Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Kenny ~oberts Jr. ...... ~ ~ m 2 ... of 14 and a bike around me, like Mick (Doohan) at Honda. When you think of Honda, you think of Mick. You think of Yamaha and you used to think of Wayne (Rainey), and Suzuki was Kevin (Schwantz). That's the way it used to be. Maybe it's not the way of the future. I still think I can develop the team and the bike around me. They may want to get more Suzukis involved and get everybody going fast on these bikes, and that's why they have Warren (Willing). That's why they wanted Warren as welL" Having watched Suzuki struggle the past few years didn't dissuade Junior from his choice. "We have the ability to make it good," he says confidently. "I have total faith in Warren. I worked with (Mike) Sinclair and I worked with a couple of guys on Wayne's team. Warren is a totally different type of guy. You can sit down and he can physically show you on a computer why it feels like it does. Other guys were always trying to keep me in the dark, and you never felt right. And when I worked with Warren this year - I would seriously say that working with Warren i 21/2 years of working with a normal guy.. You just learn so much more and he explains it so easily and he backs it up with the physical part of it - the math, or whatever you want to see, the computer stuff - and it just helps you learn. We know that it's going to be hard, but Warren knows what the strength of the Yamaha chassis is, he knows what the weight oj it is. He knows what this has to be and he knows what the uspension is supposed to do. So what more i there?" From having watched it on the track, Willing had drawn his own conclusions, which Roberts Jr. says were spot-on. "Everything that Warren thought was wrong with it is turning out to be wrong with it," Roberts said. "The chassis are heavy, which means they're stiff. We know the chassis are stiff. And when the chassis are stiff in the wrong areas, which they are - when you lean a bike over, it tends to stop letting the suspension work, and you sort of lose feeling on that side. That doesn't prevent you so much from going fast, feelingwise, it just limits you from having the maximum amount of grip, which in turn means you're fighting it. That's not really a major issue. We took some stuff to Showa, and they'd never seen any Kenny Roberts Jr. will be joined on the Suzuki 500cc GP team by Nobuatsu Aoki, who returns to the team for a second season. dampening curves or compression curves that we run on the Yamaha and we run on the Modenas and they put those in the front fork, and it's a lot better. Th.ey don't pack down and then lose feeling right away. When I got on the bike the first day at Jerez, 1 rode it half a day and I said, 'I don't want to even attempt to ride this' thing: They had the rear eat an inch and a half too low and three inches too far back - that's basically 100 mil (miJlimeters) from a Honda. And then the tank was a 100 mill further back than a Honda. When 1 got on the thing, I couldn't bend my elbows to tuck in, because the tank would push me back. It felt like you were riding a pregnant chick. It felt like you had this big tank there and you couldn't get on the front wheel. So they had brought a tank that was 80 mill shorter and we put the seat up an inch and put pads to get me more forward on the bike. We need to move the engine forward. We know everything we need to get feeling out of the bike and balance out of the bike. If we can get feeling out of the bike and balance the bike, we can win races. We have to win races. It's no secret. And Suzuki's dying to do that. They gave me everything I wanted:' His initial impression was that riding the Suzuki was much easier because you didn't have to worry about engine braking and you didn't have to worry about the vibration and you could use the back brake. As soon as you'd use the back brake on the Modenas, he said, the back wheel would come up in the air due to engine braking. "The fir t day, Warren said, 'Man, you've got to start squaring those corners off, because you're coming out of the hairpin leaned over like a 250: 1 go, 'I'm sure I am: but pretty soon 1 was able to open my eyes up, and 1 kept going wider and wider and the lap times kept going down and it kept getting easier, the acceleration patches were longer and braking wasn't so precise. You could move yourself around before you get in there. And then it all started coming back. So it's definitely a different way to ride a bike, and it's much easier to go faster on a four than it is on a three. A three's just all front end." The results have al 0 paid dividends for Junior's teammate - obuatsu Aoki. "Aoki always had a problem with understeering, and 1 couldn't ride the bike - the setting they had, 1 couldn't. ride it," Roberts said. "He uses a lot of back brake. He actually peels tires, delaminates tires, because 60 percent of the time he's using the back brake on the track. And it's been a problem for him the last half of the year, and he's been trying to fix that. When I flick the motorcycle in the corner, I don't have the brakes on. When he flicks the motorcycle into the comer, he has the brakes on. So it was a huge difference in the way that the bike has to go into the corner. If my back brakes are on going into ihe comer, I'll spin myself out, because. the rear will just lock up because there's no weight on it. When his is in there, it's got a lot of weight on it from the back wheel trying to stop, which sucks the suspension down. When I ride his bike and I flick it in hard, it takes a set and then pushes the front because I flick all the weight onto the tire. Well, his is already down and it goes in just because it's steering. He liked the geometry changes and he decided to get the suspension the way he liked it, and he's been using that setting ever since. He went faster than he had qualified." Talk, it is said, is cheap, and Roberts knows that. The time has come to win. "1 think we can do that on a Suzuki," he says. "If we do that on a Honda, is there going to be a 500cc year in the year 2000? There's eight Hondas out there. Who's going to keep up watching Honda win these championships? They're the dominant bike. If 1 can get within 80 percent of the Honda, I'll ride it harder. As long as 1 can ride it 100 percent and we don't feel tired, I can beat those other guys. I'm positive. I have no problems with tha t." Like his father, Roberts is an enthusiastic booster of the sport, aJ:Id he is profoulldly disappointed in the sport's leadership. "GP racing can be so much more," he said. "I mean, we need to get the younger audience into it." To that end, he's been working with a software developer, taking no compensation, to develop a Grand Prix computer game. When Junior last, rode a four-cylinder 500, for Wayne·Rainey in 1996, it was generally thought that he didn't take racing seriously enough. He'd watched how hard Rainey trained, but didn't put the time in himself. This year has been different. His workou t regimen is as strict as anyone else's. "You've got to say Mick's the best guy out there - bar none, physically, the best guy out there," Roberts said. "I think I'm physically equal to Mick right now. My endurance is way up, my muscle endurance is way up, my respiratory. I can't wear myself out in two hours no matter what I do. I've got a little bit of youth on my side compared to Mick, but mentally is where Mick is strong, because he's won so many championships, he's won so many races, and he's just very aggressive. He's just nonstop pushing 110 percent all the time. That's where I think my dad helps me out, and where he will help me out is that part of it. We've rode a lot this year and I've been in the gym every day, and that just makes you mentally tougher. And I think that once my confidence goes up and I'm running with Mick in races, then I think the enthusiasm part of it is going to help me out. Definitely we're lacking experience, as far as being' in the lead and knowing what it takes to get to Sunday, and knowing what it takes to get the tires in the right wear and get that mind-set:' Doohan is Junior's measuring stick for a number of reasons. One, obviously, is because he's the bes t and has been for some time. He's also ilie most dedicated. And he and Junior have similar riding styles. '1 don't care if Max (Biaggi), let's say, wins the first five races this year," Roberts said. "Let's just hypothetically say that, because I can never be a Max. I can never ride the thing perfectly in line with that much corner speed. It's just something I know I'm never going to be able to do, but I know I can ride like Mick. 1 know I can spin the thing up and push the hell out of the thing and get the thing to light itself up, given that I have a bike to do that. That's what kind of rider 1 am, and 1 can't change that. I've changed it somewhat on the Modenas, and I was able to push it hard enough to where 1 could beat Ralf, who had that style. But I still did it my own way. I know Max is going to be there. You can't count him out. He showed so much ability this year, even though he was on a Honda and anybody can do it on a Honda. But he showed he was a lot better than Alex (Criville), especially for just his first year. (Carlos) Checa, to me, seems to be a very aggressive rider - a lot of brake, a lot of throttle. The Yamaha doesn't work like that. So I'm not counting him out, but it's going to be in teresting to see how he goes. Sete (Gibemau) has been going real good -on the twin. I don't know how that's going to go. We've got Simon (Crafar), and it's going to be interesting to see how he goes on Michelins. (Tadayuki) Okada just seems to fall down and get hurt really easily. Everybody can get hurt when they fall down, but he hasn't ever really put a year together to where he's kept on the thing and challenged Mick. "Since 1 signed with Suzuki, since 1 knew 1 was going to sign with Suzuki, since the year ended and 1 started testing for Suzuki, the only rider I've truthfully thought of beating and setting my sights on how to beat him or even how to keep up with him, how to see him finish the race, is Mick. He's the only guy I've thought of. I haven't even worried about anybody else, because it's out of my control. But I know that the guy who's going to be there is Mick,. and he's proven it the last five years and okay, everybody says he was still the fastest guy by far this year. Don't look at the cllampionship. He still just blew everybody off. There were some races where Max went well. If you're always voting for the dominant guy, he (Doohan) is it." Listening to Junior, you'd have no idea that this was a rider who finished 13th in the World Championship, moving to a team who e rider finished ninth, worst of the factory four-cylinder machines. :1t's all worked out the way that we planned it if we could plan it," he said. "We're not overexcited, because we've still got to get a lot better, but we're excited that we've got a great team. Garry Taylor put together some great mechanics for me, and he made everything 1 needed to happen happen. And 1 can't say enough about that. It's ea y just to do something and kind of stop halfway, but he's done everything we've needed. We can't get anything but better unless we have setbacks from getting hurt or something like that; we're not going to do anything but get better. Because 1 know I can ride it 20 percent harder and I know the bike can easily be 20 percent better by the first race." CII

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