Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

and put the final recommendation in there, and it was considerably quicker on race tires over race distance, much more comfortably. From then on, I expected Barcelona to be competitive. So the surprise element of Barcelona was nil, for me. Now I need to be able to push harder in the beginning of the race. How many more years do you see yourself racing? It's hard work, obviously. Since I joined Suzuki I've never had a time when I was competitive with a good teammate that I could bounce things off. Normally with Suzuki, one guy would do good and the other guy would do horrible. So to come over here, and I'm the test guy, the endurance guy... I've got every role here. It's quite a big task, and it's rewarding because we've done well. But at the same time, it's a tremendous amount of responsibility. In Barcelona we had a bike in the garage that was two- or three-tenths faster, that probably would have kept me closer to Nicky [Hayden] and Valentino at the end of the race. But the way our weekends go... In Italy, that bike was about five-tenths faster with the same effort level, but riding it was a little bit more tricky. It felt more nervous, but the lap time's quicker. Normally, when they're nervous, they're quite a bit slower. Mugello's bike still didn't feel right. Saturday morning when we figured out what we had in it, it rained. And I had to run through tires after it dried out. So I got stuck on that old bike for qualifying and the race. That's just a prime example of situations where tiny things determine our weekend for us. Whether I want to continue doing that next year is one of the things I'm going to have to see. Does the thought of 800cc prick your interest? I was talking with Valentino... it's gonna be interest- ing, because Honda needs to reduce power, even though the power curve is perfect, and the rpm's fantas- tic and the motor never does anything funny. That's with a 1000. With an 800, it may be to where you never have to mess with power reduction. And it's got torque to slide the bike, and the wheelie control's not necessary. I'd have to see it, test it. Hopefully, we'll have some- thing by August to start making the chassis and start test- ing things - in our situation, you'd want to be testing no later than the end of October. Will having less power make the racing closer? That, I'm not sure. Now the field is close. Kawasaki and Suzuki are starting to catch up. You throw in an 800, and it's a completely new engine. I'm not an engineer, but it's just that everytime Honda comes out with some- thing, and it's just, like - up here. And everybody else is going, why didn't we think of doing that? So who knows what is going to happen? But I would think that Honda - being Honda - will have an engine advantage. CN C Y C L E N E W S • JULY 19, 2006 29 awesome. I think that's the way it should be - spinning every corner, the bike sliding everywhere. I don't think it would make it harder. It would make it more dramatic. The thing is, the tires have so much feel. In the '90s you didn't have feel like that, until the 16-inch tire in 2000, where you had a lot of contact patch, and a lot more area to make a mistake in. Over your years in racing, what is the best thing that's happened, and the worst? I think the safety of it is the biggest turnaround. When you stand back and look at it then it takes a minute to go, "Man, we're quite a bit better, MotoGP-wise, com- pared to other bike racing." That is not only surprising to me and gratifying, it also needs to get taken to anoth- er level. By that, I mean that in five years from now you'll have such manicured racetracks that a safety committee will be down to one guy with good experience from rac- ing, and when you get there you won't need a meeting on Friday afternoon. Everyone is kind of understanding now what the racing needs. From a rider's side that's the biggest thing. To me, when [Wayne] Gardner and those guys would slide into a barrier and do something stupid like break a leg, that makes me so irate. Imagine if Valentino, the popularity he has, got hurt by something stupid like hit- ting a wall. Everything is going to drop - the fans, the viewing figures. Everything is going to take a dive. You want to have these crashes now where the guys jump up, and it's not a big deal. You're in the riders' safety committee, but you know it's not always easy to get it right. You guys wanted a gravel trap at turn one at Phillip Island, then you crashed there and got hurt last year. For sure, at Phillip Island I would want only grass. The problem is you get tractors and rent-a-cars out there, and they make ruts. So the easiest thing to do was to put a sand trap. If you're going through the grass at 160 km/h [100 mph], and the grass has been mown and the tractor left a rut, and you do one of these [endo], then that's maybe even worse. So... the safety situation of the sand trap was more a known factor than grass that looks perfectly level but maybe isn't. But if I was going to make a racetrack tomorrow, I'd have uphill grass runoff every- where. You'd never see a sand trap. They're horrible. You don't want them. And the worst thing? The most disappointing - as a rider - is, I would like to see everybody on more equal bikes. Look at NASCAR, and other sports like Supercross, where the bikes are more competitive with one another. Here, even though the rac- ing is close now, you've got so much diversity in the motor- cycles, and also the tires. I always like beating people on the same equipment. That gives the most satisfaction. I would like to have seen racing evolve into everybody using the same tires, and the motorcycles being real similar. With such technical restriction, wouldn't you be risk- ing MotoGP being slower than World Superbikes? I'm not talking about the pros and cons of it. I'm just talking from a rider's standpoint. I think if you took all of the great champions from the years before, everybody would kind of say the same thing - that you want to beat the guy on similar equipment. The perfect situation for me would be: change the decals and everybody run the same bikes and the same tires, just like NASCAR. Because then everybody gets a shot to win. And when you win, you beat 20 other guys, not one other guy - your team- mate, and then the rest of the field by 30 seconds, because your tires and bike were so much superior. You still got to ride it. I mean look at Valentino com- pared with Colin [Edwards, his teammate]. Colin's not a bad rider, but Valentino still is the guy to beat. So you'd still have separation. You just wouldn't have 40 seconds. You always used to believe you could beat Valentino Rossi, because you've done it before. Do you still believe that? Well, he's getting harder and harder to beat, that's for damn sure. Because he's been at this long enough. I think it has to be a situation where it's at least equal, and I can use the Honda motor to advantage. If your bike is not steering as good as Valentino's, and it doesn't have the traction, then no. You've got to get it to steer as good as his, and have the same amount of grip. If it does that, then yeah - he's definitely beatable. So that's the goal. There was obviously some sort of a cri- sis in China, were HRC gave you the chassis advice that has helped since. What actually happened? It's very simple. When my father asked if I want- ed to ride, I said sure, but it's Michelin tires and Öhlins sus- pension, because they're knowns, and right now, the best out there. He said, "Yeah, that's the plan." And Warren [Willing] and everything fell into place, and it was exactly what I thought we needed to become competitive. I had to recommit to training. I was done - so I had to get all my stuff, motorhomes, ready; a lot of things I was- n't anticipating. I was wondering what position I'd be rid- ing around in. Some of my contracts and stuff - you have to say, I think it's going to be in the top six, initially. And then when you're not doing that... In Jerez - we beat John [Hopkins]. We were a long way off, but it was something to build on. Then Qatar I was quickest [in free practice], and still the bike didn't do what I wanted. When I was following Loris [Capirossi, Ducati], it's just like: "Man, I need him to get out of the way, because I have to ride this thing another way." I did- n't really know if that was good or bad. Then the wind picked up, and everytime I'd lean in a corner, it'd push the front or start shaking. From that point on, I was say- ing: "This thing does not go into the corner like every- thing else." We should have been at least equal to a satellite Honda, because engine-wise it's a lot of the same stuff. In China things started to elevate very quick- ly, from the point of there being something wrong. So I tried to make it easy. I said, "Why don't you guys get someone else to ride this thing, because obviously I don't know what I'm doing." Meaning: I need help here. Because when I go into the corner with the guys, my bike goes straight. Or I go in and lean it over, and it stands up. In the garage, they'd say, "well, we're sure that it should be fine." So I'd say: "okay, then it's me. But if you put a Honda in the garage right now and I ride that, am I going to say no, ours is better?" I don't think that's possible. I was trying to say that I'll take the blame for it, but 99.9 percent sure, this thing ain't right. Finally they spoke with Honda, and asked if they would take a look. I don't want to go into specifics, but basically they set one parameter of the motorcycle around the steering head that said this is a long way out. We weren't talking millimeters. We were talking a lot. So we went - "okay, that's something we need to try." In France, we had 50 percent of that changed, and it was the first time I could have the bike leaned over and it wouldn't pick up when I opened the throttle. So then it slides. I was using more traction control than I wanted to, and more fuel, and I'm going two seconds slower than everybody. It was a number of things that build up and show you that something's wrong. Seventy-five percent of it was done for Mugello. The bike would steer, and stay on line, and start to do what the other bikes were doing. Warren had anticipated I would want more, and we had that to test the day after Mugello. We got that, made the steering a little steeper

• Cover