Drive And Desire
Drive and Desire
RACE WATCH
BRIAN CATTERSON
John Hopkins always wanted to race 500cc Grand Prix bikes. At 18 years old, he's getting his chance.
IMAGINE YOU’RE 18 YEARS OLD, FRESH out of high school. You and your girlfriend decide to spend the summer traveling through Europe, so you rent an apartment in France, buy a used Alfa Romeo and spend your days taking in the sights. Sounds like the life, doesn’t it?
Oh, but wait, there’s one other important detail: Between visits to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, you make your living as a Grand Prix motorcycle roadracer, competing against the world’s best riders on the world’s most advanced equipment at speeds approaching 200 mph. Remember, you’re just 18...
Sounds like a fairytale, but for young American John Hopkins, it’s reality. The youngster from the San Diego suburb of Ramona, California, landed a dream ride on the Red Bull Yamaha MotoGP team, riding a YZR500 alongside teammate Garry McCoy.
Or rather, he would have been riding alongside McCoy, but the pint-sized Australian broke his leg in pre-season testing, and then underwent further sur gery to remove bone spurs from the an kle he broke in a 1998 crash. So for the moment, rookie Hopkins is the team's number-one rider-a situation not unlike
that in which Ben Bostrom found him self when Ducati's star rider Carl Fogar ty got hurt at the start of the 2000 World Superbike season.
I caught up with Hopkins at the Italian GP at Mugello, round five of the 2002 MotoGP World Championship. Sitting on a couch in the nicely appointed cara
van trailer the team hauls to each event for his use, Hopkins looked a lot differ ent from the clean-cut 14-year-old I first met at Willow Springs International Raceway in 1997. Now, he looks more like the typical freestyle motocrosser, with pierced ears and a huge tattoo across his back with his name and a tro phy girl holding American and check ered flags. But that's where the stereo type ends: What's refreshing about Hopkins is that while he's undoubtedly sure of his abilities, it's a quiet sort of confidence, not the brash cockiness of some of the other young guns on the AMA roadracing and motocross circuits.
Like most successful racers, Hopkins got an early start, riding off-road with his bike-mad father, Roy, an English-
man who once competed in the Isle of Man TT. His first race came when he was barely 5 years old at Ascot Park, where he finished eighth on a Honda Mini-Trail in the weekly night motocross races. By age 7, he was campaigning a Yamaha PW50 in national mini-cross races at places like Ponca
City and Loretta Lynn’s.
It was at one of those Ponca City events, where Yamaha put on a miniroadrace to promote its new YSR50 model, that Hopkins got his first taste of asphalt. Despite having no pavement experience whatsoever, Hopkins cleaned up, defeating future roadrace competitor Roger Lee Hayden, among others.
Soon after, Hopkins, along with his older sister Susanne, began racing YSRs with the California Mini Road Race Association. It didn’t take long for him to attract the attention of club president AÍ Lyons.
“The first time I ever saw the kid, I was completely blown away by his ability and determination,” Lyons recalls, “íb me, he’s that one-in-a-million rider that everyone always looks for.”
But no sooner had Hopkins’ roadracing career started than it almost ended. His father died of cancer, and his mother, Linda, couldn’t afford to support his racing efforts. Fortunately, Lyons came to the rescue.
“I’d been sponsoring John on 50s and 80s, and when Roy got sick, I promised him that as long as John wanted to ride, I’d watch after him,” Lyons says. “That’s
where our team name, ‘RoyAl Racing,’ came from.”
When Hopkins was just 11 years old, Lyons put him on a Honda RS125 at the Streets of Willow, and it was that experience that cemented his future plans.
“I couldn’t believe the speed,” Hopkins
recalls. “Just heading up the straightaway changed my mind and made me want to roadrace instead of motocross.”
Though Hopkins was eager to race on the big track at Willow Springs, club rules said riders had to be 14 years old. Tom Sera’s Fastrack Riders club
had no such restrictions, however, so Hopkins was able to practice there on the Fridays preceding the club races, honing his skills on a Yamaha TZ250. When he turned 14, he was immediately on the pace.
“Every time a top 250cc GP rider like Roland Sands or Randy Renfrow would show up, I’d be right there with them,” Hopkins remembers. “We never really had a tuner, though, and the thing was always seizing on me. I started thinking about my safety, and at age 15 decided that I was going to quit roadracing and go back to motocross.”
Disturbed by her son’s decision, Hop-
kins’ mother called Team Valvoline EMGO Suzuki owner John Ulrich, whose son Chris regularly competed against Hopkins.
Already aware of Hopkins’ potential, Ulrich offered him a ride in the Aprilia RS250 Challenge Cup Series, and the youngster won three of four series rounds en route to his first national championship.
Right from the beginning, the 16year-old was impressive.
“So we take the kid to Road Atlanta, and he’s never seen the place,” Ulrich recalls. “Right away, we discover that he’s got this real methodical approach, just rolling around and then slowly picking it up until he’s going real fast.
“Later, I’m watching the race, and with three laps to go he’s in third
place. I’m doing the math-$306 for the plane ticket, this much for the pipe, this much for the tires-and I’m thinking we’re going to break even. And two more laps go by and he wins the race! That’s when I came to the realization that if John’s behind you, God help you, because he’s going to figure out a way by.”
Hopkins’ first official ride for Team Suzuki came later that season in the AMA national at Loudon, New Hampshire, where he finished an incredible 10th in 600cc Supersport and fifth in 750cc Supersport.
“I’m taking this all in, and I get this phone call from (Team Red Bull Yamaha Director) Peter Clifford saying, T need the next Kevin Schwantz,”’ Ulrich continues. “I told him I didn’t think he was ready yet, but I might have the guy...”
That recommendation led to a test ride on a Yamaha YZR500 at Brno in the Czech Republic.
Clifford picks up the story: “We had rented the track, and the Yamaha factory team contacted us wanting to test there as well. I told them fine, but they had to wait until after 11:00 a.m., by which time John would be done. It was great, we had Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa sitting in the pits, waiting on this
16-year-old kid...”
While that test ride didn’t immediately land Hopkins a GP ride, it clearly impressed Clifford, who like Ulrich took note of Hopkins’ methodical approach.
“We told him we weren’t going to take lap times, but of course we did, and he just got quicker and quicker,” Clifford says. “It was immediately apparent that he had a level of maturity well beyond his years.”
Returning to America, Hopkins cemented his position as “the next Kevin Schwantz” when, in pouring rain, he won the 600cc class and finished second in the 750cc class at the Suzuki Cup Finals at Road Atlanta. He carried that momentum into the 2000 season, winning three races en route to becoming the youngest AMA 750cc Supersport Champion in history. And last year, he earned the AMA Formula Xtreme Championship by a single point after a season-long battle with Australian veteran Damon Buckmaster.
Then, right about the time most riders would have been knocking on AMA Superbike team owners’ doors, Hopkins got the call he’d been waiting for. Noriyuki Haga had left the Red Bull Yamaha team, and Clifford wanted to give Hopkins a shot at the big time. Hopkins returned to Brno for another >
test on the 500, after which the team signed him to an unprecedented threeyear contract.
“It’s unheard of to take that sort of chance on an ‘unknown’ rider,” Clifford relates. “It’s an incredible amount of money to commit a bike for a full season, let alone three, but we’ve got full confidence in John’s abilities.”
From that point on, it was a non-stop flurry of activity, with the team testing 12 days prior to the start of the season and another five since. It didn’t take long for Hopkins to determine that things weren’t going to be easy.
“When I rode the bike in Malaysia, I realized I needed to step it up,” he says. “It was a three-day test, hot and humid, and my physical conditioning was just crap. I was in decent shape, but not for a 500. From there, I went to a weeklong training camp and eventually lost 30 pounds. I was 160 pounds, and now I’m just 130.”
While the private Malaysia test gave Hopkins a good idea of what it would be like to race a 500, it wasn’t until he went to the all-teams test at Valencia, Spain, that he grasped the level of competition. Still, he wasn’t overwhelmed.
“You can’t be,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s awes,1Gb,llitb some to be riding with all WiVX(0 these guys you’ve only « «««». ever seen on TV and in the magazines, but they’re just other riders to beat.”
But it was at round two of the series in Jerez, Spain, that he came to fully appreciate the rock-star status of GP racers.
“There were huge crowds there,” he says, still awestruck. “I tried not to focus on them, or even to look at them, there were so many people in the stands. But it does pump you up a little. I’ve had more people ask for my autograph here in Europe than I ever did in the States, and I’ve actually been photographed to
be a character in a couple of racing video games!”
That latter scenario is especially appealing to Hopkins in that he’s a video game devotee. >
“I learned all the tracks playing MotoGP 2,” he proclaims. “You know which way you’re going, what kind of comer is coming up next.” Not that a video game can totally prepare you for reality.
“Suzuka was the hardest track to learn so far,” he says of the season opener in Japan. “I fell times on the weekend, high-sided myself in qualifying, wide-open in fourth gear coming onto the front straightaway, and the bike hit me.”
Things didn’t get any easier in the race, which was held in a torrential downpour.
“I fell twice and pitted once, but I was really determined to fin” Hopkins says of his GP debut. “The team thought I was coming in, but I stopped outside of the garage because if you come in, you’re disqualified. I said to them, ‘Look, a few of the boys are
gonna go down. I know I can still finish in the top 15, fix ’er up, put a new shifter on ’er, let’s go!’ Everyone jumped in and helped and we finished in the points.” And he’s finished in the points at every race since.
At Mugello, Hopkins got held up at the start, but passed his temporary teammate Jean-Michel Bayle and Jurgen van der Goorbergh on the brakes to claim 12th at the finish.
“I’m really finding out what my strong and weak points are on the bike right now, and braking is definitely one of my strong points,” Hopkins told me immediately after the race. “But my weak point at the moment is getting off the line and getting aggressive on the first lap. If you get caught behind, like I did today, it’s hard to make it up. At the end of the race, I was doing the same lap times as Tohru Ukawa, who was running third, so I’m definitely progressing.”
Perhaps more impressively, Hopkins finished just 37 seconds behind race winner Valentino Rossi and his mighty Honda V-Five after 24 laps, a difference of just 1.5 seconds per lap.
Asked what his goals are for this sea-
son and next, Hopkins gives a patently realistic answer.
“I want to be the first Yamaha,” he
says, then corrects himself. “Well, the first two-stroke Yamaha, that’s the battle. Always looking to get ahead of Norick Abe, Olivier Jacque and Shinya Nakano. Beyond that, I’d like to get in the top 10 in the next few races, and I’d like to finish the year in the top 15.”
Two weeks after we spoke, Hopkins made good on his prediction, finishing 10th at Catalunya, Spain, which ranked him 15th in series points. Impressively, he took provisional pole position with less than 5 minutes remaining in Saturday’s final qualifying session before the usual suspects demoted him to sixth on the grid.
Those sorts of performances should soon silence those critics who declared that Hopkins was going to the GPs too soon, that there were other, more deserving riders-Nicky Hayden and Eric Bostrom, for example-who should have been given the chance first. What does Hopkins say to that?
“Those guys are great talents, and I know that they’ll be over here at one point or another,” he says. “I definitely got lucky.”
But then, the GP circus has been his goal all along.
“The majority of American roadracers are focused on AMA Superbike, and World Superbike after that. All I ever thought about was Grands Prix. AMA on a four-stroke was always just a stepping stone for me.”
A stepping stone, sure, but there was one that he stepped right over, namely AMA Superbike. Does it bother him that he never raced at the top level in America?
“No,” he replies. “If you look at that class, quite a few of the riders have had their time over here (in Europe) and have now gone back over there. So someday down the road, I’ll probably end up racing back over there. I’ll get my chance.”
But before that, there’s the small matter of trying to win the MotoGP World Championship, an achievement for which Hopkins has no timetable.
“I want to be front-running by next year,” is all he’ll say. “I’m not saying winning every race or anything like that, but I definitely want to be right there.”
Considering what he’s accomplished so far, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything less.
He is, after all, just 18... □
