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/128307
Kurtis Roberts confers with Proton's senior ra ce e ngi neer Nick Davis d uring his first te st on the Proton KR V·S in Spain. either. At AMA, t here 're a lot of things that come in there that you don't see your potential as a rider. You don't see how racing can be. You kind of just deal with all the pro blems, and that' s 90 perce nt of your co ncern is just dea ling with w hat' s w rong with t he place than just riding." WORKING WITH FREDDIE SPENCER IN 2003: "My work with Freddie helped me learn to ride the Honda a lot better. I think the th ings he had to do to ride the three -cylinder I had to do with t he 5uperb ike , and I'd never ridden like that from the time I was little. 50 there were a few things I had to learn that I didn't want to do at first. You hear those things and t hink, 'Man, that's not what I wan t to do.' But it worked out quite the opposite. It wo rked out a lot. Trail-braking was mainly it and not backing the t hing in as much. Tha t upset the chassis, and once the chassis's upse t, it never co mes back. At the end the re it bec ame secon d nature. It de finite ly became so met hing I didn't have to think abo ut, that I just did. I actually still to this day, from just the two days I ro de the , RC45 at Dayto na, I prefer that bike to the RC-51 . Because t hat bike, w he n I got on it, it did what I wa nted it to do, and it felt right , and I'm more of a four-cylinder guy than a twin. " WHETHER HE SPENT TOO MUCH TIME IN THE UNITED STATES: "No, I do n't feel that. I'm still only 25. I don't think Wayne [Rainey] won his first championship until he was 29, and I do n't think [Mick] Doo han was much younger tha n that eit he r. I'm not exactly sure of his age. [jere my] McWilliams is 40, and he' s pushing the thing to his limits and the bike 's limits all the time . There's still plenty of years here. Who knows how long it w ill take to ge t o n? This bike has a lot of the right people to make it a lot better than peop le can imagine. And it can happe n. We' ll just have to see what actually does happ en . It'd be nice to be o n a Yamaha, Ducati, Honda, some of the big facto ries that are capable of winning, and being one of the guys o r the guy there. I think everyone here wants to be on the best or second-bes t bike because you're close e nough to whe re you can do your ho mewo rk and win." IF HIS MOTIVATION WILL SUFFER BY BEING ON AN UNCOMPETITIVE MACHINE: "Yeah, it's a concern . My brother's [Kenny Jr.] the perfect example because he's probably one of the best guys here, but he hasn't been able to prove that since he was on a bike that de finite ly wasn't one of the best in t he fi eld. I th ink coming into this year I have the mindset of, 'Let's make the best out of every race ; let' s make the best out of every situation : we came he re not expe cting to win .' Because we 've got to have some realistic goals, especially since we don't know if we're going to be o n Dunlop or Michelin or whatever. I think the bike is better than it will look on what we have right now. I think that at the middle or so of the year, if we weren't going to have so many things stacked up against us this thing, we could maybe be up a lot closer than we might have to be on what were going to have. The hardest t hing for me to get over is going to be the tire situation because people o n TV; peo ple all around, they don 't understand. They go, 'Well you're on tires , how bad can they be? They win in Ame rica.' Well, yeah, they win in America because they 're the o nly tire manufacturer in America up unt il this year." with him?' I said, 'Hey, I don't really know wha t the hell his prob lem is or w hat he thinks he is or what he thinks he 's not to make him w ho he is.' I respect Mat's [Mladin] riding ability And I respect how Mat does his jo b at the racetrack, . as far as riding the moto rcycle with his helmet o n. O nce he takes his helmet off, I lose a lot of respect in just the way he says a lot of t hings that do n't need to be said about ot her guys and their bikes. I think anyone who watched the races this year knows what the best bike was. It' s one thing a lot of peo ple forget is t hat Eric [Bostrom] raced Nicky [Hayden] quite a lot the year before and was right there w ith him all the time . It's just the fact that the guy [Mladin] didn't make a lot of sense in a lot of his post-race or pre-race anno uncements and press meetings t hat you kind of just go, peo ple that are going to read this and go , 'W hat are these guys talking about?' It just depends on if you have a memory. If you compare what Mat said the race before to w hat he just said, it co mplete ly contradicts itself. And then if you go o ne more race , it co ntra dicts itself again, and you just keep doing that. That stuff, you just kind of sit back and go, 'Will you just shut up?' Mat is a great rider, and he does a great job at the race track with his helmet on - that' s abou t ali i think of him. Mat tries to get into your head with a lot of stuff. I know what he's doi ng, It doesn't bother me one bit what he's going to say, and I'm just going to laugh it off anyway, so it's like, just do n't waste my time ." ON RIDING FOR HIS FATHER: "The diffe rence is tha t when I'm just o ne of the riders, they can bitch at you at the racetrack o r they can call you on t he phone , but they usually don't do tha t too much. Now it's like the father-son relations hip is there where he can call me an idiot for a month. And he has before. That's a little stressfu l in a way, but we 'll just have to deal w ith that as it goes ." " 1think some will loo k at me different, some will have dif- ON THE ROBERTS NAME: ON HIS FATHER'S ADVICE: "I've tr ied just not listening to him talk o r not being around . Like before you get on this thing, he gives you every fear that the re is before you get o n it, so your mind's so off in other directio ns that you kind of just don't use your natural abilities and everyt hing else because you're so te ntative . And that's the worst thing for me because I need to not even worry about that stuff, and it'll make me ride bett er. If I worry about all that shit, then I'm not thinking abo ut how I can ride or not eve n thinking abo ut wha t I'm do ing. It definitely will put me off wha t I can do . He tells you not to eat or breathe so met imes . He's mo re , in a way, too wo rried abou t being a father at the same time and putting you on this, and he's worried abo ut us falling off o r getting hurt , Kenny and I both . Th ings like that , it might not be what he's saying, but it's part of it, and he's nervous . How much more powerful this thing was going to be was number one. How the brakes are this or the tires are this or it' s going to do this." ferent opinions on w hy I'm here or why I'm somewhere or if I was n't who I was, I wo uldn't be here. Everyone is so rt of that w ay, are n't they? I can't sort of be blamed for w ho my father is. It's nothi ng to kind of punish you fo r. Every king o r queen of so me co untry wouldn't be w ho t hey we re if they weren't bo rn into the bloo d that way. Th ey can argue about it all they wa nt. Th e fact is, I wo n t hree championships - I wo n a lot of race s. I won a few 5uperbike races this yea r; I co uld've wo n mor e. I was the highest-finishing Ho nda guy. Without a few glitches we wo uld've bee n a lot closer. A few extra pit sto ps in som e places we didn't nee d and things like that . Y can fight ou t hat stu ff all day lo ng, but there's no point in it because eN you can't do anyt hing about it." ON HIS FEUD WITH MAT MLADIN: " 1 do n't th ink there'll ever be a final wo rd because it's like someo ne asked me, 'What' s the deal www.cyclenews.com C YCLE NEWS • JAN UARY 21, 2004