Ex-Motorainey Communications manager Paul Carruthers didn't offer much info on how or why he split with the Wayne Rainey-led organization a short time ago. His departure from MotoA was shocking given that Carruthers was their first hire and it's well-known that he and Rainey are close personal friends.

In a statement, he said that nearly all aspects of his life are going exceedingly well other than he no longer has a job. Carruthers said he intends to stay in the motorcycle racing industry and is looking for a job doing the same thing he has for 40 years—writing about racers and motorcycles and motorcycle races.

Our unsolicited advice to Carruthers was for him to write a book based on his experience in 1978. That year, after high school let out, he joined his parents in Europe where they were the backbone of the Kenny Roberts Yamaha team. That was Roberts' first season in Europe and culminated by him taking the world championship in his first try. Ideally it would be a book focused on his dad's contributions to Roberts winning the title and all the stories from that incredible year.


Here, some old interviews of members of the Carruthers family:


Interview Kel Carruthers, 1996
by dean adams
April 18, 1996 For fifty minutes on a sunny Thursday afternoon it was as if someone had grabbed my arm and pulled me back in time. At an inexpensive deli in Orange, California I was fortunate to have nearly an hour with former world champion Kel Carruthers.

After nearly a lifetime on the Grand Prix trail Carruthers has returned to the United States doing development work for Westcoast Performance, the company who runs Sea-Doo's factory personal watercraft racing team. Since I would be covering the AMA National in nearby Pomona, an interview was arranged. We walked down the street to the delicatessen and after ordering lunch, sat in the sun and talked.

The Carruthers file is rich with history. In twenty years he has tuned for Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Raymond Roche, Virginio Ferrari, Rob McElnea, Niall Mackenzie, Freddie Spencer, Martin Wimmer, Luca Cadalora, Carlos Cardus, Alberto Puig, Doriano Romboni, Gene Romero, Cal Rayborn, Gary Fisher, Skip Aksland and Jarno Saarinen. Everyone knows he once managed Yamaha's GP team with Kenny Roberts as rider, winning three world titles in the seventies, then on to the Agostini Yamaha team tuning for three of Eddie Lawson's world championships. He also went on to work with Freddie Spencer in the debacle that was 1989. From there he bounced around from one manufacturer and rider to the next: Cardus on the Honda, Chandler on the Cagiva and Romboni back on the Honda. That is the easy story to write, and one that is so often written, that Kel did some riding in the sixties, won the world championship and then went on to his real glory as a tuner.

Kel Carruthers is a rider, first and foremost. Before there was a Kenny Roberts, when Eddie Lawson wasn't much more than a late-night twinkle in his mother's eye, Kel Carruthers was one of the best riders in the world. Although he rode 500s and 350s and 125s with success, he will always be remembered as a talented and hardy 250 rider at a time when the tires were like those now used on bicycles and the tracks were all fifth gear corners.

Kel won the 250 world championship in 1969 after sitting out the first three races and having to allow his teammate to finish better than he at several rounds. After having his fill of Europe, (where he logged seven Grand Prixs wins and a total of fifteen top five finishes) and trying to come to terms with the fact that he was the only Australian world champion to survive the followng season, he came to the United States and rode 250 here (Lightweight as it was then known) as well as Formula 750 on 350cc Yamahas. He was the original AMA 250 conqueror, trouncing nearly all in the class from 1971-1973, but because the AMA didn't award championships then in Lightweight, and since they apparently don't count Lightweight wins towards the current AMA 250 win list, nobody ever talks about it. I made it clear to Carruthers that I didn't want to do the 'Kel tuning for Eddie and Kenny' story, I wanted the Kel the rider story too. He beamed with appreciation.

Carruthers is a wiry, compact man standing perhaps five foot six and weighing one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. One can determine that he was slight but strong enough to master a 250. He is nearly sixty years old but displays the enthusiasm for racing of a man a quarter his age. After years, hell, decades of team uniforms, Carruthers is back to the basic attire of any wrench: for our interview he wore a faded T-shirt, Levis and athletic shoes. His head is topped with a light wisp of white hair and his face exudes the character of a man who has lived a full life in the sun at the racetrack,

After all that he has accomplished in his life it would be easy for him to sit back in his chair and hold court. He did not. Carruthers revealed a likable, self-effacing sense of humor and in the end professed that he didn't really have all the answers-- when explaining that Westcoast Performance had just hired an ignition man for the team he said, "Thank God they did. I'm no ignition man. It's all just wires and buzz-boxes to me." Carruthers answered every question put to him, made only two off the record comments and spoke with a sincerity I rarely see in interview subjects. Q. Let's start at the beginning. You were born in Sydney, Australia in 1938. When did you begin racing motorcycles?

A. I started to ride when I was eleven or twelve years old. I started racing 125s in club events when I was thirteen or thereabouts. I was riding a BSA Bantam when the two stroke thing started; I used to ride some of my mate's 350s or something on occasion. In those days you had to have a street license to get a race license in Australia and you couldn't get a street license until you were sixteen years old. My father had a contract with the Australian army to repair their Harley's and when I left school, I worked in the shop. When I was fifteen I was working on Army Harleys and building my own race bikes. We applied for a special license so that I could road test motorcycles on the road in a one mile radius of the shop. They gave it to me, I don't know why. So at fifteen I had both a race license and a street license. I started to race professionally then. I was doing dirt track first and I was still only fifteen when I started to do roadracing. I raced all around Australia and the race at Bathhurst at Easter was the big race then. That was my first big roadrace.

For a while I raced what they called Clubmans -- modified streetbikes, not Superbikes, but you'd make your streetbike into a race bike and there I ran 350 and 500cc BSAs which were as quick as the latest Manx Nortons. And I rode a couple of guys' 125 Bantams in the 125 race. Then I progressed to a 350 Manx Norton and my dad and I built a 250 Manx Norton and I won a few 250 races on it. Then Honda sent out the 250 four cylinder and I raced that for five years (the very machine that hangs from the wall in Carruthers' home bar) in Australia before I came to Europe. With that I had a 500 Manx Norton and a friend's 125 MV and CR93 Honda that belonged to another friend of mine. The last three years in Australia I used to win almost every race. I'd win all five races on the card or something. At Bathurst I won all the races for two or three years in a row. The racing then in Australia was good - the race at Bathhurst was one of the most important races in the world, you should have seen the coverage it got in Motorcycle News.

Until I got the Honda I didn't race outside of New South Wales too much. When I got the Honda they wanted me to do all the different races. I was doing fifteen race meetings a year, something like that. My dad (Jack Carruthers, a former Speedway Sidecar champion in Australia) helped me and I had a garage out in back of my house where I worked on the bikes. I was married to my wife Jan when I was young and bought a house young and had kids young. I was like twenty-one. My father helped me and encouraged me and really, sponsored me when I was a kid.

Q. Then on to Europe, with three generations of Carruthers going there first, right?

A. The whole family went the first year. Jan, the kids and my mom and dad. My mom and dad stayed the first year and then they went back to Australia and my dad closed his business and retired, or semi-retired.

Q. You were working the entire time you were racing in Australia, correct? Working a job and racing and tuning all your own equipment, right?

A. Yeah, I worked in my father's motorcycle business. He had a contract with the army and we did all their engines and things like that. Wasn't much money in (Australian racing), the purses were practically nothing. I got reasonable bonuses and stuff and in the beginning Avon supplied the tires and after they dropped out Dunlop supplied tires. I mean it wasn't much money, but then nothing cost a lot of money in those days.

Q. Your goal in Europe had to be getting on one of the few factory teams.

A. Right. That's what we set out to do, the first step is doing well as a privateer. (A waiter sets Kel's salad down in front of him, sans silverware. Carruthers quickly asks, "hey! got any eatin' iron?")

Of course, the first two years that I was in Europe was the last two years that all the factories competed. After than in the big classes it was only Ago and the MV, but in the smaller classes the Suzukis and them were still there. That means the pickings were pretty thin. The second year in Europe I ordered a 350 Aermacchi, figuring I'd break out of the 350 Norton mold, do something different. I went to Italy and did a couple of races early in the year and the Aermacchi factory wasn't able to supply complete bikes that early but they supplied me with an engine and I bought a Rickman frame, Fontana wheels and Ceriani forks and I built myself a 350 Aermacchi. I don't remember getting beat by a privateer in the 350 class that year. In all the international rounds and world championship races ... well, okay, one or two races, I was the first privateer and I finished sixth or something in the 350 world championship. I was the first one behind the factory bikes. The 125 I did good, the 500 Norton, I did not do too bad. The next year I had more or less the same equipment except the Aermacchi factory supplied me with a special engine. This one was a standard bore and stroke but it had bigger carburetors. Again that year I finished well, the top privateer--third, in fact, in the 350 world championship.

At the end of 1968, I got an offer to ride the 350 MV at Monza. And as it turned out, they wanted (Mike) Hailwood to ride it and Honda wouldn't release him from his contract. That was the year he couldn't race Grand Prixs and could only do private races. I had a telegram to come to Italy to the factory because they wanted me to ride the 350 at Monza and when I arrived there, Honda had released Hailwood from his contract so he got the ride instead of me. In the end he didn't ride it anyway because Agostini had to win and he would have had to finish second. So he refused. In the meantime Aermacchi loaned me a factory 350 for Monza and for the next year, 1969, I signed a contract with Aermacchi to ride 125, 350 and 500, all Aermacchi. All three classes because in those days the more classes you rode, the more money you made. You'd ride at least two and if they asked you'd ride three because you got more money.

It made for a busy weekend and I never had a mechanic, per se. I'd have a helper but that's about all I had. It was good--wife, kids in the pit area, caravan to the races, everybody was friendly, having fun. (Carruthers face reveals an expression that if he had an opportunity to return to those day now, he'd do so in an instant.) I had three bikes and a spare engine for each and the Aermacchi factory didn't go to all the races but the ones they went to they would bring me a spare engine and I would just change engines. I did really well on the Aermacchi's during the first part of the season in the Italian races, got second to Ago in Spain in the 350 class. I led it most of the way because it rained but then it dried and he caught me. Then I went to the Isle of Man which was the fourth race of the season and Pasolini had been injured and the Benelli brothers asked me if I would ride the 250. So I rode that and won the Isle of Man and they signed me a contract through the end of the year.

Q. You didn't ride the first three races of the 250 season, correct?

A. Yes, I only did eight of the eleven races.

Q. So it was tough going in.

A. Yeah, and they signed me up basically as back-up for Pasolini, to help him. So I did what I was supposed to do and I helped him out because I knew some of the circuits better than him and I was as fast as him at most circuits. Then in Finland he crashed, again, which meant there were three races left. The way it looked I had to win two of the next races and get a second or three wins and I ended up getting two wins and a second and won the championship.

During the off season I went home and it happened that was the last year of the four cylinder 250s for Benelli and they were going to run 350s the next year-- so I went home expecting to ride Benelli's the next year. Happens that they had a big strike around Christmas time in Italy and all of Italy closed down. Benelli wrote me and said 'sorry we won't be able to build bikes, just enough for Pasolini.'

So I got a pair of Yamahas for 1970. I got them in America and when I came here to pick them up, I rode (Don) Vesco's Yamahas at Daytona. I won the 250 race and was in front of eventual winner Bugsy Mann in the 750 race when the crank went out. I told Vesco, before the race, 'When are we going to put the new crank in?' He said, 'Oh, it'll be all right.' 'No it won't,' I said, 'It might not even do two hundred miles. We'd better put in a new crank.' He kept saying, 'No, it'll be all right.' It went about a hundred miles and it went out.

So I went on to Europe and in the 350 class Pasolini crashed early in the season and they asked me if I wanted to ride it. I rode it at the Nurburgring and Yugoslavia and I got second to Ago in both of the races. At the Isle of Man I rode it and the chain fell off and then I told (Benelli) ... no, this isn't working out. I rode the Yamaha the rest of the year and ended up second in the 250 and 350 world championships with Yamaha.

I should have walked the 250, I mean, the year before I was kind of lucky to win it because everything was against me. In 1970 ... if I didn't win I was leading the race when it broke. The factory riders--Gould and Anderson, had electronic ignition and six speed gear boxes. I had a five speed gear box and contact breaker ignition and four times it broke --the contact breaker--three times on the last lap. Jan would hold out the board with last lap on it and (<> Carruthers laughs<>) the bike could read the damn pit board because then it would break! I won some big races that year--I won the Isle of Man, I won the Nurburgring and the Ulster Grand Prix. Then, you know, the Isle of Man was more important than the world championship.

So I won that back to back two years in a row.

The scene then at the Isle of Man? Well, we were used to it, you know? It's different now cause they're all piddly little racetracks. They're all second and third gear corners. They're like two and a half miles around, or something like that. When we used to race the Isle of Man was thirty-seven miles around; the Nurburgring was fourteen miles around; the Belgian was, I think, ten miles around; the Ulster was about six; Brno was about eight miles around; Germany was six miles around. The Dutch (Assen) was a lot like it is now except it was a long circuit. Spain, Madrid, was the smallest track we rode on more or less. Most of the other tracks were road circuits. That's what you raced on, it was all just normal roads and slippery or whatever. And we raced every weekend, world championship or other meets.

Q. Breaking down on the back section of those long tracks meant waiting for the sweep crews to come and get you, eh?

A. Yeah, and hope somebody had your bike ready for the next race.

Q. What brought you to America from racing world championship GPs?

A. Well, Vesco said when you're tired of Europe, you could come race here and run the team out of his shop. At the end of 1970 I came here and Don bought a pair of Yamahas and I bought a pair, two 250s and two 350s. We kept them at his shop and he carted them around. I used his workshop and his dyno and everything. Also I built Cal Rayborn's 250 as well. I did the first year and it was good, I won all the 250 races, won Road Atlanta - my 350 against all the 750s, got second at Ontario. I think, I only did seven roadraces and I ended up fifth in the Grand National championship which was, what, thirty dirt tracks in those days?

I got beat by a hair by John Cooper at the last race of the year. He was on the 750 BSA, I led him to the last corner and he beat me to the finish line. I said, well, that's it, I'm not racing a 350 Yamaha again. Kawasaki offered me a factory ride on the three cylinder, the triple. And Yamaha said they'd pay the same money. I decided it was better to ride the Yamaha than the Kawasaki. They signed DuHamel (<>Miguel's father, Yvon<>) to ride the Kawasaki and I rode the Yamaha, because I got good money for those days. I wasn't going to ride that Kawasaki (shakes his head). Damn things.

Q. What was good money, then?

A. Well, this was in the early seventies, okay? Yamaha paid me forty thousand dollars. (long pause) The Harley-Davidson factory riders got a thousand dollars a month, Lawwill and all those guys. I did (just) roadraces and they did the roadraces and the dirt tracks.

One of my jobs at Yamaha was to teach Kenny Roberts roadracing and look after his bikes.

Q. Ah yes. Yes, please do tell us about that time.

A. We were both riding at that time. 1972 was his first year as an expert. I built his bikes. 1973 I signed a contract with Yamaha to run their race team, I started a workshop in El Cajon; I supplied the mechanics and the transporter and they supplied the bikes and the equipment and the riders. They had Roberts, Romero ... a lot of different riders at the time ... Castro. 1973 was my last year riding. I was just so busy it wasn't true. The 700s came out in 1974, so, yeah, it was 1973 that was my last year. (Jarno) Saarinen rode my spare bike at Daytona and won it and I got second. I won Talladega, then got second at Road Atlanta, so it was one of me best years actually. Talladega I think I did three laps practice. Kenny rode it to make sure everything was all right because I didn't have time to ride it. Daytona I didn't go out in the Sunday morning practice because I was working on the re-fueling rig and all that stuff. And in the end, Yamaha just said, 'hey, forget it,' you know? 'We'd rather you just look after all the racing stuff for us,' so I quit.

I had a pretty good run. I never went to the hospital. I broke me wrist when I was sixteen, dirt tracking. Other than that, roadracing, I never went to the hospital, never broke a leg or an arm or got a concussion. And I didn't go slow.

Q. Back to Roberts. Your thoughts when you first saw him ride?

A. Well he was doing good straight away. He was winning ... actually, he wasn't (doing well). There was a young kid, (Rusty) Bradley on a three cylinder Kawasaki at most of the races. But Kenny was the Yamaha kid, you know.

He was good. You don't really teach guys to race. You can guide them and they learn riding with people. I think you can either do it or you can't, more or less. Some people are good and they get better but the real good ones can do it pretty natural. I knew when I was a kid ... I could tell a difference between what I did and what other guys did. It's kind of instinct. But it's a judgment thing. On a (modern) 500, the skill now is in controlling it, braking and getting it turned, controlling it out of the corners. Everything is pretty slow. Okay, the bikes are fast and they accelerate but when I was racing it was like ... some of the tracks were like highways and it wasn't wide open but it was really fast. It was sort of judgment stuff, you were doing a hundred and forty mile an hour and you were going from one side of the road to the other. If you didn't do it dead right, you were in big trouble. After you went two or three (high speed bends), on the fourth one, you were in big big trouble if you had it wrong. Either that or you just shut it off. Which is why at the Isle of Man and places the really good guys would just disappear, I think it was in `69 that I won the 250 race by nearly five minutes or something like that. It was so fast and there were so many sequences that you are just doing it; if you can think of some highway you know that's super fast and you have to judge from one curve to the next. It's not stopping and turning and accelerating like it is now.

It's different now, the bikes, tires, everything, but even the concept of racing when I raced was different.

We went on to Europe, me, Kenny and Yamaha America. How it came about I'm not really too sure, I'm not sure if Kenny wanted to go to Europe or Yamaha just wanted to go. The Yamaha dirt track thing had turned pretty bad so in the end Yamaha America wanted to go and they would supply him with a factory 500. I said I'd go to look after him (Roberts).

It's another one of those things--I said I was going to go for one year and stayed for 17. I took my 250 that he had raced in America and employed two mechanics. It was all financed by America (Yamaha). They paid me, they paid Kenny. They got me a budget to run the race team. Of course Kenny won the championship and the next year he won it again and then the factory more or less decided that they'd give up the factory team and let me run the factory team. So I ran the factory team and was contracted to Japan and basically I had Kenny as a rider and we had mechanics and one engineer from Japan. We had one transporter and away we went. We did that until Agostini came a long with the Marlboro money and he worked a deal with Yamaha where he would pay all the expenses. So I did the same thing with Agostini in Italy. From then on I was just kind of an engineer in charge and I didn't have to worry about the money and all that I used to have to worry about.

Q. Lawson, Roberts, Crosby and others have not come away from their business relationship with Giacamo Agostini singing his praises. But the two of you seem to be close and have worked together many times. I'd like to hear your thoughts on Ago as a team manager and as a rider.

A. Agostini is the best guy in Europe.

He's one of those guys who doesn't throw his money around, which a lot of people take as bad. He's one of those guys you sit down and you work your contract out and he'll fight you all the way on the contract. But once you have the contract done, hey, everything's cool from there on in. It's like, this is what we're doing and this is how we agreed it would be done. He doesn't cheat you or give you a hard time. With me particularly, I used to run his race team, I could do anything I wanted, he's my friend and my boss but whatever we needed to have done, I'd say this is what we need. Besides, he was always in the office upstairs and I'd do all the engineering and all that stuff.

A lot of the misunderstanding I think (with Ago) stems from the fact that riders have managers, and half the time the riders don't even know what their contracts say. Once they don't like what's happening, they see Ago as the guy responsible.

Yeah, some of the others weren't too happy with him but to me he is the fairest guy over there and you can trust him with your life.

Ago had it easy for a long while as a rider. Sometimes he'd win races by a lap almost and he won a lot of his championships like that, but I think he was a lot better than some people give him credit for. When he had to race Hailwood he was doing it, you know? He won a lot of championships on merit and he won some because they were just given to him because he had the only decent bike in the race.

Q. When you raced at Benelli you got to know the brothers (that owned the company) fairly well, right?

A. Well, yes and no. I didn't know them until I rode for them and really the brothers didn't have too much to do with the racing team, they had a team manager who took care of all that. Actually, I got along good with old Nino Benelli, he was the older brother and he went to all the races. He had a desk at the factory but he didn't do any work, he just went to the races.

Q. It's good work if you can get it. But it is said that when you went to Cagiva to work for Ago on the Grand Prix team, you saw people working in the race shop at Cagiva that you'd worked with when you were riding.

A. The Cagiva factory used to be the Aermacchi factory so when I went to Cagiva, (Ezio) Mascheroni and those guys were Aermacchi guys. I used to go to the Aermacchi factory all the time. Mascheroni wasn't the chief engineer but he was the head mechanic at Aermacchi and Milani was the one of the factory riders and he is still there. So I knew some of the guys going in, yes.

As for Cagiva, it's just a pity they pulled out. The bikes were good and Ago and I had a good relationship with them.

Q. Regarding the Agostini Marlboro team, the B rider, the second rider on that team seemed to be cursed for over a decade. Talented riders like Roche, Rob McElnea, Didier de Radigues, Niall Mackenzie and others couldn't seem to win races. Why was that-- were the bikes so drastically different between the A rider and the B rider?


A. No, the bikes were the same. Rob McElnea got a number of top six finishes. The thing was we had Kenny and then we had Eddie which was fortunate ... I mean how things turn out. Eddie came because Kenny wanted Eddie and they had the same manager and ... and then Kenny was to retire. Eddie did pretty good, especially since the bikes were bad. They were the worst bikes Yamaha built the first year that Eddie was in Europe, 83. But in 84 the bikes were pretty good and Eddie just clicked and we won the world championship.

The second rider on that team was always a commercial thing. With Marlboro, a certain amount of money came out of Switzerland and then when we had Virginio Ferrari. his money came out of Marlboro Italy. And then when we had McElnea we had Marlboro money that came out of England; and when we had Didier, Marlboro France put the money in. In some respects it was the best available rider of that nationality who wasn't signed up. And yes, Virginio did have a bad year, fell off a couple of times that year but Didier did pretty good and Rob did good. I mean, it's like, if Eddie didn't win, it was bad. But if Didier or Rob finished third, fourth, fifth, that was good 'cause that was good for them. And with Didier we got a first and a second a couple of times. And Rob, so many times was like, fourth, inches away from third. But for Rob that was good because he was such a big guy. He was always complaining that his bike was slow. Hell, his bike was always the same as Eddie's, only it had a tooth bigger on the back.

Q. Here's another now versus then question. In the eighties did you run the 500s right out of the crate essentially stock?

A. No. Back then the Yamaha factory did all the testing and we'd get the bikes and pretty much pull them apart immediately. Because in some respects they were still learning. I mean, when I first went to Europe the engineer didn't come to Europe to help me -- he came to Europe so I could teach the engineer how to be an engineer. They were just young guys, like Mike Maekawa, he was the Yamaha racing engineer on scene at the GPs for a long time. He's moved out of racing now, but in 1973 I went to Japan for the Yamaha festival thing where they just had the new 350s for us to ride. Johnny Cecotto and Stevie Baker were there and the Japanese had their own factory bikes. It was supposed to be a demonstration but it wasn't, it was a race. They didn't have that many mechanics so they gave me this new engineer as my mechanic to help me. That was Maekawa. He was just this young guy starting at the factory and he was my mechanic when I went there for this demonstration. From there on I'd get maybe two new engineers a year and some wanted to stay longer to learn the whole business.

But, yeah, they just didn't know. They were engineers and they didn't know anything about GP racing. Now of course it's hard to tell them anything.

Q. In 1990 you told me that even though the 1989 season with Freddie Spencer was one of the most trying of your career as a tuner, you came away for a lot of respect for Spencer. Do you still feel that way?

A. Freddie had been retired for, what, a year? And Eddie had dumped us, or done the dirty on us at the end of the year and we were left without a rider. I talked to Freddie at a car race down in San Diego and asked if he was interested. He came and he was overweight and just out of shape a bit. He did not a lot of testing because we didn't have the bikes but he did real good in Japan and then he ran off the track, he got going again and finished. Then in Australia he was sitting in fourth and he was catching the leaders at a half second a lap and I was thinking that he was going to make it, then he fell off the thing.

From there on it was like he never quite got with it. And, surprisingly enough, that was the year that we had a lot of crankshaft problems. That was the one year that Yamaha was getting their cranks built outside of the race department and it was just a bad year. He just ... he just never clicked.

But, I got along fine with him. He's a different guy, no doubt about that. But I got a long with him all right.

Did I ever feel like I knew him? No. I'd go there sometimes and he'd go in the motorhome and I'd say, 'okay, I'll come in a little bit and talk about what we need to do.' And I'd go and I'd ding on the bell and he had a little camera on the motorhome so he could see who was at the door. I'd ding on the bell for five minutes and nothing would happen, so you'd walk away. That's just not right. And then sometimes I'd go in there and he'd want me to stay and I'd say 'Freddie I've got to go, I've got to work on the bikes' but he wanted me to stay, then. It was like night and day. He would just change completely.

And the biggest thing was that he wanted to make the Yamaha into a Honda all the time, he wanted the Yamaha to do all the things that the Honda did.

But he was all right, it was just disappointing that he never really got it going after that.

That year, before England, he and Ago just came to agreement to stop. And it was funny because we had been doing a bit of testing with Freddie before then because he was a pretty good test rider. Before Donington I chopped the front end off the Yamaha. Can you imagine doing that with Honda? With Yamaha I could do anything I wanted and if I'd done something, screwed up, they'd just laugh. "Kel-san you screw up."

I'd cut the front off the frame and put it back on at a different angle and to this day that's all that they (Yamaha) have been using, pretty much. And we went to Donington and God, Mackenzie damn near won the race from nowhere. He got in front and faded like he used to. And Cadalora qualified on the front row the very first time he rode a 500. So at least we did something that year. But it wasn't a good year.

Q. Have you put that whole Eddie Lawson 1989 situation behind you now? Have you let bygones be bygones, the two of you?

A. No, he still doesn't talk to me, basically. I mean, I say hi to him ...

That was one of those deals that was like he wanted to leave and Eddie's one of those guys that's gotta blame somebody for everything. Eddie doesn't have many friends--he's got a lot of admirers but not many friends. I was one of his best friends. And then all of a sudden it was like ...right 'til the day that he flew home with me from Japan ... after that he didn't talk to me. We flew home together, on the train together and everything was fine. The next time I saw him he stood two feet from me and wouldn't talk to me. He wouldn't say boo to me.

It was all in the papers that he left because he wasn't getting along with my family, that was the reason he left Yamaha. So I called him on the phone and he said, no, it had nothing to do with that but (he) was talking to the press and (his) girlfriend said this and that.' He said, 'Don't worry about it.'

I said, 'Well, hey, I have my wife in tears here. Why don't you tell the press that wasn't the reason?' 'Oh, no,' he said, 'it'll go away.' He didn't want to make himself look bad or anything.

To this day I say, 'Hey, how's it going Ed' when I see him, and that's it. It's all weird.

Q. Cagiva, while you were there, got their fuel injection system working well. Can you tell us about it?

A. We tested it at Mugello a few times and the first few times that I was there they tested it and they were having problems and they had the guys from Tag working on it. They were there and eventually they got it sorted out and the last couple of times we tested with Cagiva, Doug Chandler rode it and the laps times were really the same. It felt different, (to Chandler) like it almost needed a different ratio throttle, like the slide was doing this and the butterfly was doing that. It was like the response between the throttle and the engine felt different to the rider. But it worked fine.

Q. As a tuner do you have any riders that you regret not being able to work with? Kevin Schwantz would top that list I'd imagine.

A. So many times Schwantz was going to come with us but he could never quite get with Agostini to work things out. I had a contract ready to sign to go with Suzuki and I couldn't get out of my contract with Cardus. Actually (Carlos Cardus) said I could go, so I did all the ground work with Suzuki and we came to terms and it was a go. I went to Spain for the last race of the year and that was going to be my last race with Cardus. Honda told Cardus that if I wasn't on the team they weren't going to give him the good bikes, factory bikes for the following year. So he said, 'I've got you under contract, you ain't going anywhere.' And me being stupid thinking a contract is a contract, I stayed. Which I come to find out contracts don't mean a damn thing. I should have just walked away. In fact I was going from Spain to a press conference in England to do the Suzuki deal and I had to call them up and tell them it looks like it's not on. Kevin's dad would call me like every day and we were trying to get it sorted out. In the end I had to tell them to forget it and they signed (Stuart) Shenton to look after Kevin.

Q. Since you've worked with both Yamaha and Honda's racing departments, can you offer some insight as to the differences between the two and their approach to racing?

A. When I ran Yamaha's race program in America, I did a lot of development work on the 250, 350 and 750 for the factory. In Europe, I ran their race team and continued to do development on the 500. The factory regarded me as being one of their development engineers. If I did or suggested something good then they were happy. If something wasn't so good, that was okay too. With Honda all of the development is done in Japan and Honda would prefer that their factory bike remain as delivered to the teams.

Q. Why is Yamaha so insistent on trying disc-valve motors in their 250 and why aren't they having much success with it?

A. I haven't had anything to do with the 250 Yamahas for many years so I'm not familiar with their latest engines. Their reed-valve engine is now very good and I understand they are still not very happy with their disc-valve engine. Why, I don't know. I guess it's possible that the Aprilia engineers are the only ones right now who are getting the results out of those engines.

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Interview Paul Carruthers

This interview was conducted and first published in 1996.

Long-standing Cycle News Editor Paul Carruthers enjoyed one of the most unique childhoods of anyone I know.
Carruthers, the son of 1969 250 world champion Kel Carruthers, essentially grew up in 1960s Grand Prix racing, traveling all over Europe while his dad raced against Agostini, Hailwood, Read and Saarinen. Topping that, he spent the 1970s in the US while his dad raced against Gary Nixon, Sheene, Emde, Yvon DuHamel and Rayborn. Kel then later ran Yamaha's roadrace team here in the US.

How does someone spend their summers with that background? Carruthers trailed his father while he tuned Kenny Roberts to three world 500cc titles in the late 1970s.

I interviewed him in 1996 for American Roadracing magazine.

In this interview it's clear the relationship between Eddie Lawson and the Carruthers family was slightly chilly. That's all water under the bridge now and the two parties are again friends. Q. As a child, do you remember the first time you realized that your father wasn't like all your friend's dads? That he didn't go to work every day at the shoe factory, but was instead a racer?

A. That's kind of funny because obviously ever since I was born I have been at racetracks. I guess my parents took me to my first race when I was just a couple of weeks old. In Australia, I remember thinking at the time that my dad's job was normal and all the other kids dads didn't have normal jobs. He was a racer and he had always been a racer, so it didn't seem unusual to me.

Then when we went to Europe, all the other kids I hung out with... well, their dads were racers too. So again, it wasn't abnormal.

When we came to the States and I finally started going to regular school with other regular American kids, then it was like, 'God, your dad's a motorcycle racer? It was kind of strange at that point, but you just went about your business. I always thought it was a pretty cool deal.

Q. What is your earliest racing memory?

A. I first remember being at race tracks when I was about four years old, in Australia. I also have pretty vivid memories of our first trip to Europe. We ended up going over there for the first time on a boat, across the ocean from Australia to Europe. The situation was at that time the only way our family could afford to go to Europe was if two flew and the others went by boat. So my dad and my grandfather flew from Australia to Europe, got the van and the caravan and the bikes and got everything organized. My mom, my older sister, my grandmother and I, we took a ship over from Australia to Italy. This was in 1966—I was four years old.

It's funny because I can always remember when Mike Hailwood was riding the Honda, I guess it was the four-cylinder 500, the thing was in a constant tank slapper. And whenever he was coming around my mom would push us back a bit to make sure we were safe—because on that bike it looked like an accident could happen at any time. She never did that with anyone else.

It was like a six-week trip. Six weeks on a big ship when you're a kid is pretty cool. I remember being on the boat and being on it for a long time. And you know, six weeks as an adult, what would you do? But as a kid it was great.

I also vividly recall getting off the ship and being picked up by my dad and grandfather in Italy. This was going to be our new home—a little caravan attached to the back of a van. We ended up staying in Europe, with occasional trips back to Australia, until 1970.

I remember races back then. Not vividly, but I remember being there and I remember a lot of the different people.

Q. Such as ...

A. A lot of the racers, the mechanics, the tire people... You tend to remember the ones who were nice to you, especially when you were a kid. Like I remember Jack Findlay... he's actually the tech guy now for IRTA. Jack was one of the riders of that period and a friend of my dad's. He was always very nice, but then again everybody seemed to be back then. That's not to say that they're not now, but it was different because all the riders traveled together and on off weekends we camped together in different places. I played with other kids whose dads were racers. I guess that's where they got the term "the GP circus" from, because that's what it was like. It was just a carnival atmosphere.

It's funny because I can always remember when Mike Hailwood was riding the Honda, I guess it was the four-cylinder 500, the thing was in a constant tank slapper. And whenever he was coming around my mom would push us back a bit to make sure we were safe—because on that bike it looked like an accident could happen at any time. She never did that with anyone else.
I remember guys like Mike Hailwood, Billy Ivy, Phil Read...

I remember going to Phil Read's house for parties and we'd do a lot of things with these people because everybody was friendly and they were all friends with my dad. Grand Prix racing was a very friendly atmosphere back then. Sometimes your dad would win and sometimes he wouldn't, but it didn't seem to matter—everybody seemed to stay pretty good friends.

I can remember as a kid, my mom, who was obviously a big part of the whole deal, because a lot of the time in Europe—it was just our family. Early on, my dad didn't have a mechanic and so he did all of his own work. And my mom would pack up the kids while we were at the Isle of Man and she'd take us to Parliament Square and she'd give pit signals to my dad there. We'd be listening to the race on the radio so we could kind of tell what was going on in the race while we sat there and waited for him. Then she'd give him pit signals to let him know what was going on.

It's funny because I can always remember when Mike Hailwood was riding the Honda, I guess it was the four-cylinder 500, the thing was in a constant tank slapper. And whenever he was coming around my mom would push us back a bit to make sure we were safe—because on that bike it looked like an accident could happen at any time. She never did that with anyone else.

Overall, I think I had a great childhood in Europe. I grew up around racers and knew Mike Hailwood and Giacamo Agostini. It's helped me a lot with this job: I don't look up to today's riders as something special because I grew up in all of this. Sure, I have respect for what they do and I think they're very good. I know what it takes to succeed at this level, but there's no hero worship or anything with them. I know Giacamo Agostini for God's sake. Am I suddenly going to be excited over any of these guys?

Q. When you see Ago now is it like, 'Hey, remember ...?'

A. Yeah. And I got to know him well because when my dad went back to Europe as a tuner he did a lot of that time with Agostini. Ago has always been good to me and to my family. I could call him tomorrow and go over there and stay at his house. He's just a good guy. A lot of people have had problems with him, but I could never understand why.

Q. Do you remember your dad winning the Isle of Man?

A. Definitely. We went to the Island every year that we were in Europe and those are good memories for me. I remember always celebrating my birthday there - and I remember getting my first tooth pulled out by a dentist there. Little memories like that. It was kind of like a big carnival there when the bike races were held, and I remember driving go-carts and stuff like that.

I'll never forget the first time dad won there. They give you this huge trophy that you get to keep for a year, in addition to the smaller replica trophy that you keep forever. Dad has a cabinet full of those in his home now and I think those are the trophies he's most proud of. Anyway, the first time he won I remember the whole family posing for photos with it. It was a huge deal for our family because we'd just won the biggest race of the year.

Again, at the Isle of Man it was always that fraternity of people going to this event and being this was the Isle of Man, not everybody always left there in one piece. So I remember going to hospital and visiting friends of my dads who were hurt and there were obviously people who were killed. So in some ways it was the best race, and in others it was the worst.

I think with the exception of when my dad won the (1969 250cc) World Championship in the final race of the year in Yugoslavia, winning that first Isle of Man in 1969 on his first ride on the Benelli... that was a pretty special deal.

It's funny because Kenny Roberts is known as King Kenny, but the daily newspaper on the Isle of Man ran a big photo of dad on that Benelli with a huge headline that read "King Kel!" So we always get a chuckle out of the King Kenny thing.

There are certain highlights that will always stand out. It's like now I look at Jett Chandler (Doug's son) and I know that he will look back at these times and it will be special for him. He's at the races now and he's seeing his dad win, doing things that nobody else can do. My father is a World Champion and he'll always be a World Champion. In a way you don't really realize that while you're still a kid, but when I look back at it now it's a pretty special deal - the things that he accomplished. I'm very proud of him.

Q: The Benelli ride was his only factory ride, right?

A: Back when he raced in Grands Prix in Europe, there were a few factory guys like Mike Hailwood and Giacomo Agostini, and then there was another 20 guys on Manx Nortons. So the big goal of the privateer guys was to get third or fourth place and be the top privateer guy. Then you could get that MV ride. I remember when he got a call when I was a kid to go ride for MV, or that they wanted to talk to him. And he was very close to getting an MV Agusta ride. Back then an MV ride was a license to win races. It was like you suddenly had a ATM machine in your caravan when you got an MV ride.

So we were really excited about that - as a family. Dad had the opportunity to maybe get this MV ride. Then we got a telegram right after that said Hailwood had taken the ride. So it was in the end a big disappointment. But then he got the Benelli thing and then the Yamaha ride so it turned out okay.

In 1970 his season was disappointing. He was clearly the fastest guy and he should have won the World Championship. He had some problems with the ignition on the Yamaha - he couldn't get the good ignition that Rod Gould, the factory guy, had and there were a lot of races where the bike just broke. He finished second in the championship. That was disappointing, but you live with those things. Something good usually comes out of disappointments, and if he'd won that second title we may never have made it here.

Q: You have no regrets about a childhood that most of us would think of as being a bit different?

A: Absolutely not. It was a pretty good way to grow up. We had the caravan and... well, it was like if you took your family of four camping for six or seven months and you went from racetrack to racetrack and campsite to campsite. We'd drive to the races and if we had time we'd stop and do the tourist-type things. I've seen every museum in Europe and all that stuff. We'd get to the track and we'd set up our home for the week. My dad would start working on the bikes and we'd go off and play. My dad would race and then when the race was over we'd pack back up and be on our way to the Nurburgring, the Isle of Man, or some other race track and do it all over again. It was all based on this little caravan that we traveled in and lived in, and each year it would get bigger. The more success my dad had the bigger the caravan we could afford. In the end we had a pretty good-sized caravan.

Q: Then you came to America...

A: In 1970 we came to the states and did Daytona. We had met Don Vesco and we did Daytona with him. Then we said that we'd try racing in the US and just like everything else we've done, it was only going to be for a year or so. We've been here ever since. My dad was fortunate to race here because the purses were real high back then—actually better than they are now. So we came here at a good time and then he hooked up with Kenny. And I think my dad was fortunate in some respects that the Benelli ride was the only real factory ride that he ever had, and then he kind of went away from them. The later Benelli's weren't as good as the private Yamahas, so he went back and rode Yamahas in the final year. I think he was fortunate in that he'd worked on his own stuff for so long, then went on to tune his own Yamahas, and all that experience led to what was a second career when he finished racing. A lot of guys quit racing and you don't hear from them again. My dad was able to have a second career where he helped other riders win World Championships.

A lot of my racing memories are from the period when we were here, in the States. I was older and I was out doing kid stuff. I can remember riding my mini-bike in the pits at AMA races and Bill Boyce (the AMA's then head of racing) coming over to our pit and telling my dad that 'your kid can't be riding his mini-bike in the pits anymore'. I was bummed out because they took my mini-bike away.

I used to hang out a lot with the Rayborn kids. Buddy was what we called him then, but he's Calvin III now. He had a younger brother Jack and we hung around at all the races and raced mini-bikes together and watched the races. I can remember back then, in the 250 races, my dad would win almost every time out. I remember standing there at the fence, at places like Road Atlanta, and feeling a little bad because I'd be watching the races with my buddies knowing the whole time that my dad was going to kick their dad's butt. And he did. He won almost every one of those races, and a lot of the Nationals as well. And yes, Cal Rayborn did eventually get better because he turned out to be one of the greatest roadracers ever. So those kids went on to watch their dad win a lot of races as well.

We were really good friends with the Rayborn family. My dad hung out with Cal a lot and they also lived in San Diego, so we'd spend a lot of time at their house. It was really hard on us when Cal was killed. It was... it was just a bad deal all the way around.

Later I raced with Cal Rayborn III in San Diego. We used to race at this place called Speedway 117 or South Bay Speedway. He had a 250 and I had a 125 and he had been doing it a lot more than me, because he was older. I remember that he was really, really good. In fact, when we'd race mini bikes at the Nationals with the big guys, he'd always hold his own. Watching him race in San Diego may have been what drove me away from racing myself. He was the king of the track there and maybe I didn't feel like I would ever be that good. Much later we got to hook up again when he got the deal to ride Kenny's 250 in the AMA races. I was excited about it because I knew how good he was and how much talent he had. He actually had some pretty good results, but it just didn't work out. He's really talented, even today. He's a very talented racer.

Q. It must have been quite a harrowing experience to watch your dad race.

A. Not really. That's one thing about my dad—I was never scared or worried about his safety. Because he didn't do anything silly and he was always in control. That's not to say he didn't crash, everybody crashes, but I was never worried about him. I knew, especially in those last years he was riding here in the states, and even in the last couple of years in Europe when he finally had good equipment, that he was going to win. Or he was going to be right there. That makes it fun; there's nothing like winning.

Q. It's bone of contention between you and the AMA as to the AMA 250 win list, as your dad's not on it and he won so many of those races back then. But because they were called Lightweight races, they don't count them, right?

A. My dad won a lot of races in that class. But what can you do? I know he won them, he knows he won them and they know he won them.

Q. Was he upset when he stopped racing?
A. Not really because at one point he was still riding and building bikes for Donnie Castro, Gene Romero, Kenny Roberts and others it was this huge team of yellow and black bikes. He was basically in charge of all of them. He had the shop in El Cajon where all the bikes were built and maintained. I think in the end it was too much for him to even think about his racing. I could see that his racing was slipping a little bit so I think he did exactly the right thing.

Q. The entire time you were in Europe you were what we would now term home-schooled, right?

A. Yeah, there were certain years when my sister Sharon and I did correspondence courses and the work would be sent to us in Europe from Australia. We'd do the work and send it back. Then there was one year where we had a tutor there and he was a friend of the family from Australia. He was actually part-time tutor and part-time mechanic. Yeah, it was good. I feel that being in Europe for all those years, I learned a lot more than I was going to learn at your basic elementary school. It's like anything else: you learn how to read and if you know how to read you can learn anything. And the fact that I traveled around Europe and got to see all those things and experience everything over there was great. As a kid growing up in racing you spend a lot of time around adults anyway, so I think that accelerates your learning. You're not with kids all the time... you're more with adults.

I don't have any regrets as far as my education goes. When I did finally go to school in the states, they put me back a grade because of my non-typical education history. Then halfway through the year they bumped me up because I was smoking the other children in the class.

Q. Did you know Miguel DuHamel in that early-1970s US period?

A. I would like to say that I did, but to tell you the truth I was older and only remember him being in a stroller. Unfortunately, I'm a little bit older than him. In fact, I probably remember Mario (DuHamel) more so, but even he was a little young. I was nine years old at that time and they were a bit younger. I do remember their dad and mom being at the races though. My dad raced against Miguel's dad quite a bit back then.

Q. Your grandfather was the Australian Speedway champion, your father is the 1969 250cc World Champion. You raced for a while as an amateur but never took it any further. Why?

A. It wasn't so much that I was pushed away from racing by my parents, but I kind of was. I think it was because they just didn't want to go through all of that again. My mom especially... you can imagine what she has been through over the years in racing? So they didn't really steer me that way. I started racing a little bit... mostly when they were in Europe in the summer months that I didn't go with them.

And one summer when they were gone I started racing a bit in San Diego. It was more like I was sneaking down there to do it with some other buddies, but when they found out about it... it was no big deal. They never really sat me down and told me not to race, but I could tell that's not the direction they wanted me to go in. They really wanted me to have more of a normal life where I'd finish school and go to college. Looking back on the way things have turned out, I thank them for leading me down that street.

I never really took my own racing that seriously. And I didn't like to lose. I have a real problem with losing and I still have a real problem with losing today--so it's probably a good thing that I didn't ever try real hard at racing. And getting beat by Cal Rayborn III didn't help.

Sometimes I look at riders and I look at the success they've had and sometimes I think, 'God, that could have been me.' But those guys are really the minority. The majority of them don't have that success. So I don't really have any regrets about it. In a way I like the racing so much, and I always have, that I really feel blessed to have fallen into the perfect job. I get paid to go to the races and to hang out with racers - something I've done my whole life. I've always had kind of a bond with racers because I've grown up with them... I sort of know how they think.

Q. Your dad's relationship with Kenny Roberts was a good one, but I think there was also some animosity. Agree?

A. No, not really. Maybe on some level, but I think Kenny probably has that relationship with most people. The bottom line is that my dad doesn't take any shit. If he's guilty of anything it's maybe that he didn't feel like he had to baby these people along. He raced, he was World Champion and the rider's job is to go out there and do what he's supposed to do. He probably doesn't feel like the rider should be coddled.

He and Kenny have a good relationship. They accomplished a lot together and I think Kenny would admit, and has admitted, that without Kel things could have been a lot different for him. In the end they just went their separate ways and had no problems. Kenny wanted dad to go with him when he got the Lucky Strike team with Randy (Mamola) and Mike Baldwin, but dad wanted to stay with Agostini's team... mainly out of loyalty to Eddie (Lawson), who had a two-year contract at the time.

Q. When Roberts left AMA racing do World Championship in 1978 you and your dad went with him. What was that like?

A. Probably the coolest memories I have of Kenny were from that season... that period. When I got out of school I went over there and spent the whole summer with them. That was the year he won his first World Championship and really... we had a great time. We probably had more fun that summer than Kenny has probably ever had since in racing.

We went over there and it was pretty low key—we both had our own motorhomes. That was pretty funny because Kenny... well, he didn't know where he was going in Europe and was petrified of getting lost. My dad knew everything about Europe. So anytime we were driving somewhere, to a race or someplace else, Kenny's motorhome would be just tightly tucked in behind ours. We would laugh because our windshield would always be plastered with bugs and his would be clean and clear because he was trailing us so tightly. He was so scared of getting lost. Now look at him. He spends most of his time in Europe, probably showing other people around.

That year the Europeans just thought he was great. And he is. He's a great guy. Sure he has points where you just want to strangle him because he's driving you insane. I remember, as a kid, I was a surfer from San Diego and I would surf twice a day if I could. I had longish hair and Kenny was always kind of a redneck from Modesto. So he would give me grief about it... 'Why don't you get a haircut?' Stuff like that. After a while I just wanted to kill him, then I just started dishing it right back and him and he started leaving me alone. We had a lot of fun together. Now I see him and he's got long hair... maybe I should call him up and tell him to get a haircut.

I've always had a good relationship with Kenny and have always had a lot of respect for him. In all my years of being around racing, I have never seen anybody do the kind of things that he can on a motorcycle. I was at the Indy Mile when he won on the Yamaha four-cylinder and I've seen him do some pretty miraculous things.

He's given me a lot of grief and I give it right back. That's all you have to do with him—just give it right back. He respects that and leaves you alone.

Q. You were associate editor of Cycle News when that whole late 1980s split between Eddie Lawson and Yamaha occurred. You were in an unenviable position: you were friendly with Lawson and of course the other guy in the situation was your father.

A. I would say that in all my professional career that was the most difficult time for me. I was in the middle and I was obviously involved in the whole thing because it was my family and it was Eddie. At the time Eddie was like my brother, the brother I never had. We were close. We used to do a lot of stuff together and I used to go to Europe when he was there and we had some real good times. I'd go to his place in Upland and go out on his boat with him or go out riding Jet Skis together.

That was real difficult because it wasn't so much that he was leaving the team, things happen in racing, it's a fact of life—riders switch teams. But he went about it the wrong way and he pointed some fingers in some directions that he shouldn't have. He made it seem like it was almost my dad's fault. And there was no way that it was my dad's fault. Maybe that was just Eddie's way of getting through it and not taking the heat for just wanting to go ride a Honda. I don't know. There was probably some stuff going on behind the scenes that even Eddie didn't know about.

It's a shame because I saw how my family treated him. My mom treated him like she treated me, better in some ways. The same for my dad. They used to make meals for him and my mom would do his laundry. It was just like if I raced on that team, that's how they would treat me. And then for him to do what he did, it hurt them a lot.

Q. Someone saw your dad in San Diego right after it happened and said he was acting like somebody died. Like a member of the family had died.

A. He was upset about it... about how it was handled. To them, maybe Eddie Lawson died that day. I don't know. I just know that it wasn't handled very well.

Dad had received phone calls from other journalists and suddenly their angle of the story was that 'Eddie says it's your fault'. I guess they were saying that my dad wanted Kevin Schwantz on the team and that they were trying to get rid of Eddie, which is a crock of crap. My dad never had any say as to who would be on that team. It's no different now. The people who make the decisions on who rides for what team are people like Marlboro and Lucky Strike. It's not a crew chief. If they wanted Kevin Schwantz, what does that have to do with my dad? Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but I think that Eddie felt... hey, I don't know what he felt.

Right after that I went to Eddie and... well, I wanted things to be normal as they could be. I still had my job to do. I wanted to be professional about that. We talked, but it was never really the same. And, of course, he wasn't around much after that so it didn't become a problem, at least professionally. All in all it was a shame. Everybody was good friends and then suddenly they weren't. It's too bad, you know? I can see even now there is no reason we shouldn't be able to go Jet Sking together or go out on his boat. But it'll probably never happen. It's a closed chapter I guess.

Q. Is he happy now? Your father?

A. Yeah, he is. I think he misses bike racing to a degree because he had been in it for so long. I still think a lot of teams could use him, in Grand Prix or even here in superbike. You see some of these teams and the bikes run out of fuel or the chain falls off. Those are stupid things that shouldn't be happening at that level and that never happened on any bike my dad was taking care of. I've never seen anybody willing to work as hard as he does... sometimes I wish I had his energy.