Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 13 APRIL 3, 2018 P109 bike effort for the 1993 season. "This was like one in the morn- ing and I faxed him back," Muzzy said. "I told him I would do it, but that would force me to leave my company so I wanted a personal contract for this much money, be- fore we even talk racing budget. He faxed back like two minutes later on the same piece of paper and it said, 'OK'. I thought, 'Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into now!'" So starting in 1993, Muzzy found himself traveling the globe in the FIM Superbike World Championship. And with Scott Russell riding at his absolute peak, the pair won the title in their first attempt. While fulfilling to have immedi- ate success at such lofty levels, Muzzy admits he was stretched thin during this period. "It was tough," he admits. "I was still trying to keep up an eye on my business, we still had a team in America and we were do- ing world superbike." Muzzy ran at that torrid pace for four years. In addition to the sheer workload, Muzzy went through some tough times on a more individual level. When Scott Russell abruptly left the team in the middle of the 1995 rac- ing season to race MotoGP with Suzuki, it hit Muzzy particularly hard. Muzzy felt he had helped guide Russell from promising up- and-comer to world champion. It was an amazing journey con- quering the world together and as a result the two had a strong bond. Then Muzzy had a fraught relationship with the uber-talent- ed but personally troubled rider Anthony Gobert. By the end of 1996, Muzzy was more than ready to walk away from world superbike and bring his focus back to America. Reunited with Doug Chandler, Muzzy Kawasaki, once again, won two more AMA Superbike Championships in 1996 and '97. A new president took over at Kawasaki in 1999. Muzzy met with him and was told his con- tract with the company would not be renewed to do road racing, but within weeks of learning this, Muzzy said they then asked him to take over Kawasaki's drag racing program, an important avenue for advertising Kawa- saki sport bikes in America. "So that's how I got into drag racing," Muzzy adds, talking about his transition in 2000. "I ran that pro- gram for seven or eight years." After his time in Kawasaki's drag racing program, Muzzy began to scale back his activities. In September of 2015 he went into semi-retirement and closed down his exhaust system company. At its peak Muzzy Racing in Bend, Or- egon employed nearly 50 workers. While never working directly in MotoGP, Muzzy did help with development work under con- tract for Kenny Roberts' Proton GP squad. Some of the stories that have become legend of Muzzy's "cre- ative" tuning of his superbikes, only added to his lore. Muzzy laughs but is quick to add that everything they did was legal. "Obviously I think that was the job of any crew chief, shall we say, to find things within the rules that would help," Muzzy says. Muzzy also had great relation- ships with his riders from Eddie Lawson to Wayne Rainey to Doug Chandler and Scott Russell. He always was careful to listen to what the riders wanted to make them comfortable on the bike. Muzzy tells a story involving Miguel Duhamel that wonderfully illustrates that point. "Miguel came to race with us after he raced in GP where he had a horrible time," Muzzy remembers. "And after going through things on the bike with him in testing he said, 'I can't be- lieve how much better it is to have someone who cares about mak- ing this right for me. In Europe they'd tell me, 'Tough shit, ride it.'" Looking back Muzzy says it's easy to point to the zenith of his career and that was 1993 when he headed up the teams that won the FIM World Superbike Cham- pionship and also gave Kawasaki its first victory in the prestigious Suzuka Eight Hour. It appears the era of tuners, who were nearly as popular as the riders, is past, but even during that high-flying period of motorcycle racing, Rob Muzzy stood out as one of the all-time greats. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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