Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Marty Craggill A few weeks ago, Australian road racer Marty Craggill didn't have a ride. Then his friend and training partner Mat Mladin called from California and asked if he'd be interested in being the lone rider for Mat Mladin Motorsports, a new Suzuki team that would be contesting the AMA Superbike Series. In typical "no worries" fashion, Craggill hopped a plane and headed to California to train for his debut at Daytona International Speedway on the team's new Suzuki GSX-RlooO. We caught up with Craggill prior to his debut with the team. en:How healthy are you injury-wise? martycraggill: I'm pretty healthy. Injurywise I'm fine. The neck is fine, everything is fine. en: A lot of people wouid be intimidated by riding for someone like Mat Mladin. Is that the case with you? martycraggill: Not at all. I enjoy it. We've really been haVing a ball this weekend. He's hard on everybody; he's hard on himself. He expects results, but so do I, so it's not a problem. en: How competitive is the bike at this point? martycraggill: At the moment, it's pretty good for a privateer bike. It's a brand-new bike with limited parts available, but the bike will get better. We'll get some better parts as the year goes on. Yosh is a sponsor of the team, and we'll be trying to get as much help from them as we can. en: If this hadn't come together for you, what were your options this year? martycraggill: I was welding pipes in Australia a week and a half ago when Mat called me. He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Welding up high-pressure pipelines and hating life - why, what do you want?" He asked if I wanted to come back and ride in the States and I said, "Yeah, sure no worries." I told my boss, "See you later, I'm going home." He goes, "Hey, I owe you 300 bucks." I said, "Don't worry about it, I'm going to America." It was a surprise. I had no idea at all. I actually wish he'd told me that he was thinking about it earlier, because it would have made things easier, but it worked out well. en: Did you bring the family? martycraggill: Not yet, but they'll be here in three weeks. I'm going to get my own apartment in the same area [Rancho Cucamonga, California]. en: How did qualifying go? martycraggill: It went pretty good. I crashed trying to keep up with Mat, but the bike was fine. It was just a little crash. en: What expectations do you have for the season? martycraggill: I'd like to be top privateer, and I think that's possible. I just want to do the best I can. I have a good opportunity, a good team, good bike, good support. It's up to me now to get some good results. en: Right now this is a oneyear deal, correct? martycraggill: I know this is a longterm deal for Mat that he's looking at. The team will continue on with or Without me, I think. en: You are Mat's training partner as well. What type of training do you guys do the most? martycraggill: Heaps of cycling and squash. And weights. Lots of squash lately. Not racquetball - squash. Paul Carruthers Keith McCarty - Yamaha's Main Man Keith McCarty has been at this racing game a long time. As the head of Yamaha's racing teams both motocross/supercross and road racing he's at the forefront of all things racing in this country. We caught up with McCarty at Daytona to discuss Daytona and the reasons for Yamaha not competing in the Daytona 200. en: How close was Yamaha to doing the Daytona 200? keithmcarty: It wasn't close at all. It's timing. When you find out in August that it's [Formula Xtreme] going to be the 200, there just wasn't enough time to get our program the way we would want it to be down here. Everyone sees the motorcycles are really close, and I think that's the most difficult thing for people to understand, but that's the least worry of the scenario. There's more that goes into it. You can go out here and do two fast laps, but it's a whole other thing to go 200 miles at that pace... the crew, the peripherals for that race. I heard that this was pretty close to being done in February of last year. I'd like to think we are a partner in this and I think if we were treated as such and in on that discussion, it would have been a lot better for us to perhaps participate. Our game plan was to get into Superbike. We bought stuff, quick change... based on the old rule. I have a lot of expensive stuff sitting there, because we found out in August that all of a sudden it's a 600 race. It made all that stuff useless, obsolete, and that hurts your program. We built a bike, we tested a bike last year... then it changed. We're not that good that we can do it in that short of a time. en: What about Superbike for '06? keithmccarty: There are some meeting scheduled so we can all sit down and get a clear understanding of some direction and some stability. I'm not beating up anybody. I think these decisions are tough to make. You're dealing with promoters and manufacturers and teams, and it's not an easy scenario. But I know without communication, it makes it even worse. I think there are meetings scheduled so we can get on the same page, and hopefully 2006 will be a different scenario. en: There's always talk of two many classes. not enough classes. What would make the perfect weekend for you regarding the amount of dasses? keithmcarty: It comes down to the resources you have to run events and what the time constraints dictate. I think the worst thing you can do is try to put 10 pounds of crap in a 5-pound bucket. I think we do that quite often for a lot of reasons. Promoters want revenue, they want a show on the track 24/7. I see what happens when things go sideways. We were one of them this morning. We found out 10 minutes before the session that it was a qualifying session. That's a bad decision. If a decision like that is made because there are too many events, then that's one great reason not to have that many events. We say this all the time. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying this is usually what goes down. You have to think in advance - what could happen, not what has happened. It's two different statements. Paul Carruthers

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