar in many ways compared to the 250 and the 600 - they were so different. At Vegas, things finally came around, because I went there just to concentrate on the 600. I didn't have to worry about anything with the 250 class because the championship was over already. I just went there and concentrated on the 600 and it obviously showed. We quaJified pretty dose to the front and had one of our laps taken away because I missed the infield the lap before, so they automatically take away your next lap. That would have pu t us third, so we were fa t there all weekend, and [ think we can definitely carry it over to this year. A YOU got better 600 as the year Q on. Was class? awith the of getting used towent it just maller the bike and the of things. The bike was so different. ['d never ridden fourA wewas a lottest at a beforetrokeyear started. Iyear before and didn't the had It this all to build my confidence up. I came into the year hurt, with a broken collarbone. rt was just a lot of tllings to learn. It was just so different. I'd never ridden before without slicks, so that was another problem. I think I concentrated more' on trying to win the 250 championship than the 600, because we had a lot of problems in the beginning of the year with the 250s as well. We were farther behind than we should have been. We definitely made some improvements, but we also had a lot of bad luck in the middle of the year, so the results didn't look near a good as how