Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

He came back. He did a 24.5 or something on the second last or last lap. He came back pretty hard, which he always does. I was doing 25.0, 25.1, hanging on for dear life, trying to hang on. On the last lap I saw Valentino was back on me. I was surprised I did a 24.8, because I was kinda blocking a bit. I wasn't going to make it easy for him. And that track is pretty hard to pass [on]. You seemed to find a couple of good places. [Loughs.] That's just experience. [Laughs again.] I remember you once described yourself to me as always having been the "smooth guy." On the Yamaha, you're looking that way again. How much have you had to readapt your style? Always. Doesn't matter what bike I'm on - 250, Superbike, MotoGP - the slower I look, the faster I am. It's always been that way. When it looks like everything's in line and I'm just out for a Sunday drive, that's when I'm usually going my quickest. But the Honda didn't work like that for you? Nah, it didn't work. A lot of that was the big tire that Michelin brought up. All of a sudden, the corner speed you wanted to carry, you had such a big contact patch on the rear, it wouldn't allow the front to dig in and bite. It was just skipping it across the road. Yamaha's chassis is awesome. I've never had chatter, ever - with the same tires. The thing is just phenomenal. When you lose the front, usually, the suspension extends as the weight comes off it. But this thing doesn't extend. It'll lose the front, but you pop it right back up with your knee, and it'll stay right under you. I've crashed the thing probably 20, 30 times this year but still keep going down the road. Haven't actually crashed it. Is it just because the Yamaha chassis has more adjustment points, so you can play with it more? Well, we did have to adjust something for Assen. We played with the pivot a little bit. It's pretty easy to see that I'm far forward on the bike compared with Valentino, even though we do have, not similar style, but similar setup: What works for him works for me. But I needed to figure out how to get more transfer on the rear, to get more traction. With what he was using at that time, the first few races, I wasn't getting along with at all. My personality, Ialways look at the good side and run with the good side. And that is - I'm not hounded, You come out of the garage, and by the time everybody's gotten over the fact that it's not Valentino, I'm already in the truck. So it works out pretty good. I've still got a fan base in certain areas. I enjoy it the way it is. Edwaod. nl.III.'.' lib .--I-pIac. flnlllh at home at laguna Seea in July. I was thinking more about the riding. A lot of guys say the first person you have to beat is your teammate. In this case, It's obviously pretty hard. Whenever I was with Honda, Aaron Slight was my teammate there. And I figured he really really had the disease bad... "Gotta beat your teammate, gotta beat your teammate. That's how you're gonoa keep your job next year... you getta beat your teammate." And I kind of fed off that. I thought: That's not the way to look at it. I don't want to beat just him. I want to beat everybody. And if he finishes in front of me, I'm thinking, we're a team. I can deal with that, whereas a lot a guys can't deal with that. But I want to beat everybody, not just my teammate. It just so happens that Valentino's won just about every race here, so yeah, if you want to win a race, you gotta beat him. But I don't have the attitude you have to beat your teammate. I try to look at the bigger picture. Sharing a garage with the best has its advantages, but it also creates a lot of pressure. I know Rossi's crew had been raising the bike some. Yeah. And maybe that's what's happened to our starts. Icould start the thing pretty good at the beginning of the year, but as soon as you start raising it, you raise the center of gravity, and now the rear axle pushing is coming underneath it, and teetering it, and wheelying. And the last few races, that's been a bit of a problem. Your best results last year were at Donington and Qatar, both tracks with new surfaces, and at Le Mans this year. It was beginning to look as if you were only fast on smooth tracks... at least until Laguna. Could be, could be. But Laguna's far from smooth. But last year we had chatter everywhere, except here [Donington] and Qatar. They're smooth, and they didn't have any bumps to set off the chatter, so... I think we go just as good at bumpy tracks as we do at smooth ones. You're riding now with the world's biggest racing superstar as your teammate. What Is that like? Have you ever been In this situation before, riding with Mr. Big? Do you talk much to Rossi about riding and stuff? We talk about everything, but we don't sit down and have a meeting. It'll be like after practice or whatever, after we change. Kind of peek my head in the door or if he comes walking through [ask], "How was that tire? How was the new shock?" between us, kind of casually passing information along. You can look at everything on the computer anyway, see exactly what he's doing, see what I'm doing. Most of what we're talking about is tires, just to get some feedback. To come back to riding style. what have you had to work on back on a Yamaha? I think I went from my Superbike style, in the Aprilla days, to hang-on style and see what happens next. Then to the Honda, which was really point and shoot. Any time you tried to get higher comer speed, you created chatter. To now, this year, I've gone leaps and bounds in comer speed. k's really funny, The first tests we did with Valentino, his corner speed was just unbeileYably higher than mine CYCLI NfWS • AUGUST 24,2005 29

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