Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE K enny Roberts had perhaps the most impressive back- ground in the history of Motor- cycle Grand Prix racing. Not only had he won three world championships as a rider, he then won three more as a team owner! What does a person do to top all of that? Accomplished, by the way, by the time he was 40! Roberts decided to leave the Yamaha fold after more than 25 years with the company and strike out on his own to build a completely new GP motorcycle from the ground up and have his team contest that machine in the 500cc Grand Prix World Cham- pionship. Thus, the Modenas KR3 was born in 1997. Forming a new team, utilizing a completely newly designed motorcycle against the estab- lished factories and going up against their millions in racing budgets, was a monumental task to say the least, but one that no one was overly surprised that Roberts tackled. He was, after all, used to overcoming barriers that had previously seemed insurmountable. When Roberts first went to compete in the world champion- ships in 1978, the pundits said he would need at least a full sea- son to learn the circuits and the ins and outs of GP racing. Of course, Roberts won the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship that first season, not only shat- tering expectations, but creating a whole new way to ride a GP machine. A way in which the rest of the world would gradually evolve, with knee planted, turn- ing the machine by throttling up and sliding with the rear wheel, flat-track style. Then after winning three world championships as a rider Roberts took on the challenge of becoming a team owner in 1984 when he was just 32. By 1990, with Marlboro backing, Team Marlboro Roberts became Yamaha's official factory entry in Grand Prix racing. Wayne Rain- ey would win three consecutive GP Championships with the team starting that year, not to mention John Kocinski won the 250cc Grand Prix world title with the team as well, making Kenny Roberts the most successful team owner of his era. While Roberts enjoyed the benefits of running a factory team, he'd also long been an advocate of larger grids and the factories making their best ma- chinery more widely available to private teams. Sometimes being an advocate of helping smaller teams compete head to head with the factories didn't win Roberts friends among some of the top racing brass at Yamaha. Roberts became ever more frustrated try- ing to provide Marlboro a winning formula with Yamaha, so in 1996 he began exploring the possibility of forming his own team, fielding his own motorcycles. Roberts wanted to win the world championship back and Honda was absolutely dominant at that point. Roberts said he felt he could not get the kind of P106 A GP Machine from Scratch

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