Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

L ike a hibernating creature that has missed its cue for the past several springtimes, 2000 World Champion Kenny Roberts Jr. has sud- denly woken up again, and come out fighting. That's how it seems, anyway, after Roberts suddenly got going fast on his father's hybrid Honda as the midseason approached. It started at the Catalunyan GP, where Junior was not just flash-in-the-pan fast in practice, but really competitive. The reward was third place, the Team Roberts' first-ever rostrum since split- ting with Yamaha at the end of 1986. And it went on at Assen and Donington Park, where Roberts pushed the pace, and once again looked like a real racer all the way. What a change from the five doldrum years, both on a two-stroke and a four-stroke, at Suzuki, where the one-time race winner became part of the background music. Except, very occasionally, when it rained. We spoke to Roberts at Assen, taking advantage of a radical improvement in his mood, which had been on the dark side ever since the end of 2000. Roberts prides him- self on racing without emotion, treating it with severe logic. He couldn't, however, hide the disappointment. He explained everything - the split with Suzuki, how his father's offer brought him back out of retirement, and why he's suddenly doing well again. Adding a plea for a new kind of racing, with less machine differences and more rider talent involved. After all, he's proving to everyone that talent doesn't go away when the results go wrong. What has brought about this change in results? Is this the return of the Junior? All the guys out there in MotoGP, on a good bike and with a good team, would do well. But when they're doing bad, it's them, and when they're doing good, it's also sometimes like: "He's got a Honda now, and if he wasn't doing this, then..." Everybody out there wants to do well. We're not all on equal equipment. Now I have a chance to start to do well, so it's not really me, it's just the situation I've been given. Some riders are smarter, to wait for that to come around; some are better at positioning themselves - like Valentino [Rossi] - always with a good team or a good factory since he started. For me, I've just been with an unsuccessful project for a time, and now this project seems to be getting better. Do you view the bad years at Suzuki as wasted time? I don't really know what would I have done that would have turned everything around. There's not really a lot out there. As a World Champion, I didn't have an extreme amount of options to be factory-number one. I had a lot of factory-number twos or other teams, but that wasn't the ideal situation at the time. With Suzuki, I always looked at the glass kind of half full, rather than half empty. I had a factory that's making one of the best Superbikes in the world, and quite a big factory, saying "we know if we build you a Honda, that you can win races." And that was pretty much their thought process right up until last year. Then, I was definitely not good enough. Does getting dropped by Suzuki, when they kept John Hopkins, give you a lot to prove? No, I don't really feel that in any way. Actually, I know that the Japanese racetrack staff didn't want me to go, and expressed their... I wouldn't say anger, but their dis- pleasure to the factory. So the people ahead of that don't know much about racing anyway, and it's to be expect- ed. They don't see John's risk level of doing what he's doing, now or last year. They just expected me to be better than him, and since I wasn't, then... The risk level was quite conspicuous. Yeah. He had some good injuries last year. He was push- ing, because he's never had any success, so your effort level's quite high. And he doesn't really see it as high. He just sees it as natural. But he's an intelligent guy, and he's start- ing to understand more and more that if he was in a differ- ent situation he would already have a lot more success. After that, how close were you to retiring? I don't know about official retirement. I was just done. I never wanted to announce it, or saw the meaning in that. I was just going to stay home. So were there no other offers on the table? I never asked my managers or anything. Because I was doing so poorly at the time, I was like - it's the last time I have to do this, and the last time I have to do that. There must have been several years when you didn't enjoy racing? I actually wasn't so bad - the problem is, last year, the risk level was way to friggin' high in the beginning. Until Bridgestone came out with a tire in Czecho' that started to make it more normal to ride, then I was start- ing to kind of enjoy it again, and I had some success from then on. Malaysia was pretty good in that I was 16 seconds from the lead. That's when the bike got safer to ride. Up until then, it was like: this thing is sick - scary to ride. No feel... you're hav- ing to risk stupid crashes for 14th and 20th. So that was the worst time. But there's a lot worse things to be doing in life than racing, and that was always my mentality. I was at the top, in MotoGP with one of the top facto- ries. Could have been doing a lot of other dumb things. Sete Gibernau left Suzuki (at the end of 2002) and right away started winning on a Honda. Was that hard for you to watch? No. Actually, it was good for me. It would have been worse if he'd done poorly. Then I would have been - you know, I've got stop to - I better think about doing something else. Some people thought he and I were equal, some thought he was better and some would say I was. Depends who you're a fan of. For me as a rider, knowing what he was going through, and I was going through at the same time, if he'd have done bad, you would have to think I would- n't be doing much better. I was actually one of his bigger fans, and I still am. It seems the 990s have become pretty easy to ride, with guys coming up from 250, such as Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa, and they're right on the pace. Is that the electronics? Are they too easy to ride now? I think the tires are the biggest thing - they got so much grip and feel. Even if you took the traction control off, the motors are so good - at least the Honda is. I've ridden it without traction control, without any engine reduction in power, and it's JULY 19, 2006 • C Y C L E N E W S 28 Kenny Roberts Jr. BY MICHAEL SCOTT PHOTOS BY GOLD & GOOSE

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