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/128322
Kenny Roberts Jr. is hoping that a revised Suzuki will revamp his career 32 MAY 5,2004 • CYCLE NEWS o uld it really be that bad? Could Suzuki really have screwed the pooch that ba dly? Could it really have built a Mo toGP prot o type with barely more power than a ro bust GSX-R I0001 O r is it the rider? He 's not trying. He 's given up. He was neve r that goo d in the first place . Such was the nature of the dialogue surro unding the underachieving Suzuki Grand Prix team in 2003. Kenny Rob erts Jr. hear d it. The re was no way he co uldn't , not w hen you finish 19th in the wor ld and your te ammate is 13th. He claims it didn't affect him. Over and over he claims th at it didn't bother him. But it did. It had to . Even thou gh he knew the truth and the t ruth sustained him. Some day, he was cer tain, the ship wou ld get righted. The eng inee rs would listen . The bosses would take heed . The factory would build him wha t he needed to do what he do es best: ride a moto rcycle abo ut as we ll as anybody in the wo rld. Halfway into the first wee kend of th e first race of 2004 and Kenny Roberts Jr. is a changed man. Not tha t he 'll admit it. He' s no differe nt , he says, than last year, but he is. "Th e mental side of it has always been really easy fo r me because I can always say I trained this way, 100 pe rce nt, and t hen I committed myself to it," th e oldest son of Kenny Robert s, w ho go es by Junior, said dur ing an interview in th e Suzuki hospitality te nt on Saturday afte rnoon in Welkom, South Africa. He is mo re upbeat and forward -thinking t han last year, and mo re o rnery. Not as much as his dad o r bro ther Kurt is, but feisty nonetheless . C 40th Anniversary "I've never or the mental s e So wha t hap e bad . It was slow ahd ragile and handled badly, the Three Stooges of mechanical maladies . Suzuki doesn't release ho rsepower numbers , but some inside the team will tell you that they we re unimpressive . By design , it tu rns out. Suzuki aimed low last year and didn't .quite hit the mark . The team, at the very top, was badly st ructured, top heavy, and uncommunicative. There was an undue reliance on electronics wh ich was futile because of a lack of support from the supplier. Requests for upgrades on the machine were ignored for so long that they were irrelevant when and if they arrived. It wasn't until the second half of the seaso n that the factory took notice and stopped the bloodletting. Finally someone in Japan woke up . A new boss , was put in charge of the race team. He didn't hide behind the problems. But he also knew ther e was too much to do to salvage the seaso n. The aim was th is year and beyond. One step at a time . "To me it seemed like last year they tried as hard as th ey co uld wit h the engine , but the electroni cs we re an attempt to make the engine better t han it was ," Robe rts said. "A nd so maybe in the future th at' s go ing to be o kay if t hey get enough informatio n. But you'd roll off the thro ttle , and you'd bra ke, and then t he engine pushes you too much, and you to uch it, and it' s too violent . Then yo u'r e always trying to fix it wit h the co mpute r. "It seems like this yea r the y've gone away from