June 2002
The first race of the revised MotoGP class at Suzuka did actually feel like a new era. It was a bigger deal. The thing that we have adopted now - after what I'd said years ago - is that we need to bring more engineering into the motorcycle business, and the new rules brought a whole bunch of it at one time.
It's a good thing because everybody is looking at the new bikes, wants to know what's going on, not necessarily just the people involved but the spectators. I haven't seen a crowd like that on a Friday at Suzuka - ever. I don't know exact numbers but in the rain it was a huge crowd. Their advance ticket sales were up 20%, so it's added a lot of interest - even within the paddock. If it's more interesting for us, then I'm sure it's going to be more interesting for the spectators.
The Honda and Valentino Rossi might have won the first race, but do you think that Honda's going to get buffaloed into not making a good motorcycle? I've never seen that happen. I've seen great riders and great teams beat them but all in all, since Honda entered GP racing, there have not been many. Having said that, I didn't think that the Honda was terribly dominant in practice, it didn't look to me quite as well packaged as I thought it was going to be. I went out on the racetrack a couple of times to watch - and I was expecting it to be better.
I'm not surprised that the Suzuki was competitive; I think that it's got a decent design and they obviously know how to make four-stroke motors. They've dominated Superbike in the States there for three or four years, but the rider and the machine works very well. I think we would have had a little bit different picture had it not rained. I've got a feeling that all the factories except Honda are working pretty hard to catch up. The Yamaha M1? I would have to say that for three or four laps there in qualifying it was very good. I've only seen photos of the new Ducati GP bike that they released before Suzuka, and it seems small and thin, and I think that there is a lot to be said for that. Obviously every company has its own engineering group, and when you look at their streetbike, their Superbike, and realise they probably have the same engineering group working on it, it's not going to be too far off. It's impossible for me to say what problems Aprilia has just by standing at the side of the track but having watched it, it has some horsepower. It just seemed unable to make the lap time it had to make. I could speculate all week long, but until you see the data then there is no way I could say any more.
Everyone saw at Suzuka that the handwriting's on the wall for the two-strokes. The best GP bike for a decade has been the Honda; I would say that in terms of the present two-strokes the NSR's as competitive as you're gonna get to the new four-strokes. The times were incredibly close in qualifying, but I think that was more a factor of the weather than anything else. It went from hot to cold and that made the set-up of the machine difficult.
The fact that we are not out there with a four-stroke right now is not a disappointment for us; it's an advantage - because now we can see what the benchmark is. If we were a manufacturer of thousands of motorcycles, like the people who are there now, then maybe we would be disappointed. But we're not; we're just a small engineering group. So whatever we make, we would like to make sure it is near the mark. We made a three cylinder two-stroke a few years ago, and it never reached the mark because the four-cylinders got a lot better. We have struggled sometimes, but with budgets being what they are and companies being what they are, and engineering being what it is, all in all - if you look at what we've done - I don't think anyone else has done it. I think it's fairly impressive with the money we've spent. Anyone can spend millions of dollars and win motorcycle races, that's not a problem. It's the people who can do that, having a small group of people, a modest budget and doing the best job they can. Now we have to look at a four-stroke MotoGP bike. What would we build? We have several designs that we have looked at; one's a triple. One's a four-cylinder, one's more cylinders. We will probably build either a four or a five, if you ask me right now, it wouldn't be a three.
We want to build it in-house, we're somewhere down the road doing that, obviously. We have been for a while. We have a very good engine designer, John Magee who designed our last three-cylinder, who is in house, in charge of our engineering group. He will be responsible for the motor. From time to time we will be picking on small engineering groups to assist in the major concept of the group. Once we have the information we require, John's job is to incorporate that expertise into the design, giving us the assurance that the design will function properly. Hopefully by the end of the year we would have something that we can ride around. No way would I even want to compete with the bike this year. What is interesting is that if you look at Formula 1 engines, there isn't much difference between a Mercedes and a BMW. They all end up being the same. So when you get close to the mark the differences are less.
I heard Fogarty had a go at me in his last column. Got upset about something I said about eight months ago. But that's all right, as long as it makes him happy. If he's got time to do that stuff then he's not working hard enough. It's gonna be a long rough road for them guys - but it all seems good when it starts.
My younger son Kurtis, who races AMA Superbikes, fell in qualifying for the Fontana race in California, and hurt his knee. Your instant reaction to news of your son's injury is as a parent, but they're not 16 or 17 year-old kids anymore, they live their own lives. They are always going to be my kids, but they're not little boys anymore. I cannot be at Suzuka and Fontana at the same time. I would like to be, but I'm not. My first thought is for the rider with any injury, being the father makes it worse. But I tend not to try and fix things that I can't fix.
