Fastest of Them All?
FASTEST OF THEM ALL?
RACE WATCH
With team troubles and 170-mph crashes hopefully behind him, Kevin Schwantz wants to be America's next worid champion
IN A NEAT. CLEAN. SIMPLE WORLD. the fastest man in 500cc grand prix racing would be the world champion; and the world champion would be the fastest man in GP racing.
But the world isn’t neat, clean or simple. Just ask Kevin Schwantz. Schwantz. the man many think is the fastest CJP rider of them all. won five «rands prix last season at ter sitting on pole position seven times. But Wayne Rainey, who took the pole just three times, won eight races and is the reigning 500cc world champion.
Schwantz. 26. would possess, it seems, all the proper tools to haul home to Austin, Texas, every GP trophy minted last year. His Suzuki RGV500 can be. when the team gets the bike's set-up just right, the quickest thing on a CJP track—Schwantz has said" of the Lucky Strike-sponsored bike, alluding to his well-documented crashes over the years, “Yeah, it does everything quickly, and it's just that much quicker to spit you off." Yet Schwantz’s formidable riding skills, honed since the age of 10 on all kinds of motorcycles, would seem sufficient to vault him into Victory Lane and keep him there.
“He's got the most peculiar blend of intelligence and ability to experiment." says race guru Keith Code. “He's as fast or faster than anybody out there on a given day. You can just look at the record books; 1 don't think there's any question about it." Threetime world champion Kenny Roberts. a man of few words, gets right to the point: “Yeah, he goes very last.
Yet Schwantz has had his problems. Chief among them this past season was the astonishing consistency of Rainey and his Team Roberts/Marlboro Yamaha. That, and Schwantz's uncanny ability tes snatch ignominy from a finish in the points, as he did in the 1 990 season with four falls—three of them in the last four races.
But things are going to be different in 1991. he vows. That's because Suzuki has rethought its pre-season test schedule, and also because of a 1 70mph set-oH during the Australian Grand Prix that has caused Schwantz to rethink life on and oft the racetrack.
Testing and development are the keys to championship performances, and the lack of those keys is exactly what Schwantz believes hobbled the Suzuki grand prix team in the 1990 season.
“Last season, I started with a bike that should still have been in the workshop being developed, he says. The problem was two-fold: A lack of «rip at the rear wheel and the difficulties of adjusting the finicky, razoredged Suzuki.
Pre-season testing was confined to a five-day session at a track in Malaysia. “They (Suzuki) didn't feel like they needed to go anywhere else. So w e had a bike that worked well in Malaysia. but not at tight, tough tracks like Laguna Seca and Jerez (site of the Spanish CJP). SO we went into the '90 season about half-cocked," Schwantz says.
The team didn't get fully cocked until the German GP—the fifth event in the season, and the third after Schwantz’s very public fall in the USCJP at Monterey's scenic Laguna Seca circuit, a fall’that would color the rest of his season.
JONE THOMPSON
As he came through Laguna Seca's Turn 11. a sharp left-hander. Schwantz came up on leader Wayne Rainey's rear fender. “1 actually had to stop and wait to get on the gas." he recalls. “1 had the bike all bent over, and when I got on the gas. the suspension was loaded, and it high-sided me," breaking his left wrist. He rode the next event, the Spanish GP. four weeks later, wearing a cast, f le didn t win. but he didn t tall, either.
Test time in Germany prior to the German CJP did two things: It helped the team discover that the '90 bike had to be set up using mainly rearsuspension adjustments, whereas the ideal set-up on the nearly identical '89 bike came by manipulating its front suspension. Testing also resulted in a new rear-shock linkage that was less progressive than the linkage it replaced. 1 his cured a lack of traction so significant that Schwantz was sideways, he recalls unfondlv. through the three fast lefthanders leading onto the Misano backstraight during the Italian GP. the event immediately prior to the German event. The payoff of the pre-German-GP testing was a w in after Rainey crashed in practice—his only fall of the season.
Of the Austrian GP. the next event on the schedule. Schwantz says. “Wayne and I really went at it. It was the first time since Laguna Seca we had really raced hard against each other. My last lap was a 10th (of a second) faster than my qualifying time, and that's what I beat him by.”
Yugoslavia went fairly well for Schwantz. who finished second behind Rainey's win after a poor start aboard an ill-handling bike. And the Dutch GP went even better, because. Schwantz says, the team got in two days of testing prior to the race.
“Seems like any place we could get two days of testing, we could get our stuff sorted, and we could race with them." In Holland, after a poor start. Schwantz won. “It was real satisfying for me." he says. Not as satisfying to Schwantz was Suzuki's apparent emphasis on single race wins at the expense of doing well in the entire CjP series. “Suzuki is committed to winning as much as they can." says Schwantz rather diplomatically.
Others can afford to be less diplomatic. Kenny Roberts, whose adroit management of Team Marlboro led to two world titles last year, says, “I think the way Suzuki sets the bikes up
and approaches a race, it's all-out to win each event, or to get the fast time. We take a more conservative approach.”
Despite that questionable team Phi I osophy, Schwantz won in France. He won again in Britain, and then strangeness set in. Recalls Schwantz, “We'd cut Wayne’s lead to 21 points. And at that stage, our engine and suspension technicians went home. We never saw them again the rest of the season. Suzuki
said they had to start getting next season’s bikes ready. I thought that was a bit early to throw in the towel. Seems to me. if things start going good, you keep your development going. I guess I don't understand Suzuki's way of racing . . . it just doesn’t seem like Suzuki wants to go flat-out to do whatever it takes to win a world championship.” >
It was by this time in the season, Schwantz says, as the GP circus pulled into Sweden, that the 20 points lost by crashing at Laguna Seca loomed especially large, for at the Swedish GP, Schwantz fell again and Rainey won. “It was mid-race, a fast, second-gear corner. I drug the fairing hard enough to lever both wheels off the pavement and I fell. It was really, really hard to accept. It was the first time I had been on the ground since Laguna, and it gave Wayne 20 more points. It put the championship out of reach,“ he says.
He fell again in Czechoslovakia when the fork bottomed during braking and he lost the front end, and finished third in Hungary. Then came Australia, where Schwantz had a crash that truly got his attention.
“I was sixth going into the first turn,“ Schwantz remembers vividly.
“I got up to fourth, and I knew I could catch the guys up in front. I got to second, then third, then back to second. But I got into the first turn too hot and I kept my foot on the rear brake as I flicked it in at about 170, 175 mph, and the back end came around. I’m on the ground and I’m sliding, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is a big crash. If I get up and walk away. I'll be extremely lucky.’ I must have slid 300, 350 yards. I cracked a bone in my foot and chipped one in a finger.
“That crash affected my attitude towards racing. I began thinking that enjoying life is a lot more important. I thought about it for maybe a month. Now, I’m not gonna stick my neck out for a bike that’s not working.”
In spite of his criticisms of Suzuki’s racing and development policies, Schwantz, who’s been saddled with a care-free public persona, but comes
across privately as mature and thoughtful, insists he remains happy with his decision last year to sign a two-year contract with the company. It's made his off-season much more hassle-free than it otherwise would have been, he says, and it has allowed Suzuki, knowing that Schwantz will be on board, to build on last year's findings and tailor the '91 bike more to his liking.
And who knows, 1991 may be Kevin Schwantz’s year. He'll start the season with several rounds of testing at GP tracks in Spain, Australia, Japan and perhaps the U.S. “It seems like that should be enough,” he says. “Hopefully, we'll be coming into the season with a bike that’s ready to race. We’ll go out, try to finish up front, see how things go, settle down and ride a little better.”
In the meantime, he'll be at home in Austin, resting, hunting, playing golf, enjoying his speedboat and cruising, unrecognized, on his RGV250 streetbike or in his Porsche convertible. He'll be keeping fit, maintaining the 145 pounds on his 5foot 1 1-inch frame by riding his mountain and motocross bikes.
And he’ll be thinking about the 1991 title chase. For that, he has a plan, a simple one. “We’re gonna make ’em beat us to win a world championship,” he says. And with the team’s upgraded testing schedule and Schwantz’s determination to take a more conservative approach to riding, the fastest man in GP racing just might do it. E3
