Kenny Roberts - MotoGP Diary 2002-2003

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.

July 2002

After all the long hauls the European MotoGP season started off in its usual fashion at Jerez, and I was pleased with the performance of our team. Nobuatsu Aoki had a good ride for us, very good, and I think that Jeremy McWilliams would have been right there with him, if he hadn't had some bike problems. For us Jerez hasn't always been that good but for some reason the riders we've got right now have shown well in races, as we thought they would.

As you probably saw, Honda took the top five places at Jerez. They've been in that position before, so they seem to have not got things wrong anyway.

I've had a look at some of the rules for the new Spanish Supersport class which allow lot more suspension and chassis modifications than World or British Supersport. I'm very interested in the rules and I was hoping they'd go all the way and allow a complete chassis-change. But that wasn't to be - not this year anyway.

Some people have said this could be the class to take over from 250 and 125GPs, but I've not heard that myself. If you look down the road someone has to find a solution to succeed the two-strokes - especially if everyone else is running four-strokes. It seems the next step would be 600s and possibly even 250 singles alongside MotoGP.

If I had to design the MotoGP classes, in an ideal scenario, I think they would be very much MotoGP support classes. I don't think you could build three number one shows, and any new class has to be designed to develop the riders for MotoGP. You're always going to have plusses and minuses in any formula, but I'd hate to see it turn into just 600s and have all the factories throwing gobs of money at them - because that's going to somehow spill over into what riders get chosen. I'd hate to see 24 Japanese riders in the 600 class, for example.

I've said it before - we certainly need the big factories, and the factories have done a lot for racing - but there also has to be a person or a group of people, like Dorna, who make the rules. I don't feel the Japanese manufacturers need to make the rules, I think the rules have to be formulated as a sporting and commercial venture.

I think it's more or less driving itself in that direction now though and teams like mine can compete, and teams like Honda can compete quite easily - with some rules.

Now if there are no rules, and Honda wants everybody else out of the picture, then they could do that. But because there are rules they can't. I don't think you're ever going to have no rule racing. You're going to have to be small enough and quick enough to make sure that the rules make for a game played for the spectators and for the commercial good of the sport. As long as that happens, no matter what the factories do, the racing should survive very well.

To outside sponsors motorcycle racing is sometimes a confusing landscape, but mainly in the UK and America only - because that's where superbike racing has gotten the most hold. In Spain we never run into that. It just doesn't happen there. I don't think it happens anywhere else - maybe Italy, although I don't have that much information about Italy. But because Ducati is in Italy, maybe there is some spill over there as well. In England Superbikes has taken a very big hold. Whether that will continue I have no idea.

The fact that we seem to get less people to come see Jeremy McWilliams racing a British-built GP bike than go to see the Superbike guys race is a racetrack problem. I don't think anybody out-drew the GP last year in England. I like it when the magazines speak about how many people they can get in the Superbike race at Brands Hatch - because you can't get that many people into Brands Hatch - I think there are a few myths going on in England, when you look at it closely.

England has a lot to offer but I don't see the sponsorship in Superbike racing as any more lucrative than in Grand Prix racing. I would have to say that with the programme I've had in the last few years, having built my own Grand Prix motorcycle, I don't think I could have done that in superbike. I don't see how I could. I only build 5 bikes a year, I don't build 300. If I built 300 motorcycles that don't go as well as they're planned to go, what am I going to do with those 300 motorcycles? I was never one to think about superbike in terms of manufacturing, simply because you have to make too many and they have to be right. And the next year Honda comes out with something that's much better and then you're back in the same ball game. Which is why I always thought about GPs. Because the sponsorship value in GPs, TV-to-TV, is more. So if you're talking about running a sponsorship-based team, which is what I do, there is no question of what you would run - GPs.

There were a few years there that I was very frustrated that GP racing wasn't going the way I wanted it to, but now it is. I can tell you that we're going nothing but straight up, my company being a perfect example. I'm not sure about all the seeded teams, but it's certainly booming for us. We're hiring people faster than we can find them at the moment. Lucky there are a lot of F1 teams letting a few people go right now, so that's helping out. The four-stroke project is progressing, and we will probably be ready to say something by the Barcelona race. Certainly by Donington. We don't want to discuss the exact format of the engine yet, maybe it will be something we'll finally talk about and have pictures of by Barcelona in mid June.

I think the one thing that everyone is concerned about is to have some younger riders. The difference it makes to have a Tiger Woods in golf or not is huge. Huge! In the old days we had Yamaha 350 racing in England that actually produced some racers. The problems with running any of these in the past 10 years is that the money's been going up to run them. Even though they are streetbikes the cost is higher than the sport can afford at a dealer level. My thinking is that we need to develop classes that need to develop riders, not to develop factories. If you look at the amount of Japanese riders out there, why is that? I don't see anybody talking about that. I for one think that it needs to be looked at. I don't think we need to develop classes around 34 Japanese riders. I'm not Japanese rider bashing, I'm just saying that we need to look at these things a little bit differently. Spain is one of the countries that has done that. They said 'hey, we're going to do this and this and we think it's going to work.' And so far for the Spanish it has.

October 2002

As usual at this time of year I'm at the Sturgis Rally, at home in America. Jeremy McWilliams is here, enjoying it, riding a Harley. I even had to fix the thing for him. It fouled a spark plug and I had to fix it, which Jeremy thought was very funny. I talked to Jeremy about going to Sturgis months ago and I said that he should come and see it. He said, "yeah, I'm gonna go." They always say that, but in his case, the closer we got to it the more he was saying "so where do I fly into when I come to Sturgis?" Our other MotoGP rider Nobuatsu Aoki is also here as well, and they both seem to be enjoying it. We had a real big road ride yesterday.Sturgis is in South Dakota, in a very special part of the world for motorcycles. It is something you have to witness, to go through the experience of, to describe it properly. I can tell you what it really is all-day long but until you actually see it you won't understand it. It's exactly like the TT races in some ways, but although there are all sorts of racing activities, we come here just for the Harley riding. I've seen a lot of women who ride better than I do this week - but I am getting old! I hope the engineering people at Banbury are not having a summer break because there is a lot to do in a very short period of time! We are on schedule with our new vee-five and have had no major hiccups. I come back to Europe before Brno and when the engine castings physically show up on the desks we will see the whole thing assembled. We will probably be showing some more rapid prototyping stuff on our website in the meantime. As far as racing goes, at Donington Nobu was up to fifth place and then he ran into some tyre difficulties and dropped back a bit, just to bring it home. Jeremy's problem was just a freak - we have no idea why his power-valve would stick because it already had 450kms on it without any problems. Normally if they stick it happens on the dyno when the power valves are new. Everything went fine at Sachsen and we had new Bridgestone tyres there that were even better than before. I really think that our overall performance was better than maybe it looked on paper. Jeremy certainly proved on Friday that our bike is plenty fast around the track, because he set provisional pole. I wasn't there. I'm not always going to be able to be at GPs, and there is no more to it than that. Having said that, I think Jeremy really does well when I'm not there just to piss me off! It was great for us though, for the whole team. It's those little shots in the arm that make us work a little harder. The problem is that when everybody gets in front of our bike we can't re-pass them, and that's why we ended up building a five-cylinder four-stroke because I just didn't want us to be in that position again. But we are making progress every week. We're also spending a little bit more time on the three-cylinder two-stroke than we would like to, but Jeremy and Nobu are riding the bikes so well that it would be hard not to. Honda are putting Daijiro Kato on a vee-five from now on and being a fairly big company they can do anything they want. I think that he'll go good because for a first year rider I think he's doing extremely well. He is Japanese as well, so it does make sense. Kato's the 250 World Champion and he probably deserves it more than anybody else at the moment. I think that there will be more Hondas anyway, and I listen to the same rumours as anybody, the ones that say that there will be eight Honda vee-fives in 2003. I don't think it's right that they have eight bikes but there is nothing I can do about that. I don't think even Honda thinks that it is really good for the championship. We just have to make our bike better than theirs. We have a two-year commitment from Proton to go racing from next year and right now we aren't really spending a lot of time thinking about anything else. Our current rider situation is fine although we're not going to come out next year and blow Honda into the weeds. We're going to come out and do the research and development on the racetrack as we have done in the past. The last engine development we did was only a week old before it hit the racetrack. We are the only ones that do that, and we're not in a position to do anything else at the moment. Every year we get a little better and a little bigger, and we do a little more in house. It's a war, it isn't a battle.

November 2002

Kenny Roberts, three times World 500 Champion, father of a 500 Champion, current GP team owner, and bona-fide living legend, gives his opinions from a unique point of GP experience. This month it's time for a gaze into next season and the ongoing development of the team's all-new V5 four-stroke

We've had some up and down results this year but Jeremy and Nobu have been riding the motorcycles better than they have ever been ridden and the bike and tyres are working better than ever.

In qualifying at Brno Jeremy had a save from a near certain crash - although we don't call it a save, we call it luck. But seriously, it's not often a rider catches them like that, it also keeps the crash bills down, although in our case as we make most of the stuff on the bike in-house it's not as big a cost problem as it is going to Japan to buy parts. I wouldn't think our 2002 expenditure is anything out of the ordinary, although I was hoping we could get by with our existing gearboxes and stuff because we knew we wouldn't be using them next year.

We just didn't expect we would be going as fast this year, but that's what Jeremy and Nobu are doing. Despite our good performances against many of the V4 500s this year, I'm not sure we've vindicated our idea of building a triple. I am, however, satisfied with the project because the bike now goes round corners the way I always thought it should. Not winning races hasn't come into it. Now I can honestly say I've seen the bike do all the things I wanted it to. Now we have to forget about that and build a new bike to get down the straights faster. We're still on schedule with our V5 and are getting cast metal parts now. We should have a running engine by November.

Rob Muzzy, a long-time friend of mine is helping us out now too. I've helped out some of his riders before, Wayne Rainey being one of them, and Rob's had long experience of running teams for Honda and Kawasaki so I would say he brings great experience to the party of small four-stroke power production and characteristics. He also has a lot of knowledge on valves, pistons and all other four-stroke engine aspects and he's an invaluable guy to have around. He'll be at the MotoGP races, because he's going to be our go-to guy for information. He's also invaluable because we don't want to have to get involved in every aspect of the motorcycle ourselves - Ferrari doesn't do every part of their engine, they have specialised people all over the world working on specialised projects. And we're setting up a similar network of specialists.

We don't do two-stroke development here in England anyway, that's all done in America by Bud Aksland, who can also work with four-strokes. There are no two-stroke experts in Banbury we have actually gone out and deliberately acquired. Here in England making the two-stroke was a simple case of engineering, like determining the way the crankshaft should go in. We've not spent a great deal in research and development to make the two-stroke go faster - that wasn't something we set-out to do. The last couple of years it wasn't the speed that was hurting it - if we lost half a second in the straights we expected to gain it back in the next succession of corners. At that time it that was simply not happening.

Now it is happening and Jeremy's the first rider saying, "give me ten more horsepower and I'll beat everybody." We've never really heard that before. Most of the time we were hearing "Well how come we're slower than everybody", or "I can't get it to come off the corner because it hits too hard."

There were always reasons why it never worked before and I have to say that if we were running the two-stroke again and Jeremy wanted ten more bhp, I would say it wouldn't be too difficult, you just need the money. We could have spent time doing this but we really just wanted to get through the year without doing anything. We almost shut down all development on the two-stroke.

I wasn't surprised Honda gave out information on the RC211V at Brno, but it was just streetbike stuff. Motorcycle racing is so bad for technical information. If you brought out that kind of information in Formula One they would start laughing. Technology is a bigger part of the show over there. The world of bike racing needs to get better at getting that sort of information distributed,and that means the press needs to find out and present more information. We've shown certain aspects of our engines already, and much more than Honda did at Brno even before our parts had been manufactured. That will continue, without us giving any real secrets away.

At Brno it seemed like the domination of the V5 Honda was questioned for the first time. I think the Yamaha simply worked better at Brno than the Honda did. We didn't get to see the true potential of the Honda because the tyre let go before the end, and Rossi was just starting to make his move. It looked like he was following Biaggi, then with a few laps to go was going to make his move, but he had heated the tyre up too much and away it went. Your guess is as good as mine as to why it failed but it didn't look to me like his Honda was set-up too well for that racetrack. Watching the Yamaha going round, the Honda looked a little bit untidy, compared to what we normally see from it at least. If the suspension set-up and all the settings aren't exactly right it makes it harder on the tyre and it looked to me like the Honda was the hardest on tyres of them all at Brno.

Next race for us is Rio, and then the run-in to the end of the season. Have a look at our website, www.teamkr.com to keep up to date with our progress at each race.

December 2002

Kenny Roberts, three times World 500 Champion, father of a 500 Champion, current GP team owner, and bona-fide living legend, gives his opinions from a unique point of GP experience. This month, King Kenny reveals his new V5 motor and hints at the possibility of road bikes to come...

We unveiled our V-5 four-stroke engine just before the Sepang GP, at the Proton factory near Shah Alam. The new bike's going to be a much more interesting engineering exercise for all of us than our current two-stroke, because it's the start of a whole new world.

To be competitive with the two-stroke took us a lot longer than we expected but we were on the front row of a race during our first year out. Jeremy being on the pole-position at Phillip Island recently made it all worthwhile.

As a company I am happy that our three-cylinder has gone round the corners faster than the rest, even if its top speed is slower.

We have had some lean years in terms of finances as well, but we have weathered the storm and from the beginning of the season it has started to turn around - to the point whereby I can't complain about anything. There is nothing I can say that is wrong and we are delighted to be into the four-stroke arena. We know we can make a motorcycle go around the racetrack and we know a lot more about it than we did when we started. Many people tell you they could do it, but there are not that many who can actually do it.

We had toyed at one time with the idea of a three-cylinder four-stroke, but we are not Aprilia, and we make five or six motorcycles each year, not thousands. Whatever we make has to hit the ground running. Because we are a racing team we survive on sponsorship, not sales.

The four-stroke has demanded more sponsorship, because obviously you can't do it for the same money as the two-stroke, but it does have more technological appeal in terms of manufacturing.

There has been a general shot in the arm for the sport and that's going to bring sponsorship in. I don't know that the four-stroke rules have added any sponsorship all on their own.

We have the support of a company, Proton, who believes in going racing, and they have been a manufacturer for a long time and now they now have had a long-term commitment to building a four-stroke bike.

Going four-stroke just adds more to the attraction. The technology of four-stroke bike racing adds to the value of Proton. They don't run two-stroke cars, they run four-stroke cars. Any improvement in horsepower per cc is of direct benefit to their company, so in that respect it is better to be four-stroke than two-stroke.

As Mr. Tengku Mahaleel, CEO of Proton said, get the results on track and a follow-up streetbike will be easier to market. We are very interested in any market that makes money. If we produce any street motorcycle - and our plan is to produce them - then we want to be known to the world before we hit that market.

I would think that it would be manufactured in Malaysia. Manufacturing in England is another thing. It could also be a joint venture, because Proton owns Lotus and Lotus is a small-scale manufacturer in its own right.

We have a very, very good company structure now. We have a motorcycle end of the company that we can look after, and in terms of emissions and aerodynamics, Lotus are world leaders, especially as they have experience developed over the past 50 years. Proton is a major car company, with many smaller supply companies under their own umbrella. Our combination of companies is a very attractive package.

It is my intention to create a super motorcycle and if it were Proton's desire to build a Superbike then we would do that. lf we were going to make very small numbers of motorcycles, very good motorcycles, then between us all we have the capability.

I'm going to be spending a heck of a lot more time in England in future so it looks like I'm going to have to live there. I'm currently living between Spain, the USA and England and it's really hard to keep all of that going and have any home life. I have homes that I rent for a couple of months, and this whole effort may dictate that I live full time in England.

A lot of people say to me 'how can you live in England?' but I don't find it that difficult, even though I do come from a sunnier climate. I think all that aspect is a bit overplayed. There aren't that many restaurants that have the same kind of quality you get in Spain and Italy, but I really don't see it being that bad. There is nowhere else we can locate our company - there is nowhere else I could do this.

I've been keeping an eye on the Colin Edwards situation. Honda has good riders in MotoGP, they're stuck with a whole bunch of riders. Superbike should be the place to train riders and then promote them to the MotoGP class, but it hasn't been like that. It's been a home for riders who couldn't get a ride at Grand Prix. But in future we have to look at new categories to bring riders forward - although last year and this year it looks like the 125 class is the one that's got the hallmark on it, not Superbikes. If it turns around to be that way, then fine.

May 2003

It was obviously a shock for me to hear about Barry Sheene's death, a mere seven months or so after his cancer diagnosis. I talked to Barry about two weeks before his death, and he said 'barring a miracle'', it was all over, but it still came as a shock.

I'd heard about some very good anti-cancer drugs produced at UCLA so I phoned Barry back and spoke to his sister Maggie. I told her about the drugs but he was obviously further along than he had let on.

Of course it made me think about him a lot and the main thing I will remember is that he enjoyed his life. He enjoyed every part of it, lived it to the full. The nice thing about him was that he wouldn't pull any punches. If he wanted to say something, he said it. I liked that. He didn't play middle of the road. He more or less did what he wanted to do.

When the idea of World Series started (a breakaway bid by Roberts and others, to drag bike racing into the 20th century - ed) the first person I went to speak about it was Tom Herron and the second person was Barry.

The one thing about Barry was that even though we were arch-rivals, as soon as we sat down and talked about World Series he said, "I'm there, and we've got to do this, got to do that". He never varied from his focus on it. I can remember that he was very upset when the first rider left the fold.

I wouldn't have gotten so much out of motorcycle racing if Barry hadn't been as big a name. When I got to Britain he was 'The Guy', the Sportsman of the Year, on all the posters, with Texaco Suzuki logos everywhere. If I had gone over to Europe and beaten nobody, it would have been no big deal. Because of Barry it was special for me.

I think that Barry had a quality about him, so that when he came to America he was very well liked. He had that kind of spark that the press liked. He was the playboy type, he was very quick on his feet, you could do very little to topple him. He had a quick wit and I enjoyed him off the racetrack and on the racetrack, especially before we became such big rivals. I think the first time I met him would have been Daytona, riding a damn mini-bike, and he would have been hanging around with Gary Nixon. To show how long ago it was, England could as well have been Mars to me. The name didn't really mean anything - I never knew the place existed.

When something like this happens to somebody as big a name as Barry, and for him to go so early at 52, it makes everyone think. If this had happened when he was 65 then it may be a different thing, but thinking about what's happened to Barry certainly sets you back a peg or two.

I can say it has definitely affected me, and we were rivals. So I can imagine what it's done to people very close to him. Barry will be sadly missed by a lot of people, and I guess his passing puts some things into perspective in other regards.

The racing calendar is drawing closer and as far as our new four-stroke is concerned maybe we will have to turn up at Suzuka with the previous two-strokes, but we will be there with motorcycles, ready to race. Like all these projects we've had difficulties, and I would like them straightened out so we can be there with the vee-five but if not, no big deal. Life will go on.

One of the key differences between MotoGP and Superbike is that if a GP motorcycle is no good you can build another one in eight months. If you are living off sponsorship money, that's a good deal. If you have 200 motorcycles that you have built to sell, and they don't sell then you're out of business. If there is a backer around who wants to stay in for the long haul, then great. I never liked Superbike rules for this reason.

I have made a little bit of money in my lifetime but I could take all the money I own and try to race Superbikes in America, and I couldn't do it. How could anyone? How do you start a team in the USA and be competitive?

In the USA they have a Ducati racing team, a Honda one, a Suzuki one, a Kawasaki one and they used to have a Yamaha one. I cannot compete with those people in that series. I cannot buy a streetbike and go compete. Forget it. The amount of money it takes to run in the little Supersport 600 class alone is unreal. They cast magnesium wheels to look the same as the road ones and all sorts of stuff. I can't do that as a private owner. And they allow this stuff to happen, as the rules are. I've never liked Superbike racing. At Daytona last year they had about five or six guys who were on factory bikes and then they have standard 750 Suzukis in a Suzuki 750 Production class. Tell me that's healthy? Seems like to me that somebody has to wake up and start doing something.

In MotoGP, Peter Clifford's team - like ours - has gone out of the fold. He's not buying a MotoGP machine, he's making one. If he is successful, as I believe he will be, his deal is much cheaper to run than it was previously and as competitive as it has to be.

People say he's not going to win but is Yamaha going to win? Is Suzuki going to win? Is it about winning or losing, or making money out of a company and putting something better on the racetrack the following year? Is it just winning? Because if it is then we've all lost. If it was like that in Formula One then McLaren would be upset, Jordan would be closing the doors, Jaguar would shut the whole company. If Peter Clifford leased Yamahas right now would he win? The answer is no.

When Peter ran the Red Bull Yamahas with Garry McCoy and John Hopkins they won a couple of races because it happened to fit a niche here and there. He's not going to do that every time, every year. Plus you have to have 'x' amount of money to run a team. If the equipment costs more than you bring in for sponsorship, it's not a good thing.

An example of that was when I raced 250 Grands Prix with John Kocinski. I thought to myself, 'this class is stupid ' because it's running factory bikes.' It was a feeder class, but trying to get factory bikes is what everybody aimed for. People like that just don't think about it as business.

Riders from other teams said to me 'I've got to have a factory bike.' I told them; 'Why are you guys paying for Japanese factory bikes'' They said, 'Because then we can win.' Yeah, they could win - but by paying more for the bikes than they brought in through sponsorship. That doesn't make sense to me.

It's the same thing with Superbikes. If you can find the money to run Ducatis, and Ducati wants to help you, then you're great. If not, what do you do?

June 2003

We're shooting for Jerez to go racing with our vee-five four-stroke, and that is a day-to-day project. I think we probably will be there, even with two bikes, but hopefully four of them. How capable they will be compared to how good they're going to be I would say is about 60% by mid-season - maybe 70%. We will be testing the whole package probably the weekend before Welkom, but when I say testing I mean that we won't be throwing in different shock absorbers or choosing tyres. It won't be a test - more of a shakedown. Hopefully, time permitting we can get on a racetrack. If we skip Jerez then hopefully we will be able to test somewhere, or we could get to Jerez without a proper test and join the Continental circus there. If we have to use the two-strokes in Spain we have enough parts and so on.

What's stopping us right now is having enough parts to get going with all the four-strokes. When you redesign the cylinder liners you have to do it to every one, and make modifications to the crank case, and change the water flow around the engine, because it was going a lot better in some areas than in others. Our problem was overcooling.

So we've had some normal hiccups with this motor.

We're on the dyno today again and we're knocking out a lot of the little gremlins that held this thing back a bit. But we're not done working with it yet. When it does go on the racetrack it is not going to beat the Honda.

The main problem we have is limited time. I could put another million dollars down on the floor now but that is not going to buy me any more time. It doesn't work that way. We still have to order camshafts to build all the motors and we haven't tested a camshaft yet. That gives you an idea of what we're up against. When the engine isn't behaving properly on the dyno, you're not going to worry about what cams you're going to use.

The main thing about our bike is that in two weeks time it's going to be better, two weeks after that it's going to be better still and so on. There aren't going to be too many holidays around here.

I think Suzuka showed that Ducati is a very serious company. Some of the other ones out there are not, unfortunately. I think any company like Ducati, Aprilia - which is very involved with Cosworth product - are serious. Some companies are structured not to pay any attention to the streetbike business they just do the job in racing. For me it's a welcome sight, to see a company come to MotoGP to do the job properly. I don't think eight Hondas out on the grid are going to beat one or two motorcycles done really properly. Quality not quantity.

It's gonna take Bayliss and Edwards some time, but they will be there - they have the talent. I think that they will get there eventually, they're not going to bounce out there and win. We always knew that. I was surprised at how well they went to be honest because Suzuka is no easy playground to come out at and get a result. I think there will be a lot better racetracks for them - Welkom maybe - and they're only going to be better. At the end of the year they're going to be two of the guys that can win races.

There has been a lot of talk about Suzuka but I haven't ridden there since 1986, so I have no idea if it is a dangerous track or otherwise now. I know it was dangerous then. It's not changed too much although the track people might say it has. That whole new chicane thing is a joke in my opinion. It's a typical 'let's-fix-this-with-a-band-aid' reaction.

The bikes are going to get a lot faster. They can't change the rules to limit power. I don't think GPs are ready for that. I would have liked to have seen fly-by-wire nipped in the bud but forget it, it's already out there.

As far as sensible rules are concerned I feel a lot better now that they will be better than before, because with the advent of companies like Ducati the Japanese don't control racing any more.

We are supposed to be going to hold MotoGP races in some different venues around the world and if and when it happens of course it will be good for the sport. There has to be more of a worldwide presence for motorbike racing, not just in Europe.

Europe has enjoyed growth in the sport. It's not that way in America for example. It's getting better but there is a long way to go. There is a bigger likelihood that we will be racing in America next year though; the drums are beating a bit louder for that.

The whole series is still growing and in case someone thinks we have made it already, we haven't made it yet. There's still lots to do in this sport to make it even better.

July 2003

We didn't make it to the Jerez race with our four-stroke because we were still having trouble at that time under hard acceleration. The oil pressure would drop, and we were scared that it would fry a bearing or something. So the baffling system in our sump had to be changed. We were doing that back in the UK during the Jerez weekend. It really wasn't worth bringing the bike all the way down to Jerez to try it. If we were still having the oil pressure drop with the bike in Spain, the bike really shouldn't be on a racetrack.

Honestly, we would probably have not raced the bike anyway, even if the pressure problem had been solved. The bike has never even seen a racetrack yet, so we would have been fairly foolish to think that we were going to come in here and do a race. We can't say it wouldn't have worked okay, because if the thing had ran all the way through practice, we would have left it up to the riders to decide.

Listening to people who have done this sort of thing already, we would probably be ready to really go racing in about three months but unfortunately we don't have three months. A crankshaft takes x-amount of time to manufacture, so there is no speeding that time up.

We have three thousand parts numbers for this motorcycle and all of those pieces have to be manufactured either by us, or by a supplier, who then has to send them to our factory and they all have to fit.

When we showed the motor off for the first time at the press conference at Proton's facility in Malaysia, I said that we were working to a crazy timescale and we may not make it, but that was what we were trying to do. We just didn't make it, simple as that.

We have had more problems than I anticipated us having and some of that is down to this being our first four-stroke ever. We just have a new guy we hired from Cosworth Racing but he's been in the office for only about a week. So we have an increasing number of people to look at these things and try to figure them out.

I would say that our complete bike would probably be lapping a racetrack in mid to late May, but it won't start showing what it's capable of doing for at least three months. And remember that right now we are working flat out on only one motorcycle, not the four we'll have to take racing.

I would say right after the break in August we will start seeing some of the bike's true potential. It took us a while to get the two-stroke working. You've got to have the right riders, the right technicians, and the right amount of time and the right finances to make it all work. It's a huge puzzle, it's not easy, and that's probably why we are the only team that does it.

We could always bring in more of the manufacture of individual components to Banbury. I probably won't be satisfied until 100% of the thing is done in house, but the crankshafts obviously come from outside, pistons will come from piston companies, but I would like to see us machining our own crankcases. We have been very lucky that we could put back in 20 or 30% into our facility and equipment at Banbury. The biggest problem we have right now is that we are out of room in the factory.

We would have probably been to the first race had we not run into development problems early on, and had to redesign some components earlier than we anticipated. We can either say our engine people aren't good enough or these are things that happen with new engines. Talk to our new engine guy, from Cosworth, and he'll sit and tell you all sorts of funny stories about Formula One engines that never were right. This is an engineering exercise that did not go exactly 100% on time. That's it, end of story.

The two-stroke went well at Jerez, the fastest two-stroke that has ever been around there. I am impressed with the way the two-stroke is actually going - and the riders who are racing it, Nobu and Jeremy. They never give up, they didn't care where they were in the race they just ran it as hard as they could. Our average steed trap speed was better than some of the four-strokes, including Nicky Hayden's Honda RC211V. I don't know what was wrong with Nicky's Honda, but it just wasn't going down the straight so fast.

August 2003

We put our V5 MotoGP bike out on the track for the first time at Le Mans. Literally the first time it had ever negotiated a bend on any track was the first time it went round turn one in the first session of qualifying for the French GP.

To be honest our whole four-stroke project is kind of hard for us right now because we're bringing it out into the public gaze so early in its life. We know it's not very good, but there is nothing we can do about it right now. Things have not gone exactly as planned but at least it's out on the racetrack and there is a long list of stuff to fix now.

Had the three-cylinder two-stroke been a bit more competitive we would probably have run that until we brought out the V5 at Assen, but that would entail making more parts for the two-stroke.

I think as far as it goes and the amount of problems we have had - mostly due to lack of time and the software on the EMS to improve the rideability of the bike on track - I would say I'm not disappointed at all with what Jeremy was doing on the motorcycle at Mugello.

We had fuel pump problems throughout the GP, which were sort of unexpected because Jeremy's bike ran flawlessly in testing the day after the Le Mans GP. We did not anticipate the fuel pump problem, even though Nobu had glitches on his - which we thought were just down to the proprietary pump. But it was a number of things: how hot the fuel was getting where it was going and the fact that the fuel rails were getting too hot.

In one way I am not unhappy because if we had have got tenth, say, then that would have been a hell of a place to start. I'd rather start at the bottom and work my way up. I don't want to have to stand around and say "hey guys, that's not the real world." The people that really know knew that what we did was awesome, the people who don't know I can't convert anyway - so I don't care.

The fine points of building and fixing a four-stroke are going to take a lot more time than I had anticipated. In saying that, I don't know how long it really will take.

I don't think we could have brought out the V5 at a worse time. Mugello has a long, uphill 320kmph straight and we didn't even have the gearbox for it, to be honest. We didn't order all the gearbox ratios that we needed because we were supposed to be running the bike around in December and making a judgement on what kind of gearbox we needed then. That added to the differential between the rest and us - and you can't just make gears. It's going to be two to three months before we can plug the bike in and say, "OK, it's going to do this or that."

At the speed and horsepower we have right now we're experiencing reasonable reliability of the major engine components. We can't really say how much we are down on power on the other guys right now, because first of all there are the numbers you choose to believe and the numbers they are really putting out. But I know we were 17ks slower than the Suzuki at Mugello. The other bikes are all fairly close, with the Ducati being the exception. Each day that goes by I can probably tell you a lot more about that.

The best moment so far has been riding the bike for the first time. Seeing it as a total package, running under its own power for the first time as a motorcycle. It actually ran and did wheelies and all the things it was supposed to do, and that was quite amazing.

We are still recruiting people and race teams in general evolve at a fast moving pace. There are now more than 50 people working in the building at Banbury. I suspect by year's end there will be closer to 60.

We have a very human project going on here because we are letting everyone see what we are doing. I don't know of any racing motorcycle ever made that was brought straight to a race with no testing.

Someone told me that it was brave of us to do that but I don't know if that's the right word. It borderlines on being stupid. We wouldn't do this in different circumstances. We certainly wouldn't want to do this with our racebike. When I say racebike, I mean that the bike we have now is a prototype, there aren't three of them that are the same. When we build a racebike it will be towards the end of the year - or ready for next season.

September 2003

I'm realising this four-stroke MotoGP project of ours is much bigger than I imagined it to be. Our prototype didn't turn out the way I thought it would. People smarter than me told me this could be the case but I never tend to look at these things from the worst side.

Something between the heat-treating, design or some other things means that the crankshaft is not working the way we expected. We've broken two brand new ones this week just running the bikes in. There's a bit of a dilemma there but these are things you would expect with a brand new motor.

Because of ground clearance we have had to redesign the exhaust pipes and a few other things, like the fairing on the bottom. That was something we went through after Mugello, when we had to raise the bike up. We've had to make it taller until now but the new parts mean we can get the bike back down to where it was designed to run.

The clutch and things have been plaguing us a little bit, like they do everybody, although Jeremy was out last week at a test and that proved to be a little bit of a step forward.

Out of the box our bike was probably better than the Suzuki in this regard and they have been working on theirs for a couple of years. We still need to perfect the clutch though, to make it as good as a superbike.

What we have to keep reminding everyone - even ourselves - is that we are testing, not really racing this bike anyway. We really wanted to test it and make the race bike off of this bike. So we're still very sure we haven't even scratched the surface on the potential of this motorbike yet.

To be as competitive as we are right now we didn't to do a bad job. When Jeremy rode in the wet at Le Mans in practice we learned this when little Kenny came up to me. I said we weren't going to ride it in the race and Kenny said, "well can I ride it?" because it passed him in the wet and the back end wasn't sliding around. He said, "How did you do that?" I said "I have no idea how he did it."

So our bike is obviously not a complete disaster. But I'm hard to please and I want more performance. It's up to us now to get that.

I didn't expect Ducati to win a race in the first season. I haven't paid that much attention to them because they weren't in my arena until now. Superbike is pretty complicated and for the first few years I think Ducati had an advantage just because of displacement - and that has turned out to be right. So to go up against Honda this year with no rules was pretty gutsy.

After watching the whole thing unfold in the paddock I realised they are a full-bred Italian racing team - not just people who make big V-twins. They are a hell of a group of people. They will - and already have - changed the face of the Grands Prix. Do you think Honda would have thrown away their mufflers if the Ducati hadn't sounded so good? I said last year Honda wouldn't even need to throw away their mufflers, and they didn't until Ducati came along.

I think what we see in MotoGP is just scratching the surface of what Ducati is going to turn it into. I think the days of preparing motorcycles in Japan and turning up at the first race with new stuff, being really cool, is over. The amount of investment will go up.

I think the Japanese will have to change to be more competitive. I don't see Suzuki beating Ducati, for example, straight up. Will they design a new motorcycle for next year and beat Ducati? From what I've seen I wouldn't bet on it. We have less rules than F1 so it's going to come down to who has the best turnaround time and the best manufacturing facilities. Things are not the way they used to be.

It's also nice to see Ducati has been pushing itself as a recognisable brand. I see a movement in that direction in the whole motorcycle market and a lot of things add to that - the extreme sports idea that is. Ducatis are seen as fast bikes for example, while Harley-Davidson are seen as slow.

The whole industry changes from time to time and it looks like this is the right time for Ducati to make hay while the sun shines.

No one at Harley knows exactly what they did to get to where they are. It just happened. I remember Cagiva buying Ducati years ago before resurrecting it and at the time I thought to myself - why did they do that? But then if I were right all the time I'd be a millionaire I guess.

October 2003

We didn't use the four-stroke at the Sachsenring MotoGP race, but went back to our existing two-strokes. We felt that the two-stroke would be fine in Germany and it was. That gave us some time to re-machine some of the components that we want to add to the four-stroke to solve some of the problems. It also gave us tome to take everything apart, have the new parts made and have time to test it. If we didn't do that we would have been bring-ing one engine to the race when it was done, then another once it was done. So we were lucky we could fall back on the two-stroke.

Right now we are finding a solution for the breathing of the four-stroke, which we think we have done now. The performance of the engine is up and we are playing with the way the engine responds, how it affects handling.

We know the engine performance is not Honda, but the bike has to start going around the racetrack properly.

We'll have a new chassis, probably at Brno, and it is a modification, a fairly significant one. It's not going to be Earth shaking, not complete carbon or anything. I don't want to get in too specific on chassis stuff at the moment but it'll be longer, a little less twitchy.

We have had some complications with people going on holiday at this time of year but we have things like that constantly. We're not in F1. In that class people work every day, in motorcycling that is still not the case. There are very few teams like mine where people work all year round. Some other teams have two months off in the winter and then go back home to wherever they have a home. Almost every one of us has to have a home in Britain. I think there are one or two that live somewhere else and even do something somewhere else.

I'm in America right now and you don't get to hear a lot about what's going on in racing over here.

I heard that World Superbike was going to single make Pirelli spec tyres. Superbike isn't my business so I don't really know why they did it and what I think about it isn't that important. It's more important what those guys think about it.

For me, I think Superbike racing has to get cheaper and if a spec tyre is a way to do that then that's a good thing. I think it has to get more competitive and if that's a way of doing it then that's a good thing. MotoGP is the glamour and the money and the engineering. Where do you need two of those classes? The thing that attracted a lot of people to World Superbike was that there were 12 guys racing for the lead and sadly they have lost all that over the last few years.

There has to be a clear-cut difference between classes. Some people are going to like streetbike racing and some are going to like the thrills and spills of MotoGP. The biggest motorised racing class right now is NASCAR and it shows no signs of slowing down. Those guys use a spec tyre. So I don't think a spec tyre is going to hurt them - but it isn't my business.

The fact that there is going to be no USGP next year doesn't bother us at all. We have survived this far without one. It's not the end of the world and what is important is that when we go there we go there for the right reasons, to a proper facility so that everyone can go forward.

I would say that if you had to build a motorcycle racing circuit to host a successful USGP, you would put it in the east, somewhere between New York and Atlanta. For reasons of racing tradition, population mass, density of airports and road networks. Somewhere with three major airports within a couple of hundred miles.

I went to the big V-twin rally at Sturgis this year, and I actually survived it again. We ride all day and it's a beautiful place to ride, especially on an Indian or Harley, whatever your chosen V-twin is. We ride, see the sights and monuments, and there are over half a million people at Sturgis - on motorcycles. My friend Garry Biasci brings over an Italian chef, we come back to the house, have a superb Italian meal - and then we do it all again the very next day.

You have to go there once and you would understand the attraction instantly. I reccomend it to anyone!

November 2003

We had both our bikes finish at Estoril so we're getting our heads above water. It's just taken time and there is no shortcut to make improvements in the reliability of a brand new motor. Nonetheless we qualified the four-stroke to within three or four tenths of the two-stroke. To come from where we were at Czecho to that was a big improvement in performance. The V5's got a new chassis and a modified engine, so to go to Estoril with only two complete bikes and to run the whole weekend was good. We are still not in racing mode and we won't be for some time. We're still testing.

We are not in a position to do real engine development right now. We are trying to upgrade components to manufacture them but when we had six engines at Estoril they were the only six we had. We're now in a position to have a test engine so when you see everybody in Rio, we will have engines back at the factory running, which is the first time that has happened. But we really need a winter off to be able to finish off this motor to where it is competitive. Saying that, it was competitive with the Kawasakis and it is very close to the Suzukis. Those guys have been running a long time.

My son Kurtis finally made the breakthrough to win an AMA Superbike race, and there were a lot of times when I thought he would do it. Nicky Hayden snuck up under him last year when he had that particular race won. I was at that race and he just left the door open a little bit. Those kinds of races are like Sheene and me at Silverstone in 1979. No one is really a loser. Sheene just came across the line a split second slower than I did. You can't say that he was fairly beaten. It was a race both of us won, and Kurtis has had that a couple of times. Now he's got the confidence, the pressure's off and he can think about riding without having to win so badly.

I don't know that Honda are going to do AMA races with a twin but the bigger the bike and the more power they give Kurtis the better.

For Kenny, I know that if I was world champion and racing around for 15th place I wouldn't have liked it either. I think Sete, his 2002 team-mate, is doing very well this year.

It seemed like Valentino had a significant speed advantage at Estoril. In his position I wouldn't be afraid if I were going to ride for Ducati and Valentino is never going to get the credit he deserves on a Honda. Like Mick, who will never get the credit he deserves because he was on HRC's number one bike. No matter how many band-aids and mirrors they put up on that bike it's The Big One. How many people have they put on that bike and won? They gave one to Barros last year and he won two out of three. Honda is a very dominant factory at the moment but I see Ducati coming in and taking that over.

I've been asked if Neil Hodgson is a worthy World Champion. Anytime you win a world championship you are worthy. You can only beat those there with you and if Bayliss was still there there's nothing to suggest that Hodgson wouldn't have stepped up and won it anyway. I really wouldn't take anything away from the guy but MotoGP is another thing - and it is not easier. He was at the right age two or three years ago to go to MotoGP.

When I was racing the world championship I would never have been satisfied going for the 250 championship. As a matter a fact I led the 250s most of the way through my first year and backed out of it to concentrate on the 500. That's how much it meant to me. I just did it to learn the tracks.

I heard Neil became a Dad on Tuesday and a World Champion on Sunday and if you want to have a family then there is nothing like it. Despite all the pain and stuff you go through you would probably do it again. That's part of life; racing isn't really part of life. As part of life having children is one of the greatest things you do, after you're grown up enough to do it. In my opinion at least, and I have three kids.

December 2003

The performance level of the bike is growing but we're working on next year now. We are still testing, and know we've missed the mark on the bike's design in three or four aspects. Now that we are almost done testing we are going to have to manufacture a better piece of equipment.

It was probably a mistake to run this thing in front of the public, in front of the press, while it is still in test phase - but we have been beating a lot of people who have made thousands and millions more motorcycles than us. We should not have had it out until it was ready, which will be next season. But that's hindsight, so we are pressing on.

Next year we will be running a V5, same 60° configuration, with about 75 per cent of it redone. The head engine guy at our factory is at home, working on the new bike, while we are doing the Pacific long-haul races. It should be finished and ready to race the second or third event of next season. We started up our current machine's engine with 175bhp and now we're up to 200bhp. That's a short period of time considering we've had to solve a whole bunch of other problems first.

The other problem we're facing is that we have seven Hondas out there now. There will be six out next year and four Ducatis, and who knows how many Yamahas?

I have said many times that there should be a limit on how many motorcycles each manufacturer can have, but that is up to the people who run this sport how they see things happening. Commercially I think it would be better to spread things out and make it more solid from the front guys to the back guys, but it depends on the powers that be.

We also have to remember that Grand Prix racing has never been better. If a rider wants to come along and make millions of dollars now is the time to do it.

I feel that if Valentino does go somewhere else than Honda that could also help a lot. Although I have to say that the TV ratings and so on are all pretty good anyway. This sport has gotten where it's gotten one step at a time. Sometimes three steps back - but it got there in the end and we are facing a hell of a year in 2004.

No matter how difficult it gets for us I would still rather do things this way, than still have a factory team with a manufacturer supplying all the parts. Why? I have had a very privileged life. I was American Champion; I grew up in that system and was able to achieve top honours in that arena. I was sort of forced to go to Europe but when I got there I said, "OK I want to be World Champion..." So I did that - three times.

I was lucky enough to be able to work with Yamaha all those years, run its racing team and win world championships. And then I got bored with that and wanted to do something else. I was happy and fortunate enough to be able to do what I've done. I don't think there are many people who have achieved all that although there are plenty of people who could.

At the end of the day I have to make the decisions in Team Roberts and there's probably only Chuck Aksland and me who see the total scope of budgets, sponsorship, manufacturing and performance. And I can tell you that it's not easy. Ask Fogarty - we've each got our own problems.

But this whole thing is a long war, not a short battle and he may very well have the best bike in the future - and more power to him. I think they - everybody - needs a bit of variety in their lives. We could all say, "OK, the Japanese factories rule the world," but I'm simply not ready for that.

August 2004

Kenny looks at the future of MotoGP and believes the answers could lie in World Superbikes

The minimum weight limit for a five-cylinder bike is going up, but we have nothing to do with that. That's a Japanese decision - as many things in this sport are. They are the powers that be. We wouldn't have a voice in the MSMA, because no one would disagree with Honda in the manufacturers' association except Ducati, who have brains.

I don't believe this is the way the sport should be run. I believe the sport should be run from a commercial point of view and I've thought that since the early 80s. The promoter sells the show and if they can sell the sport for more, the sport goes up.

The sporting rules are another thing and I think the current tyre situation is out of hand and has been for some time. That's why I said when Flammini did his one tyre rule last year - and everyone said he'd shot himself in the foot - I don't see it like that. There was a reason why he did it and only he knows what that particular reason is, but now he can control his racing.

It would be better for us and a lot of other teams if there was a one-tyre rule. I would instigate that instantly for next year. Everyone is saying we should slow the MotoGP bikes down and the best way to do that is to control the grip. Being a manufacturer, I know what it's like having to spend time and money on a bike to get the weight down and then the rules change so that the bikes have to weigh more.

We went to a 1000cc limit to make sure everyone could have the required power, so to start backing off from that doesn't make any sense to me. If you want to slow them down, then the easiest way to do it is to control the tyres.

Just from watching the races as an observer, it's Honda on Michelins and a couple of Yamahas and that's it. You have to control your racing if you want to push your racing further up. In motorcycle racing at the moment, we have to stay better than everybody else. We're finally getting the image up - the glamour is back - and the four-stroke MotoGP rules are responsible for a lot of that, so I would hate to see it slide back just because of silly little rule changes.

We have to have the show controlled to where we have more people who can ride these things. If we go with the Japanese decisions, we have less chance of that happening. They will eventually wreck it. Honda has more bikes, spending more money; a bigger fish in a small pool isn't what we need.

Valentino going to Yamaha has made a huge difference - got them out of the gutter and breathing some air again. I would hate to see rule changes affecting that. We can take the necessity of having to have this tyre or this tyre company before you even start racing. I really thought they would have had more problems than they have in World Superbike.

The only way I see Superbikes surviving is to be absolutely the best racing. It appears to me, watching the races from the outside, that it has lost a lost its spark. The only ways to get that back are to make it cheaper - which they are trying to do - and get better, closer racing. Give everyone a chance.

We here in MotoGP have to build up a pretty good base and we should make sure we protect it. Part of that is the franchise system over here and it's still valuable to be in the club. Some teams who are struggling this year may be stylin' next year, but the contracts end in a year or two anyway.

We're going into China now, heading back into the States, so it can get significantly better. What we have to do now is ask ourselves what we can do to improve the show and yet still cuts the costs. I'm not interested in cutting the costs and not improving the show. What we need to do is get the costs down, but move the show up.

October 2004

Yamaha has got it made in MotoGP right now, but, asks Kenny, how long is it going to last this time round?

One of the many good things about motorcycle racing is that it is still 70% rider and 30% machine. Having said that, the machine has to be within 30% of everything else, where ours isn'yet. There are no geniuses in the sport who can just make it better without the rider. What Yamaha has is a very strong team of racing people helped by a whole factory of Yamaha people, and they've turned it around. In doing that, it appears that the Honda is not as good as everybody predicted it was. I'm sure it is that good but there are tracks that catch it out.

Valentino and Yamaha have just pushed the game forward.

Certainly when I went to Yamaha they wanted to win. But it's not the winning that's the problem with the Japanese; it is the consistency of winning. Like Honda with Valentino, they won for a couple of years and then it all fell apart.

When we were winning all the time with Yamaha I know Honda called up Yamaha and said, "slow him down, slow that team down and let us catch up". Our team was too big, and the sport was growing faster than Honda thought it should. So Yamaha just quit spending money on development and it frustrated us to the point where we left.

You can't fault a Japanese company in the motorcycle business, because they keep getting bigger and bigger, but sometimes it's counter productive. You can't fault the way they make or produce things, but I wasn't raised to follow the company line, and that makes it frustrating at times.

What caught us out is that different people came through Yamaha and they put people in charge to cut the budget and so on. It has been bad for them and Yamaha had a bad run at it recently. Suzuki as well, but every now and again someone comes through the company and they want to see that change. That person was Shigenoya-san for Suzuki. They put Kenny and Warren Willing and all those people together, and they won the championship. Then they went into sleep mode. That's a company decision and it's nothing to do with the racing people. Yamaha has lost every good rider they ever had. I would say that Honda is better at the engineering, but then again that is their motto. They didn't treat Valentino very well, and insiders can pick their effort apart for that reason, but you can't fault the company.

A guy like Valentino is going through a human experience, not a company experience, and when you go through that experience you don't always agree with the company decisions. Valentino was prepared to lose just to make his human experience better. That's why I have to take my hat off to the guy, because he could have stayed at Honda and taken the money and the wins. Mick Doohan had many chances to change the whole thing but he didn't. Valentino did.

The Honda is a proven product, the Yamaha was not. For Valentino to step up and put that thing in the winner's circle and be so dominant just shows how good he is, how good the team is and how he puts people around him. The best guys dig in deep when things like that happen. Some people can't dig in and show the team what it takes to be better but Valentino did. He's got the talent to ride it and he doesn't think about what he doesn't have. He has what he has and it's part of him, all part of the deal. A lot of guys don't see it the same way. They just all look at things and say "I want Sete's bike", or "I want Valentino's bike".

You cannot compare people like Valentino with Wayne Rainey or anyone else; it's too difficult because of the different motorcycles. I don't spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing, but I would say that on a racetrack at any one time he could beat me, beat Hailwood, and beat anybody, because he's one of those top guys. Now if we're all in the same race, on the same equipment, then he would win - and we would also win. It's hard to say that he would win every race; I don't think so. But he is capable of taking what he has now and beating everybody. That is a very talented rider and we get one of them every ten years or so - and he's that guy now.

November 2004

Team Roberts tries KTM's V-four MotoGP engine and Kenny is impressed. And he's pretty excited about next year's US GP, too

W e tested the KTM V-four engine in our chassis at Estoril after the GP and it all went very well. Our bike was designed as a total package, not just for outright horsepower, but also for overall balance of performance. But nobody expected outright horsepower to become as critical as it has. Our bike, with KTM's engine fitted, went faster than our own bike, on the same race tyres, and it was more consistent. And that was not even knowing where the shock settings should be or the ignition curves and all that. For the first test it was very impressive.

When we started this four-stroke project we needed more time and four-stroke experience than we had. Once we got into it, it became obvious we were lacking four-stroke engineering experience. It took time to add personnel with the necessary experience to the company. Adding these skill sets to this company, in a fluid partnership, makes sense. It's logical to work with a company that has been through all we've been through; it can ease things a little bit.

It would be nice to be with a partner that truly cares about building a motorcycle and selling motorcycles. Obviously that goes without saying, but Proton has been a huge benefit to my company and our partnership is a good one. They are a good company in their own right.

To be with a company in the motorcycle business, building four-strokes, would help us. We need the engine expertise and backup in order to get to where we need to be. MotoGP is not getting any cheaper, even if it is getting better. For the smaller teams there is still a lot of work to be done.

I haven't had any conversations with the guys from WCM or Blata, but their V-six project is intriguing. That's what MotoGP needs, something new and unique to keep it interesting. Personally I like to see different thinking and different engineering. Technical diversity is one of the major things that will keep MotoGP interesting to the industry and the fans. I'm a lot more interested in that than watching six Hondas with different paintjobs running around the racetrack.

The US GP is on for next year and the way it has happened is encouraging. Laguna Seca has jumped in with both feet and wants to do this. We didn't go running to them and try to do it by ourselves. They've signed a five-year deal, as I understand it. Any US MotoGP has to be done properly and for the right amount of time. I think American fans deserve it and they want to watch it.They said Laguna has had the most requests for advance tickets they've ever seen - and they probably haven't even made the tickets yet!

There has been a lot of talk about how the MotoGP bikes will go around Laguna but they do not have wings. If the MotoGP bikes are too fast for Laguna then the teams - me being one of them - would then slow things down to where they are fast enough to be competitive and no more. I rode two-strokes that would make the MotoGP bike look like a street machine around Laguna. Eddie Lawson and I had special Daytona 200 machines, 750cc two-stroke Yamahas with well over 200bhp. We would be on the back brake for the first three gears - but we had to ride it around Laguna anyway. We could have gone faster on the 500s, easily, but we didn't have them. If Laguna is safe enough then that's okay. If Colin Edwards and the people who have ridden Superbikes around there are okay, and they say, "it's perfect, don't worry about it," then who are you going to listen to? It's going to be hard riding a MotoGP bike around there, but that's what these guys are paid to do. It's going to be an awesome spectacle.

I've been told that before the Estoril race Valentino Rossi said he would finish his career with Yamaha, but I don't think it's even something worth talking about. I think it just means that the length of his contract with Yamaha means he'll retire at the end of it. What is worth talking about is the way Yamaha has bent Honda over and spanked them this year. If I were Valentino I wouldn't go to any other factory. Yamaha, fortunately enough for Valentino, understood what he wanted to do and were already on their way to doing it.

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