Reflections of A Champion
REFLECTIONS OF A CHAMPION
RACE WATCH
Kevin Schwantz looks back-and into the future
MATTHEW MILES
IT'S LATE AFTERNOON, AND I'M RIDING SHOTGUN WITH Kevin Schwantz in his big, white pickup. We're headed west, straight into the setting sun and away from Road Atlanta, where we spent two days whipping around the rolling, concrete-lined racetrack on GSX-Rs. The oversize tires are humming and country star Toby Keith is singing on the radio:
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Schwantz thrusts a scrawny forearm toward the radio and asks if I like the song. I nod, wondering if he connects with the lyrics. Or maybe he just likes the tune. His cell phone rings and he picks up the call, so I don’t ask.
Later, at dinner, we’re joined by several instructors from Schwantz’s riding school and 17-year-old Blake Young, a Suzuki support rider whom Schwantz is mentoring. This is everyday life for Schwantz: another night in a hotel, another meal ordered from a laminated menu. It’s been that way for a long time.
Schwantz, 41, contemplates cutting back, attending fewer races, spending more time at home in Texas. “My dad just turned 65, and he’s not going to be able to ride dirtbikes forever,” he says. But turning his back on the sport he loves, the sport that gave him all he has, isn’t easy. It’s why he’s in the pits at most AMA nationals, why he works with young riders, he sat on the now-deíunct AMA Pro Racing board. It’s why he makes himself available to fans.
4 g Schwantz retired a decade ago, but he’s still a hero to many. Twenty-five Grand Prix wins, 29 pole positions, the 500cc title in 1993 and the only rider at this level to have his num ber retired have that effect. Maybe most importantly, he's also remembered for his unmatched off-the-bike approachability. Graving middle-aged men recount the time Schwantz out-braked Wayne Rainey at the German GP. Giggling schoolgirls ask to pose with him for pictures Valentino Rossi has him over for dinner. And Schwantz treats them~ all the same.
Kenny Roberts Jr. told me that Schwantz is the only ex-GP champ who isn't bitter about his racing days. "Doo han, Lawson, Kocinski, all those guys, they tell you about races or champion ships that they should have won. Not Kevin."
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Of course, Schwantz has regrets. He wishes Rainey weren't paralyzed, that the three-time world champ could still "go play on dirtbikes." Schwantz would trade that impossibility for his title any day. In fact, given his own many crashes, Schwantz wonders why he's not the one in the wheelchair. "I'd fallen 10 times to his one," he says. "How am I not the one who is hurt7"
Schwantz is equally forthright when asked about his leap from Novice club rider to international su perstar, his battles with Rainey, his failed bid to .~ race a Yamaha, Suzuki's L middling MotoGP pro gram, the state of AMA ,X~ racing, Mat Mladin's ( Superbike dominance and if Ben Spies is the next Kevin Schwantz.
"ANYTHING THAT WAS EVER PUT IN front of me, I always looked at it as an opportunity, not as a chance to fail. In 1984, when Suzuki invited me to Willow Springs to ride the GS700, they said, `You may not get to test. You may just have to practice, then do the race.' I thought, `So what?' It was a factory Superbike, some thing nobody that I knew had ever ridden. Even if I crashed on the first lap, at least I could say that I'd ridden it.
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"It was the same way with the Match Races in England in 1987. Barry Sheene told me, `Stick around. Let's see if we can get you on one of my 500s and maybe go do some GPs.' I showed up at Assen, Holland, for the Dutch TT, and Mike Baldwin, Randy Mamola and Kenny Rob erts were standing there. When I walked up, Kenny said, `What are you doing here?'
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"Just having fun."
"Well, you picked a lousy place to have fun."
"I said, `What are you talking about? We're racing motorcycles, right?"
"Mv LEARNING CURVE WAS REALLY steep. ii learned my basic skills from my dad and Uncle Darryl-riding dirt-track, motocross and trials. As far as roadracmg went, though, I didn't have a mentor. "A rider can get to a level where he doesn't feel obliged to listen or ask for help. Yoshimura team boss Suehiro `Nabe' Watanabe was always trying to give me help, figure out how to go faster. So were all the GP guys, my engineers. They could see that the speed was there, if not the race finesse. But when they started giving me advice, I was like, `Hey, when was the last time you won a Grand Prix?' Not that I didn't want to believe them, not that I wasn't looking for help, but the credibil ity wasn't there.
"If somebody with the credentials that I have would have said to me, `Here's what I see you doing. Here's what I think you should be doing differently,' I prob ably would have listened."
"EVEI~tY TIME I WON, PROBABLY THE guy who got second was Wayne Rainey. And Roberts was always there-watching. If I had an advantage on Wayne in a cer tain split, Roberts would stand by the edge of the track, looking at three or four dif ferent corners, trying to figure out what I was doing to outrun Wayne. When I beat Rainey, I felt like I beat him and Roberts. I was like, `You know what? I kicked both of your asses today!'
"I didn't like Wayne when I raced against him, but only because I raced against him. I really respected Wayne's riding and the way he treated me on the track-and later in our careers, the way he treated me off the track.
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"I'd like to think that I put myself in a good position to win the championship. Had Wayne not gotten hurt, I'm not sure if I would have won it. But talking to Wayne afterward, he said, `You deserve it. There were a bunch of guys racing in that same championship. Ijust made a mistake.' That meant a lot to me. It really did."
"WhEN WAYNE CAME BACK TO EUROPE jn 1995 and started running the Yama ha team, it took me forever to even talk to him. I'd see him, turn around and walk the other way. I couldn't stand the sight of him in a wheelchair.
"When Wayne got hurt and I won the championship, I told Suzuki, `I know we've got the number-one plate, but I'm not sure what I've got left.' A Wayne was my motivation. I spent my entire career trying to beat him. Had I not fallen off my bicycle and broken my arm before the start of the `94 season, I'm not sure I would have had the fire in my gut to come back. But everybody was saying, `You idiot, you 1 can't even ride a bicycle with out getting hurt."
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"J.WAS RIDING REALLY WELL IN 1989qualif~.ing on pole, setting fast lap, win ning races-but I was having problems with my chief mechanic, Simon Tonge. He had been around racing for a long time-since Sheene's days with Suzukibut he didn't have the experience of an Erv Kanemoto or a Kel Carruthers or a Jerry Burgess. The bike was decent, and when we got it right, nobody could see which way we went. But it wasn't consis tent. For it to be a winning machine, the Suzuki had to be perfect. I felt like I needed someone who had been around a lot longer to help me get it right.
"My parents and I used to hang out with Kel after the races. He was always say ing, `You ought to talk with Ago-Giaco mo Agostini. You ought to ride for us.' With the problems I was having with Si mon, I decided to talk to Ago. I told him, `What I want from you is a signed letter from Yamaha that says I'm going to get the same equipment as Team Roberts.' I wanted to beat Rainey, and I felt like the only way I was going to accomplish that was to ride the same bike.
"But Ago came back and said, `I can't get that letter. I can't promise you that equipment.'
"So, I stayed with Suzuki. In the end, when I saw what other guys were doing on the Yamaha, I realized it was a lot of Wayne and a little bit of Yamaha.
have been the end of me. I might never have got ten the same equipment as Wayne, and maybe we never would have had those batties that everyone remembers. In the end, my hat is off to Ago for being honest." >
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4 -~ "WJ~ 1MD:4:BSOLUTELY nothing in 1992 I won one GP, but most places, we were terrible. Wayne Gardner's ex-mechanic, Stuart Shenton, had come to work for me that sea son. And, to be fair, he hadn't figured every thing out yet.
"At the end of the season, we went to Jerez, Spain, for three days. We went through 1~7 everything we could come up with to make that bike better. Back in Japan, Suzuki put to gether what they thought would be the best package, and we started testing, testing, testing. By the first race in `93, I'd done 15,000 kilome ters on new-spec stuff.
"For that first race in Australia, it was click-click, fiddle-fiddle, and we were ready. It was that close. Stuart and the other guys who were working on my bike knew the track, the way I rode and the corrections that needed to be madeoffset, ride height, wheel widths-to make it better. We put the thmg on pole and won the race."
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"I•.THINK~:MODERN GRAND PRIX MA chinery has brought the field closer together. The bikes have 4000or 6000 rpm-wide powerbands, maybe even more. With a 500, if you had 2500 rpm to work with, it was a pretty good day. If you had 3000 rpm, you were over the moon. With the latest machine and tire technology, everybody can go fast for a lap, but there is no doubt that the four strokes are just as hard to ride over race distance as the two-strokes.
"I think MotoGP is in pretty good shape. I think the class restriction to 800cc in 2007 might bring some of the diffi culty back to riding those things. It might get `em down to where they're a little sharper, where the power delivery is a little more abrupt and bring the rider into play a bit more.
"The single thing I see is that Rossi has such a grasp on what's going on out there. Until he decides to do something else, or somebody from one of the other classes moves up and starts to threaten him on a regular basis, Rossi is gonna have the measure of everybody."
"WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, MY PAR ents owned a Yamaha shop, but ever since I started racing professionally, I've been a Suzuki person. So when I get questions like, `What's going on with Suzuki's MotoGP program?' I get a sore spot in my stomach.
"Kenny Roberts Jr. realized that more effort on his part wasn't going to make a big difference. It wasn't the difference between 10th and the podium. It was the difference between 12th and 10th. You can't disrespect him for making that de cision. It's one of the things you have to leam as a professional: when you have a good bike underneath you, when you can go to the front, when you can win. There were times when I should have known that I had a sixthor seventh-place bike, that if I tried to force it into the top three, I was going to step off it-and I did.
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Portrait of a champion: Mat Mladin won six AMA Superbike titles through determination, hard work and by developing a close relationship with his mechanics. "Mat is 100 percent confident in his guys," Schwantz says.
“If I knew that my knowledge and input would make things better, I’d drop what I’m doing and spend the next two years of my life trying to get Suzuki back on track. I’d do it for nothing. I’d do it because I’ve seen those guys’ faces-the pain, the suffering-finishing where they’re finishing. Racing isn’t fun when that is the result. I went to the British GP last year, where Kenny Jr. finished second in the rain, and the team was ecstatic. That was the excitement I remember.”
"I TH1. A RACING IS AT A GOOD point right now No doubt, it could be better. I think the public wants to see Honda and Suzuki and Ducati and Ka wasaki and Yamaha all bump heads in the same class. Maybe what we need is fewer classes and a double-header every weekend. Also, I know this is Pro racing, but I think we need some stepping-stone classes to get to Supersport. You can’t go from CCS or WERA to AMA with all the factories and expect to win. You’ll be lucky if you finish in the top 15.
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“I want what is best for the sport. That’s why, as a board member, I sat in 14-hour meetings and listened to conference calls that might last three or four hours. I feel like I was one of the few board members who went to almost every race, who saw what’s going on, who had some international exposure, who knew what it’s like when things are right at the top level. Do I want to spend every waking hour trying to figure out how to fix it? No, but motorcycling has done a lot for me, and I enjoy being able to give something back.
“I think accessibility to riders is one of the AMA’s great strengths. Fans can walk right up to the Yoshimura Suzuki tent and talk to Mat Mladin or Ben Spies or Aaron Yates. You could tap Mladin on the shoulder while he’s eating lunch and say, ‘Hey, will you sign this for me?’ That’s CONTINUED
not a recommendation I would make, be cause he might turn around and stab you with a fork, but you can't get anywhere near Tony Stewart or the Home Depot 1.~~i.sporterat a NASCAR race."
"MLADIN'CONTINUES TO WIN BECAUSE be is mentally and physically stron ger than everyone else. Here's an exam ple: A couple years ago, Suzuki tested at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, in preparation for the AIVIA na tional that was scheduled for later in the year. Other riders had tested there, and Mat got down to their times pretty quick ly. But he wasn't consistently quicker. He hadn't gotten to a point that, when every body showed up for the race, he would have an advantage.
"I watched as Mat and his guys went back through everything he had just triedshocks, linkages, offsets, everythingto make sure they hadn't missed some thing. That work ethic is what got Mat Miadin on top, and it's what keeps Mat Mladinontop. 1
"Also, Mat's team-Reg O'Rourke, John Asher, Manny Macias and Peter Doylereally makes a difference. Mat is 100 per cent confident in his guys. If they didn't work in such harmony, I don't think Mat would be as competitive as he is every weekend. Peter can tell by the tone of Mat's voice how large of a change needs to be made to the motorcycle. You only get that by spending lots of time together and by winning races and championships."
"Is BEN SPIES THE NEXT KEVIN Schwantz? I don't know. Ben has the abil ity, but he also wants the best bike. When he doesn't want to ride the 600, I tell him, `Ben, go out there and ride that thing. You're learning all the time you're riding it, because you have to push the enve lope. That's good for you.' There are things in life that we may not con sider to be fair, but we figure out how to get through them, don't we? • A "Ben has to realize that it takes work to get there. I don't mean riding 400 miles each week on the bicycle. I'm talking about long, hard days testing suspension and tires, work ing on the motorcycle, going back through and trying everything again.
"He has to want it; his heart has to be in it. And he has to be happy doing what he's doing. He can't sit around trying to figure out why he's not the best. He needs to make sure that, as a person, he's the best that he can possibly be, and to take whatever step, however big it may be, that's put in front of him."
"IF I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO my career over again, I'd do it exactly the same way. I'd like to think that I might be a little smarter in a couple situations and would end up with a few more wins under my belt and maybe another cham pionship, but who knows?
"Even if I was on the third row of the grid, having qualified a second and a half behind Rainey, I still thought-somehow, some way-I would be able to run up front in the race. That was a strength, but it was also a weakness. Had I been able to say, `I'll be happy with a top-five finish,' I might not have busted my ass trying to get third. But I might not have won as many races, either."
