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bikefuckersoftheworldunite · 7 days ago

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Wayne Rainey’s interview with Cycle News, 1997

When I'm watching a race, or when I'm watching qualifying, and I'll see a look on a rider's face, I'm analyzing a situation to what I think it is. I'll watch a corner and I'll say, "That guy's off-line there. Did you see that?" I'll see that stuff. It's all so clear to me how it needs to be done. But most of the people that I have to be around don't see what I see. So sometimes it's frustrating to me that I can't be out there doing it and sometimes I'm pulling that in because, it's just like if you just did it like this the people, riders can't comprehend or understand that. There's a lot to this analyzing that would take all day. It's just that I'm different, I guess.

This is the truth.

This is Wayne Rainey's life the past few years in his own words, what he's been through, how he's coping. Being in a wheelchair hasn't slowed him down as much as it should have. He still puts in 17-hour days and most of those hours are devoted to racing. Making his team better, making his riders better, making himself better. It isn't easy being Wayne Rainey, it never was, it never will be. He possesses that defect in his personality known as perfectionism. It must be viewed as a defect only because he lives in an imper- fect world that he can no longer control as he did when he was winning three 500cc World Championships in a row, and nearly four. "Riding for me is both a blessing and curse," he believes, and he means it. He asks of others what he asked of himself and cannot understand why you would want to give less. "He's the most amazing person I've ever met," says his team manager and good friend Tim O'Sullivan, whose previous vocation involved dealing on a regular basis with brain surgeons. No one ever beat Wayne Rainey by outworking him and they never will.

Every year brings a new challenge. First it was winning championships as a rider. Next it was winning championships as a team owner. He started slowly, but soon found himself in a very high-stakes rivalry with Kenny Roberts, a friend he considers a brother. Now that Roberts has moved on to his own project, Rainey is the standard- bearer for Yamaha and his job is to restore the factory to the glory that he afforded it as a rider. It won't be easy. But for Wayne Rainey, it never is.

Let's start with Marlboro. What happened to the sponsorship?

There's a few different stories I've heard from each different guy, three different Marlboro guys. But the one I think I have to rely on is that there was a budget cut, because that was the most senior guy that told me that. That came on the 20th of January. The 20th was a Mon- day. They said there was a budget cut on Friday.

And they called you up and said...

No, I was just making my weekly call. I usually make one on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday. And that was my Monday call. And it was like 6 o'clock their time in the evening. I guess they weren't even going to tell me that day either.

When they called, did they tell you at the time that it was a budget thing?

The guy who told me didn't know why. He was just told that there's nothing there for you. And so I called the higherups and asked what happened. They said, "Well, we had a budget cut." "You guys just recently had one?" "Yeah, we're sorry." So I didn't have much time to think about it. I had a team to put together so I was on an airplane the next day to Japan.

What did Yamaha say?

They, officially, I don't think have ever been told by Marlboro that there's been a separation. They were pretty upset about it because I had told them all along that Norick (Abe) looks good and there was never any question about that. That budget for Norick always came from (Phillip Morris) Lausanne (Switzerland). Because that was my (Tetsuya) Harada budget that was there the year before and that budget didn't change, the numbers on that. The only thing that we were trying to put togeth- er was the second rider. And I believe that what Marlboro was trying to do was get the second-rider program sorted out. Kenny (Roberts) and I just didn't know all the way through if we were going to have sponsorship. We were talking weekly too. So they started throwing (Jean-Michel) Bayle's name around with me and a proposal with Bayle at the beginning of January. I didn't like that so much because I thought that was Kenny's only leverage he had to keep his sponsorship. So I refused to speak to Bayle about it. When they made the decision, Kenny didn't know either if he was going to have it or not. I think Yamaha coming on board just shows that they're serious about Grand Prix racing. It was a big push on their part to keep the team going and just get on with it.

Was there any chance that they could have just said, 'No, we can't afford it."

They could have very easily, I think, if they would have had some more teams to choose from. We had never ever geared up for NO from Marlboro. We just kept planning like the Marlboro thing was going to happen. And when it didn't happen they were pretty much in a corner. It was either do it or we have to stay home. Within 15 minutes of me being there they did it.

When did you decide on the second rider?

About half an hour after that meeting. I had told them, being so late, we need a second rider. And they weren't really gung-ho on a second rider. And then I told them the problem that I've been having for the last couple of years is having one rider and not having a back- up for the riders to have some kind of rivalry in the team to push each other. And I said the only guy I'd really want to put in there would be Sete (Gibernau) because of the job he did for us on the 250, and he's a good-size kid and he speaks very good English and we'll bring him on to test. They agreed with that philosophy and so far it works well.

Did your money last year come from Marlboro Italy?

Loris's (Capirossi) money did, not Harada's. Harada's came from Lausanne, which was (Norick) Abe's budget.

What do you think the team has to offer to Marlboro?

The Yamaha factory effort. Abe, myself. It's a good image.

What is it they get by sponsoring you? Do they want to win races or do they want to sell cigarettes?

I don't know. I think when I raced for them they wanted to be on TV. Okay, after my accident they haven't been on TV much and I think that's the philoso- phy behind Phillip Morris, they want to be racing for the top three and that's what we were hoping to do with Abe this year is to get him up on the podium because this is his third year. Abe's a young kid, he's flashy, he's fun to watch, he's exciting. If you look at Mick Doohan, he's not real exciting, but he wins. But you can pretty much write down what he's going to say each time and with these young guys coming up it's exciting and it's a good image for Marlboro to get in behind. You've got the factory effort and you've got my experience and you have these young guys. I think there was quite a lot to offer. I don't know what else you can offer.

Maybe someone who speaks English?

(Abe) does speak English. In Malaysia we did a Marlboro press conference and he spoke English there. I told him if you're going to do this thing, if you want to have a better chance for your career, you have to speak English. He did it. He was nervous. When I asked him, his first comments were in Japanese, then he changed them to English. He's making an effort at it.

There was also a story that Marlboro came back to you at some point.

Well, it wasn't Lausanne, it wasn't Switzerland that came back. They've always been in charge of sponsorship, they've always been the center of the world. It's getting a bit tougher for the Europeans now. The Asian people came back, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan. They still wanted to keep the relationship with Yamaha and myself and Norick. So we did a deal with them.

But it wasn't for full sponsorship for this year. Lausanne didn't want to sponsor the whole team for this year and next?

I don't know where Lausanne stood on the whole thing. All I know is that I said no to them because they came to us two weeks before the first race. They made a decision January 20th and I haven't looked back. I've gotten trucks painted, everything's done.

What did they offer you two weeks before the first race?

It was the Asian group that came to us. And they said, 'Hey, we want you.' You guys were involved in the decision.

They were?

That's what I thought. They didn't know about it. Not at all. They still want to keep that going. They're enthusiastic, they want me to work on their Indone- sian program. Right now they like what they're hearing and they like what we're doing.

So that's why they're sponsoring you in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Right.

Any reason why they're not here (at Suzuka)?

Japan is its own market. There's a European branch that does worldwide sponsorship. And so then Malaysia and Indonesia are out of Hong Kong and they wanted that relationship. They didn't say no, they wanted it. And Japan is its own market. It's not part of anything else. It's like a third party.

Let's go back to last year. When the year started it was full of promise. You spent the winter with Loris Capirossi. It didn't work out as well as everyone had hoped. What went wrong?

I think there was a variety of things. One, Loris, he was World Champion in his first two years. He went from being a working man every day to being World Champion status and he missed a few years of labor, what the real world's really like, and the team catered to him before and pretty much took care of everything. Coming to my team, being with me, I was used to doing my own program. I trained my way, I developed a certain way, and it made me really strong. And when he came to my team it all worked really good, he understood the whole thing. But then he had a few accidents. I think he fell off nine times and some weren't his fault, some were. I think when he went home the star status wasn't as strong as it used to be and he started lashing out. I wasn't used to that. I was used to bearing down and reaching inside myself to find a little extra to pull out, but one thing that I've learned since my accident is that I did it my way and nobody else does and I see why I was successful. Most of these young guys come up, they get paid a lot of money and they don't want to work at it. And he had to reach inside to go find out what was wrong, and that's something I'm not going to push. I want a guy that's going to come to the team and wants to work at it. And that's what I've got with my two riders now - I feel that they're working hard. I think Loris just...he was worried about his career. Second or third year not thinking that he was going to be as sought out after as he was before. The beginning of the year was great, everything was on a roll. We had some good results. But in the end you could just see the fire going down. I wasn't used to that. I didn't really know how to respond to that because me being a racer was always wide open or nothing. It was completely different for me to do this.

He wasn't happy with the way the team was run?

I don't know if it was so much the way it was run as what he felt he needed out of the team as far as bike setup. He didn't really lash out at me so much. Every time I was hearing rumors about him being unhappy, he'd say, 'No Wayne, everything is fine.' But he was afraid to confront me, I guess. And then we'd read in the press, especially after he left, that the team didn't do what he wanted. It's hard to get the team to do what you want if you don't tell the guy who can make the changes. So, he wasn't honest with me at all.

What did he want? Anything specific?

All I know is that he wasn't happy with his mechanics. I went over each guy and he said, 'No problem, no problem.' I didn't know at that time that he'd already made a decision to leave. This was a couple of races towards the end of the year. I'd seen that there was a change and I was trying to get out of him what he needed. He had a deal with Aprilia that was a certain amount of money for three years and he wanted to go back to doing it his way, I guess.

Would you do anything differently?

No.

How about with Tetsuya Harada?

With Harada I could sense the frustration in him because of the tire problem. Yamaha didn't push that 250 thing real hard and I saw that. I could understand that, but I didn't understand some of the things he was doing on the race track by just riding around. I've been in those situations and I pushed hard, no matter how bad it was. And there were times that I rode my stuff that it was just impossible. But that's me. I can't expect that out of everybody. Especially the results that I had, from the outside they probably look like Wayne's thing was pretty good most of the time. But a lot of the times on Sunday morning, man, I had to suck it up and go after it.

Do you think that since Harada wasn't in the championship he wasn't willing to try as hard?

I was explaining to Harada, we could have a tire advantage and we could really make Max (Biaggi) upset if we keep pushing that advantage. I said, 'Hey, we're on a tire nobody else has.' But, again, I was thinking that was an ideal situation. I was trying to sell it to him and it worked, it worked for a while. In Indonesia, we won. He just flat out out- rode them. Here (at Suzuka), the Michelin should have been terrible here. He was pole position and he was a second behind and in three corners he caught right up, but Max sucked him in there and he fell off. And as soon as he fell off and he hurt himself a little bit, he was just like, some of the stuff that he was telling me is that "Wayne, I've already been World Champion. I don't need to go out there and prove myself anymore." And I said: "Yeah, you do, you do. When you're World Champion you've got to keep proving to everybody that you're World Champion no matter what situation you're in. If it's bad, you've got to do the best you can. But if you're going to ride around in 18th, I'm not used to that." I said, "All you're doing is hurting your career riding around in 18th."

But the tire choice was a bit controversial. You tested at Shah Alam, back to back, the Dunlops and the Michelins. They tested Dunlop in November and in December they tested Michelin. I wasn't there for that test. He was sold on it. Isn't that a track that favors Michelins over Dunlops, generally?

Probably. It's temperature. But 250s aren't hard on tires. It's more of a profile thing. Dunlop has always been quicker than Michelin in the 250 class, even in Malaysia. So, after the Malaysian test he liked the way the bike turned and he thought that there was a lot of promise there.

And he made the choice?

He didn't have the choice. Yamaha was pushing hard for Michelin. And Marlboro and Yamaha were tired of hearing about tire problems. Put the same tire on as everybody else, and to make everything smooth we went with the 250 tire. But Harada wasn't happy with it, honestly wasn't happy with it. But again, he could have been. The philosophy was working for a while until it threw him off. Then he wasn't willing to work anymore.

What was the final straw that caused him to leave the team?

He never said, "I'm leaving." I said: "Hey, Tetsuya you're riding around. I bring all these guys here and we need you to put the effort in." And he just couldn't do it. And I just said, "Hey, it's okay. Why don't you just stay home and I'll put somebody else on the bike. I know you're not going to push." I said "You've worked hard to get where you're at and we'll put somebody else on it." I think he was quite happy with that.

You knew at Barcelona that he wouldn't be back.

We had Sete (Gibernau) testing at Czecho. His (Harada's) last race was Imola. With Tetsuya there was no effort left. I had to fulfill the contract, but I didn't want a guy out there riding around. Especially when we had done some tests and I was talking to him and I could see that he just gave up and it just wasn't worth it to me to watch all that. I needed to give somebody a chance that was willing to ride it and do the best they could and Sete was the guy.

So the season ends, and you start thinking about this year. When did you make your rider choices?

Abe was always there. Everybody knew that, Marlboro, Yamaha, myself, Kenny knew that, that Abe was coming two, three races from the end of the year. We won the last race, but I knew something was up because Loris was just so distant there. He tested the '97 bike on Monday and I could just tell he maybe needed a break. He just wasn't the same kid; he was real distant. Then I got a fax saying he left the team. That kind of surprised me because Loris and I were pretty good friends and we'd worked good together. He and I never had a problem, but then he left. I had Abe and we were just wondering who the second rider was.

Who else did you talk to?

At that stage, the first people Marlboro had me talking to was Max (Biaggi). But I kind of got in the same position with Marlboro with Max as I did with Mick (Doohan) and Marlboro. With Mick, Kenny had a contract (with Marlboro in 1995). So I was talking to Mick, and Marlboro said we need a letter of intent so I got that. I was talking to Mick in '95 and Kenny had a contract with Marl- boro in '96 already done. It was already done. That's why I chased Mick because I wasn't taking nothing away from Kenny. And Marlboro said you need a letter of intent from Mick because he's done this a lot to us before. I'm thinking, well, that's news to me. So I got a letter of intent signed, everything was done. I did everything that Marlboro had asked.

Then Marlboro went to Kenny at the very next race and said, "You need Mick Doohan." After they had already seen everything that I had done. They knew that I had him. So that's when they were going to give me Loris. And Mick stayed at Honda because it got real cloudy after that and I just said, "Hey I don't want no part of that." It was kind of like what happened with Max. They said talk to Max. And Max was going: "You know Wayne, I hear you talking to me and stuff and Marlboro, they're also telling me to go race a 250. I'd like to ride a 500 but they want to keep me in 250." They had talked for a month. I felt like they were doing the same thing to me with Max. They'd say, talk to Max. As soon as you hang up the phone, they'd say, "No, no, you're going to ride a 250." So I said, "Well, what do you want me to talk to Max for?" That was the thing that was going on that just didn't make sense. And they said Max is not an option, talk to Luca (Cadalora). So at the end of November, beginning of December I was talking to Luca. Through this, Marlboro comes up and Luca wanted a lot of money to ride for Marlboro. He figured that there was a lot of money there for him, but there wasn't. I tried to tell him that.

You were always critical of Luca, both as a teammate and afterward. How could you hire him?

Well, I was talking to him and I was telling him why I was critical, which was pulling in when things weren't right. Or Luca, "What's it going to take for you to beat Mick Doohan?" With Luca, I don't hide that fact at all. I wasn't real high on Luca. I was really excited about Abe. But if it helped to sell sponsorship maybe I could work with Luca. This was all going to be up front with Luca and the stuff I was talking to him about, he knew I was critical of that stuff. I'm not afraid to tell people. The thing is, that I'm a racer still, I can't race no more. When I go to a race track I'm there to race. And I let everybody around me know that we're not here to make money and say hi to the crowd, we're here to win and everyone's got to do their job. And maybe that's where I'm different than other people. Maybe I push hard and stuff, but I don't think I push that hard. But looking back on what I did and how I pushed and how I got the team to do it a certain way, maybe it's a little bit hard on these guys. I don't know.

So how do you change that?

By example I guess. When I fell off at Donington, I had a concussion. I figured out a way to race the race and make something happen. But most people aren't like that. Most people are going to go out there and race and go, "Well, if I get a good start maybe somebody will make a mistake and I'll take advantage of it." That's just the way I thought about racing. It consumed me and there was never any compromise.

But you can't teach that, can you?

No you can't, you can't. It's hard. It's different now. I was never satisfied. I see a lot of young guys coming up and their salaries have to be there. For me to get motivated by money, I don't need it. I enjoy coming to the race track and I enjoy trying to help the riders and com- ing up with possible scenarios that could happen in the race and seeing it pan out. I was just talking to Ralf Waldmann yesterday and he was talking about his hand and stuff. I said, "Hey, Max can make a mistake this year," and he made one the very next day. That's the way you've got to think. With some people you get done talking to them and they say, "What's that Rainey talking about?" I don't know. I just look at it a lot different than everybody, I guess. I've had to tone down some things, and some things I'm not willing to.

Like what?

Can you accept what you have to accept? And for how long?

Yes and no. I accept the way I am now as far as what my life is because this is the way it is and I can accept that. But there are some things that happened in my life that I'll never accept. Some of it's personal and some of it is right here in front of me. Some of it's complicated, some of it's black and white. Sometimes I got to the race track... For instance I was in Phillip Island this year and I got very emotional because I just miss being out there on a motorcycle. I didn't miss the pressure of racing for a championship, that I'm over. But I do miss the physical thrill of riding a 500. I was watching Mick (Doohan) and I thought, "I know exactly what he's doing out there." It was nice to be able to watch Mick and relive that moment again. It was tough to sit in a wheelchair and watch it for sure.

But there are other times when you don't want to be out there.

Yeah, I have to be very, very patient right now, much more than I ever was when I rode because live got to realize that I raced for 28 years, or whatever it was, and how I did it, I was successful doing it all the way until the very end. I've got young guys now that if I tell them to change their line two inches, they're going, "How do you change two inches, Wayne?" I think, yeah, well, that's true. They wouldn't understand two inches because they're riding within 12 inches. I was so precise in what I needed that sometimes I showed up at a race track and I couldn't use the line I wanted until Sunday morning because the track wasn't clean enough yet. And that line I wanted to get to wasn't there until I kept chipping away at it for two days. Most people don't understand that, but that's how I thought about it.

And you haven't been able to find anybody that will go about it the same way?

I thought with Loris I got a guy that's wanting to do it and I was showing him some training stuff and I thought, "Wow, this is great." But, then reality set in and it really came time and he had to dig in on his own without me, it just wasn't there for him. That hurt me a bit because I was kind of trying to live through Loris a bit, and I did for a while. But when it stopped happening it was a real reality check for me that I have to be more patient. It wasn't like I was out there screaming and yelling. I was just like, "You should try that, you should try this." When it came down to it he just didn't understand and most people don't.

There are times that you're not even 100 percent sure that the way you did it was the right way. You didn't know when to back off.

That's true. You can get riders and most guys to a certain level pretty quick. You can show them the basics and they'll excel. But to really go past what I can feel or say they have to be willing to go out and search for it themselves. That's something you can't teach and that's desire. And that was my strong point. Not having it good all the time and trying to make something happen. But when I lined up to go out to race or out to qualifying I knew that I was going to be trying. I just feel that I was at a certain level in my life that consumed me that I can't get right now and it is frustrating, it really is. And I think the only way that I can get that is by riding again. And sometimes I just have to watch and stay back and let it happen and sometimes it's no fun at all.

Is there anyone out there who you see who's as committed as you are?

Mick's (Doohan) the only guy. The only guy I see that I can see is doing it right is Mick. And, I think he's doing a great job staying motivated and having fun and he's the only you can say, "You're doing it right." Because the other guys are just waiting for Mick to make a mistake instead of trying to push him into a mistake.

Do you ever point that out to your riders? Do they know?

I think the general thought when it comes to Mick is that we're racing for second. That includes (Alex) Criville. They're not racing Mick, they're racing everybody else. (My riders) see Mick doing it. He's flicking it a certain way and he's keeping it on line. And my guys say, "Well, I can't keep it on line." I say, "Mick does it right there." They say: "Yeah, but Mick's stronger. He's physically tuned his brain and muscles just to ride that 500." Well, you're not going to get there. You're not strong enough and it's going to take you a few years to get strong enough. They want the result now, they don't look it as a race by race thing. It's like if they don't have it today then we've got to change something else. I don't know what you're going to change.

What about after Mick? When he retires, what happens then?

I think it becomes exciting again. I think with Mick out of there I'd get new life. There's a lot of guys who are a couple of levels away from Mick. Everybody I think just races for second, but with Mick out of there it's exciting for them to talk on TV again and for us to go, "Hey, maybe we've got a chance this weekend." Mick's talking about racing another year. I said, "Why don't you race the 250 class or something?"

That's another change this year. How much different is it being able to concentrate on just one class this year?

It's wonderful. I can sleep in a little more because I don't have to get up. My day starts at 6 and ends at 11 every day. And most of that is just getting prepared to get up and getting prepared to go to bed. That 250 thing was a completely different set of circumstances, problems. The team was completely separate from the 500 team, the engineers, their particular problems, completely different than the 500s. There was no camaraderie between the two teams. And so I'd put on my red hat over here and mess with the 250 team and then I'd go out in the garage and come back in and change teams and go work with the other team. It was a lot of work on my end. You're trying to keep everybody motivated, because that's what it was - it was work. Keeping everybody motivated. And when I rode it wasn't work, it was just, this is the way it is. And, again, it's me understanding how everybody does it.

You've said that Tetsuya and Loris were completely different to deal with. Tetsuya could motivate himself more, at least in the beginning.

Tetsuya is really, really strong mentally when things are right. But when it's not right he's three-quarters throttle. I believe you have to be even more full throttle is when things are off a bit because the rider is going to have make up 70 percent of the deficit that we have. And Loris, he rides all on lap time. If the lap time's good, he's happy. But if it's not, it's like, fix it. I can't do it. If I could fix it, I'd be in my leathers.

Was that 250 Yamaha as bad as it was made out to be?

Yeah. It was electrical failures and seizing up on the warmup lap. I think at the end there Yamaha just gave up on the 250 thing and when they saw the effort Harada was giving they just went: "Hey, he's not trying, we're not going to try." Let's work more on this 500 thing. Kenny beating up on Yamaha in the press was hurting me and my sponsorship thing with Yamaha and Marlboro. I'm trying to do a good job in the 250 class and trying to protect the interest in the 500 class and I think both of my efforts suffered because of the effort Yamaha was giving.

But Kenny's always beat up on Yamaha.

Kenny's always beat up on Yamaha, but we were winning. Kenny said, "You know Wayne, we keep winning on that thing we're not going to get a better bike," and he was right. But I'm the one riding it and I didn't have a choice. And we would get in some huge arguments over there's no way that we can win on this thing and then we'd go out on Sunday and win. Kenny would go, "Wayne, how are we going to get a better bike?" But I didn't have a choice. But, now, the situation that he was in, and I was in, is that we could beat up on Yamaha all we wanted, we weren't going to win. I think Kenny convinced some people that that was the case and I knew all along that we needed the riders, the riders had to suck it up. Because. the Yamaha got so much better because they weren't winning the last couple of years. You can ask Mike Sinclair on Kenny's team about the Yamahas, a good rider could win the World Championship on it. Kenny's own guy would say that.

How's Yamaha's position changed from last year to this as far as development?

The problem we were having with Kenny last year, Yamaha and myself, was Yamaha wanted Kenny to stop all of his development. And there was some friction with Yamaha and Kenny. So then Yamaha was in a delicate position because they had Rainey Marlboro and Roberts Marlboro and if they showed more favoritism to me, they'd say Kenny's got this big team and you need to support him so Yamaha had to hold back. Whatever they give me they didn't want Kenny to have because I think they believed Kenny was doing something else. So, my effort suffered from Yamaha because they were trying to protect their sponsorship with me. It was really difficult with what Kenny was saying with Yamaha and the way things really were.

How does that translate to development?

For instance we showed up at a test and as soon as we started the bike Kenny's guys come over and said: "What's this? Oh, you guys got differ- ent cylinders on it, where's ours?" Kenny'd make a phone call to Marlboro and Marlboro would say: "Hey, what are you guys doing? You're helping Wayne, you're not helping Kenny." That's what I mean. We could develop, but with Kenny in there we couldn't do it.

So this year how's it different?

I tell you, it's been a joy. The way Team Rainey is now with Yamaha is a lot better for me because I don't have any controversy with taking something away from Kenny or Marlboro jumping in with, "How come the bikes are no good?" Now Yamaha has been able to develop stuff on Sete's bike, which is why he came, to develop. And it's really good, really good. Yamaha's putting a lot of money into it so we've got make sure it's right when they build it. We don't want to go off in some direction that's wrong. Right now we've got some new stuff that going to be really good when we get to Jerez.

#motogp #wayne rainey #rainey talks about being a team boss; working with his riders; sponsorships and contract negotiations; yamaha and the state of racing in ge #the ways in which his partnership w harada and capirossi didn’t work out…..#also about norifumi abe; kenny roberts and mick doohan #and of course explains how sete got a factory yamaha seat (spoilers) they got him for bike development as a second rider bc…..#…..he made a good impression while riding in the last 3 races of 1996 250cc season as a replacement for harada #interview archive

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