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Transcript

Jeremy Burgess · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:18
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:30
  Names like Doohan, Gardner and Rossi have a special place in the history of motorcycle racing and all of them owe a great deal to an unsung Aussie, Jeremy Burgess, a racer turned chief mechanic who's behind more than a dozen world championship wins.
• 0:47
  The proof?
• 0:48
  Just listen to his tally of titles that is unlikely to ever be beaten.
• 0:53
  Mick Doohan, five world titles.
• 0:56
  Wayne Gardner kind of put Aussie riders back on the modern day radar, I guess you could say, with that memorable 500cc world championship win in 87.
• 1:04
  And of course, Valentino Rossi's MotoGP record is phenomenal.
• 1:08
  Seven premier class titles.
• 1:09
  You have been part of all of them.
• 1:12
  And you worked with Freddie Spencer during a title winning year there as well.
• 1:15
  More than a dozen world championships that you've been a part of.
• 1:18
  What is the actual official total for Jeremy Burgess of world titles?
• 1:23
  Well, I always said it's not how many you've got, it's the next one you've got to get.
• 1:28
  But looking back on it now, there was the 14, which, you know, five with Mick, seven with Valentino, one with Wayne and sort of assisted in Freddie's 500 world title in 85.
• 1:41
  You underrate yourself.
• 1:42
  You did more than assist.
• 1:43
  You were very much a part of that.
• 1:44
  We'll talk about it in a moment.
• 1:45
  Where did the love of bikes come from, from an early age, obviously?
• 1:51
  Well, I grew up pretty much where we are right now, and it was small dairy farm properties then, and some of my friends had bikes, and then when I started work, I couldn't really afford to run a car, so the bike was the option.
• 2:05
  And then from that point, you tend to meet like-minded people, and then on one particular day, somebody said, you should come out to the racetrack and have a gallop around, and the rest is history, so to speak.
• 2:18
  What was the bike that you first rode in that set of circumstances?
• 2:22
  The first bike I had was a T500 Suzuki 1969 model.
• 2:27
  First road bike I had.
• 2:28
  I had bikes from mucking around in the paddock.
• 2:32
  And then my first race bike was a 750 Kawasaki H2 in 1972.
• 2:38
  Am I right in saying, though, that you were tinkering from quite a young age?
• 2:41
  I mean, as you and I talk here, we're just outside of Adelaide in South Australia, not far from the vineyard, so there's obviously place and room to do that stuff.
• 2:50
  But you were driving a car, I think, at quite a young age, weren't you?
• 2:54
  Oh, yeah.
• 2:55
  I mean, for sure.
• 2:56
  I was driving at eight tractors and what have you, and had my first car at 12, which cost me £12.10.
• 3:07
  What was it and what became of that car?
• 3:10
  It was a little Ford Anglia and we ended up cutting it up and just driving around the paddock in a chassis, sort of Peter Brock style.
• 3:19
  And we did a lot of that.
• 3:21
  I mean, the vineyards are here now, but in the old days, when I was a boy, they were all dairy farms.
• 3:26
  How did the racing bug really kick in?
• 3:30
  Yeah, I went to a race with a friend once at Mount Gambier and he was racing and I sort of got excited by it.
• 3:37
  And I'd been going out doing these sort of Saturday afternoon track days at Adelaide International, which was a fairly new circuit in those days.
• 3:46
  And I was going faster than some of the guys who...
• 3:49
  were doing quite well in the C grades and what have you.
• 3:53
  So I ended a race and the first race I contested was the Advertiser three hour race and I finished third in the unlimited class.
• 4:02
  Phenomenal.
• 4:02
  And you developed, even back then, quite a reputation for being meticulous with your bike prep.
• 4:09
  Is that something that you enjoyed and was it every aspect that you worked on on the bike?
• 4:14
  I think what you saw on the outside probably wasn't that flash, but the things that actually did work were maintained well and bikes were reliable.
• 4:26
  And I got an enormous enjoyment out of tinkering with a bike in the shed when other blokes were running off with their girlfriends and doing things.
• 4:34
  I was quite happy to be in the shed at night doing things.
• 4:37
  In early 1980, you head to Europe to take in some Grand Prix racing.
• 4:41
  How did that trip come about?
• 4:42
  And was it purely just a spectating mission or had you already kind of had the aspiration of doing something abroad?
• 4:50
  It probably goes back a bit further than that.
• 4:52
  A friend of mine who I used to travel a lot with, Carl Hammersley, was killed here in South Australia on the road, and he was the guy really sort of pushing me to, you know, make up the double to travel interstate and do everything.
• 5:06
  So I probably did a few less races in the end of 78 and 79, and I'd probably say I wasn't really enjoying it that much in a sense.
• 5:17
  I needed something to sort of spark me up and I'd taken up water skiing and sort of met up with a girl who was keen on water skiing so parents had a shack on the river so you know everything had sort of a different focus I even did a lot of scuba diving in those years so I can look back and say I really wasn't totally fixed on motorcycle racing but certainly still very interested in it
• 5:46
  And I did in 1980 pretty much what every young Australian does and said about that trip to Europe or to the mother country as most of us went to.
• 5:59
  My father wisely said to me to sell my bikes because he said they'll be another year older when you get back and more difficult to sell.
• 6:08
  And I think, you know, when I got to the UK and went to some of the races there, you realise very quickly that the level is so much different.
• 6:17
  And as a 27-year-old, it wasn't really going to happen.
• 6:23
  And I was lucky enough to get offered a job at Suzuki GB as a mechanic for Randy Mimola.
• 6:28
  There's a little bit deflating in that sense because you, even though you may have reached a bit of a crossroads with it, young race is obviously doing well.
• 6:37
  You're probably at a little bit of an older stage for, you know, nowadays at least anyway.
• 6:42
  And money, I mean, money's so pivotal to it as well, isn't it?
• 6:45
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:47
  But I think, if anything, the thing I didn't have was any sort of mentoring.
• 6:51
  You know, if I'd had somebody...
• 6:54
  In your corner.
• 6:54
  ..in my corner who had been a racer himself, who, you know, wanted to assist or just help, it could have made a difference.
• 7:06
  I'm not saying it would have made me any better, but I might have lasted a bit longer, and it certainly wouldn't have made me any worse.
• 7:13
  You stayed with a mate during your time there in the UK.
• 7:15
  And did he help you with the introduction to Suzuki?
• 7:18
  And tell us how that all came about.
• 7:19
  Yeah, very much so.
• 7:20
  I left here in February of 1980 with Greg Priddy.
• 7:25
  Greg was going to Europe with his 750.
• 7:28
  And he'd been Australian champion in 79.
• 7:31
  And I just said, well, I'll come on the same flight.
• 7:35
  There was no real connection with me and Greg from that point on.
• 7:39
  I sort of gave him a bit of assistance looking for a van in the UK.
• 7:43
  But I was as much out of my depth there as he was, you know, in being in a different country doing things where the prices were double what we were used to.
• 7:53
  But we're staying with Mick Smith, who had been Geoffrey Sowell's mechanic here in Australia.
• 8:00
  And he had been Steve Parrish's mechanic in Europe the previous year, but he was now about to embark on a career working with Graham Crosby at Suzuki, who was the other rider with Randy.
• 8:15
  So one day Mick sort of said to me, we're looking for a mechanic to work for Randy.
• 8:20
  And I said, I'll put my name down with the other 500 you've got.
• 8:25
  It was really a case of being in the right place at the right time because Rex White, who was the manager of Team Suzuki GB in those days, called me in on a Saturday.
• 8:34
  And I knew Mick, of course.
• 8:37
  I knew Randy from meeting him in New Zealand in 1976.
• 8:42
  And I knew George Vakmanovic, who had been Warren Willings mechanic in Australia in 78.
• 8:47
  And George was an American.
• 8:50
  So, and I knew Cross because I'd raced with Cross.
• 8:53
  So I knew a lot of the people in the team.
• 8:56
  And I think the fact that my RG Suzuki had run pretty well when they were a very fragile sort of motorcycle probably tipped the scales and got me over the line.
• 9:07
  You mentioned some great names there.
• 9:09
  I mean, Steve Parrish a minute ago.
• 9:11
  I mean, he's a teammate and great friend to the late Barry Sheen, Randy Mimola, obviously, Kiwi racer, Graeme Crosby.
• 9:18
  I mean, all great characters.
• 9:21
  And what was it like working in those circles with those guys?
• 9:25
  Yeah.
• 9:26
  Looking back, it was fantastic, of course, and Krozz and I spend a lot of time together now.
• 9:30
  I was in New Zealand only a couple of weeks ago with him.
• 9:33
  But at the time, it was something that was very new to me, Grand Prix racing and working with factory machinery was just sort of every boy's dream.
• 9:47
  I think the most important thing I was worried about was not messing it up.
• 9:50
  To be sort of handed an opportunity like that was pretty much unheard of, I think.
• 9:59
  Working in a factory team, nobody in any of the other teams knew who I was and there I am spannering Randy's bikes in 1980, 81 and 82.
• 10:09
  And he won in Belgium.
• 10:11
  That's the first podium, I think, in a career for you that's, I mean, something like 280 podiums that you contributed to or were a part of during a phenomenal career.
• 10:20
  What did that first podium with him, what memories have you got of that?
• 10:24
  Oh, look, I can remember very much the party that night in Zolda.
• 10:30
  The bike guys are good at that, aren't they?
• 10:31
  Yeah, look, it was a fantastic thing.
• 10:35
  We'd been close on a number of occasions and...
• 10:38
  You know, what amazed me so much was the fact that we'd go testing and break lap records.
• 10:44
  So you knew that Randy was a very, very good rider.
• 10:49
  And there was this sort of expectation that you'd run better lap times everywhere than the Grand Prix of the previous year.
• 10:57
  We got to Zolda, which I think was a last-minute choice for venue because normally it was Spa.
• 11:05
  There'd been issues with Spa in 79 with the condition of the track.
• 11:12
  We were in Zolda and anyway, Luca Nelli and Rossi were on the other Suzuki's and...
• 11:18
  Kenny was on the Yamaha of course and Freddie Spencer even turned up at that race on a 500 Yamaha and Randy was able to to pull off the result which was terrific.
• 11:29
  Was it about reliability for you at that that phase of the game you mentioned the fragile nature of some of the bikes what did you go in with from a you know an approach was that that one of the key things?
• 11:41
  Well
• 11:42
  Well, for sure.
• 11:42
  I mean, I was there and my guidance was coming really from George McManavich, who had experience, and of course Mick Smith and the mechanics on that side.
• 11:52
  So, you know, I was sort of half a step behind them, but trying to stay half a step in front and make sure that...
• 12:01
  You know, we had good bikes, everything was prepared well, and we understood what Randy wanted with the bikes.
• 12:08
  And that's pretty much what I learned earlier.
• 12:11
  It's a lot about the rider feeling as much as it is about the bike, if the rider's happy with it and feels good.
• 12:18
  We know it's not going to be perfect everywhere on the circuit, but it has to be perfect.
• 12:22
  a very very good compromise that allows him to push where he knows he can push.
• 12:27
  You used the word mentor before.
• 12:29
  Who were the mentors for you in the chief mechanic role?
• 12:33
  Was George one of them and certainly Irv Kanemoto was another name that comes up?
• 12:37
  Absolutely.
• 12:37
  You know, George sort of got me started and then when I moved over to Honda in 83, it was George who suggested I go there.
• 12:48
  He had already gone over with Freddie Spencer and Irv was running Freddie in 83 and continued to do so for a number of years.
• 12:57
  But I was asked to do a lot of the testing here at Surface Paradise with Honda in those days because I was Australian and Freddie was the rider.
• 13:06
  So...
• 13:06
  I worked very closely under Irv with George in that period, even though I was working at the Grand Prix for Ron Haslam in sort of 84.
• 13:17
  And we did some races in the US with Freddie.
• 13:20
  We did the Daytona 200 and the Champion 200 at Laguna Seca.
• 13:27
  And Irv asked me to assist them in those races,
• 13:31
  And the following year, he asked me to work on Freddie's 500s with George.
• 13:37
  Yeah, so I learnt under Irv, sort of, I could sort of, it was very interesting because in 1985, Irv, of course, was supervising both the 250 and the 500s.
• 13:47
  So he had a lot on his plate, as did Freddie.
• 13:51
  And a lot of what Irv said to us to change, because you weren't involved in the discussions, you had to sort of reverse think it to sort of say, why are we changing this?
• 14:03
  Freddie must have said that.
• 14:05
  So you start to work, you know, we're changing this because Freddie wants the bike to do a certain thing or a gear ratio to be longer or shorter in a certain area.
• 14:15
  So, yeah, a lot of that was sort of understanding what you're doing and not just doing what you're told.
• 14:21
  In line with that, you pair up with the Wollongong whiz, Wayne Gardner in 1986, fellow Aussie.
• 14:28
  What was he like to work with back then?
• 14:30
  What were your first recollections of Wayne Gardner?
• 14:33
  Oh, look, my first recollections were I didn't have any because I didn't know him, even though we were Australians.
• 14:40
  It goes back a little bit further than that.
• 14:42
  I got a telephone call at the end of 85.
• 14:46
  Irv said that it would be good if I went over and was chief mechanic to Wayne Gardner.
• 14:55
  And I said to Irv, look, mate, I'm really happy working with you and George and I know my stuff, I can get through the work.
• 15:03
  And Irv says, oh, I think it'll be good for you.
• 15:06
  Within sort of 24 hours there was another phone call from the...
• 15:11
  President of Honda Racing, Mr Aguma, and Mr Aguma said that he thought it would be a good idea if I was to be crew chief for Wayne Gardner.
• 15:21
  And I explained to him in the same sort of way I had to Irv that I was very happy with the job I had.
• 15:28
  And he explained in no uncertain terms that if Honda felt that I could do more and I didn't really want to do it, then I wasn't part of what Honda were going to go...
• 15:38
  I wasn't going to be part of Honda going forward.
• 15:40
  That's an ethos thing with the company.
• 15:41
  That's right.
• 15:42
  So pretty much it was take it or there is no job because we know you can...
• 15:47
  They said, we know you can do it.
• 15:50
  And to be fair, I was... Wayne got the short end of the straw because...
• 15:56
  Wayne was coming into a factory team with Freddie Spencer and he needed really good people around him.
• 16:07
  Freddie was expected to be the number one rider.
• 16:10
  and Irv was going to run that side and Wayne was going to learn his craft and we'd be there supporting him.
• 16:18
  Well, unfortunately, Freddie's 86 was a disaster and Wayne became the number one rider.
• 16:25
  So had Wayne perhaps had somebody a little bit more experienced than myself at the time, he might have picked up the 86 world title as well.
• 16:34
  You sound like you're being a little hard on yourself there.
• 16:37
  I think that when you make it to the factory team as a rider, you would expect to get the best of what they've got.
• 16:47
  But I guess we were building to a two-rider team and part of it was taking the talent that Honda had in their mechanical...
• 16:55
  teams which I was one Stuart Shenton was another and you know Wayne bought one guy from Honda Britain with him and we were there to sort of learn in the first year but suddenly we find ourselves in the number one Honda team and we pick up three Grand Prix wins which was really really good and the interest started here in Australia because Wayne was you know winning
• 17:26
  following year he wins it are they stressful times before we get to 87 because it's growth as you said in in the the race team sense there's expectation from the factory the way things work to the factory uh design build do a lot of things and then it sort of works in connection with with you guys to actually implement but to get all that right to get all the ingredients right is not easily done but you were still winning races
• 17:51
  Yes, I mean more from the determination of Wayne because I think the bike in 87 was so superior to the 86 bike.
• 18:01
  The difference was just incredible but the engineers at Honda had seen the effort Wayne was putting in and most of the time his feet were off the foot pegs and they realised that their bike wasn't going to be good enough going forward.
• 18:15
  And they developed the bike for 87, and it was pretty much untouchable all year.
• 18:21
  We're talking about the NSR 500, which is an icon in machine terms, the record of it.
• 18:27
  It debuted in 84.
• 18:30
  To get back to your point on Wayne Gardner, I reckon I can recall an early conversation with him about the bikes.
• 18:35
  And I think he used the word evil, that in the early days they were an evil machine.
• 18:39
  Why?
• 18:40
  Why would that like that?
• 18:42
  I don't think Honda's chassis development was as good as it could be.
• 18:48
  I mean, if there's something that makes me immensely proud is that I worked on every one of the NSR 500s from the very beginning and...
• 18:57
  to make it the championship winning bike that Wayne won on and then that Mick won five titles on and Valentino finished off on that bike in 2001 and winning the title.
• 19:06
  So to see the evolution and change in that motorcycle, albeit still 500cc, and to see it become the bike of choice for anybody who wanted to win the championship, it's a pretty special piece of history when I look back on those years.
• 19:23
  Reminisce with me a little bit more because it's a 500cc two-stroke.
• 19:27
  What did it weigh?
• 19:28
  What kind of power?
• 19:29
  And can you recall some of the speeds perhaps at places like Hockenheim and Monza which have some massive straights where you can really unleash that two-stroke?
• 19:39
  Yeah, look, the power was phenomenal.
• 19:42
  There were evolutionary things that happened.
• 19:47
  In 98, we went to an unleaded fuel base and lost a bit of horsepower, but the last bike I built for Mick as a 500 produced 196 horsepower.
• 19:57
  Wow.
• 20:00
  And, you know, there was no electronics.
• 20:03
  So they were pretty lethal pieces of equipment.
• 20:07
  200 miles an hour, first recorded in Hockenheim in 91 or 2.
• 20:14
  They were very high speeds, but at the same time, that high speed didn't always equate into winning the World Championship because the Yamaha didn't have that speed and Wayne Rainey was winning on the circuits where speed wasn't the absolute...
• 20:28
  necessity and it still happens a little bit today I think with the Ducati you see the extra speed but it doesn't translate into the world titles that perhaps it should so Honda got their head around the what they called the big bang or the media dubbed the big bang in 92
• 20:46
  and we got back some of that acceleration off the shorter corners to sort of gain a meter off every corner which gives you 15 13 to 15 meters when you enter the straight and so it negated that necessity to have the power but made the bike a lot easier to ride and mick and wayne felt the bike was slow but when they looked at their lap times they were quite impressed and it just seemed too easy
• 21:10
  You mentioned Mick, Michael Sidney Doohan.
• 21:13
  We will get to him in a moment.
• 21:14
  I just want to reflect on the 87 title win for Wayne.
• 21:19
  And you said, I mean, it was huge back here in Australia, the reaction to it and the follow-on that has happened from that, from Mick Doohan.
• 21:28
  I mean, there's all kinds of names, even Casey Stoner in more recent times.
• 21:31
  It was a huge thing for us in this part of the world, wasn't it?
• 21:35
  Absolutely.
• 21:35
  It was, looking back on it, even sort of in 1990, 1989, 88, the interest generated initially by, I think, SBS, and then when it was poached by Channel 9, you started to think there may be some commercial value in this.
• 21:56
  And it went on and on, and then we had Bob Barnard refurbish Phillip Island for the first Grand Prix in 89,
• 22:05
  a little bit of an issue with tobacco advertising and we've got another circuit built at Eastern Creek so if you look at the knock-on effect from Wayne Gardner's efforts in 86 right through you know it's fantastic and Mick carried it on Casey Stone has carried it on
• 22:23
  Other guys in other classes have been part of it.
• 22:26
  Anthony West, people like that, they've all snuck a Grand Prix win in.
• 22:30
  Jack Miller now is our next chance to go on with it.
• 22:34
  And who will be the next?
• 22:35
  I don't know.
• 22:36
  But the interest is here.
• 22:38
  I know that from the people that I associate with today, and they're not all motorcycle people, but they all are interested in Sunday night,
• 22:48
  Usually when it's not at four o'clock in the morning.
• 22:52
  But they all know what's going on and you see it on the byline on the news in the morning as to who's won the Grand Prix.
• 22:59
  So there's a definite interest in it.
• 23:02
  And I think people that aren't necessarily motorsport people understand that these guys are heroes, what they're doing.
• 23:08
  And when they go out, go wheel to wheel at 340, 50 k's an hour and do what they do, it is spectacular, mate, isn't it?
• 23:18
  Oh, and even to me it can be scary.
• 23:21
  You know, you stand on the rise at Mugello and have bikes go past you at 340 kilometres an hour.
• 23:27
  You're 20 yards away from them, but they're going straight past.
• 23:31
  Your eyes just can't keep up with the speed of it.
• 23:34
  It's awesome.
• 23:35
  I mean, it could be said, do we need to go that fast to race motorcycles?
• 23:42
  But, you know, as long as there's motorcycles, there'll be guys who'll race them.
• 23:46
  Some sections of the media called him dead by June, I think, wasn't it?
• 23:51
  Mick Doohan.
• 23:52
  Can you remember your first impressions of him?
• 23:53
  And was he a wild child?
• 23:55
  What was he like?
• 23:55
  Yeah.
• 23:58
  In 89, Mick was, you know, he was great, but he didn't have the experience of the guys in front of him, but he wanted to run at their pace.
• 24:07
  And I remember one instance in Jerez in Spain in 89.
• 24:12
  Mick came back into the garage after the race had started and he'd crashed and a bit of straw bale hanging out of his helmet and I said to him, what happened?
• 24:27
  They were getting away from me, so I shifted into fifth.
• 24:31
  They were a series of fourth gear corners.
• 24:35
  But the beautiful thing about Mick was that he never made the same mistake twice.
• 24:41
  You would look at him on the racetrack and where you saw to where he got, it was absolutely magnificent to watch.
• 24:51
  He had the other guys beaten before they started for a long period of time there.
• 24:56
  You're all Aussies, so how did the transition from Gardner to Doohan and Burgess and Co, how did that all unfold and what was that like?
• 25:04
  Well, at the end of 88, Honda came to me again and they just said, we'd like you to do with another young Australian rider, Mick Doohan, what you did with Wayne Gardner.
• 25:18
  And I couldn't quite understand the logic of why they wanted me to do that, but they asked me to go over to a race meeting in Winton where Mick was riding, and the first person I saw as I went through the gate was Warren Willing.
• 25:34
  And Warren said, I said, hi, how are you?
• 25:39
  He said, what are you doing here?
• 25:42
  I said oh no I'm just having a look and he said no you're not he said don't worry he signed for Honda and the Japanese just wanted me to go there and sort of show an interest you know we didn't discuss it but I met Mick for the first time
• 25:58
  Then we went up to Orrin Park for another meeting, I think, and that was pretty much it.
• 26:07
  But yeah, Mick was, he learnt so much that year.
• 26:11
  When he injured his finger in the Suzuka 8-hour race, he came back to Australia and he did a lot of training for a few weeks with the...
• 26:20
  triathlon boys on the Gold Coast.
• 26:22
  And when he turned up in Guyana, he was a completely different physical specimen.
• 26:27
  And so he knew what he had to do.
• 26:30
  And I think for some of the riders...
• 26:32
  These days, the first season of having to sort of race on Sunday, think about it again on Tuesday, drive your motor home to another event, there was no break like there was in Australia.
• 26:44
  You didn't have a month between events, go back and play with your mates and then come out and race your bike.
• 26:49
  It was serious business and testing in between.
• 26:53
  And I think a lot of the guys just wanted the season to be over.
• 26:57
  And I think Mick could see that he was going to be a lot better than he was in his first season because he knew he had to be.
• 27:03
  He's mellowed a bit in post-race life, but he's at the peak of it.
• 27:10
  A very determined human being, wasn't he?
• 27:11
  Absolutely.
• 27:12
  He knew what he wanted to do and nothing was going to stop him doing it.
• 27:18
  Very, very intense.
• 27:19
  It's very handy to have somebody sometimes to vent his frustration on.
• 27:28
  Unfortunately it wasn't me very often, but Dickie copped his fair share of it.
• 27:34
  But no, I mean, I'm just so happy for Mick and for Wayne that they achieved what they wanted to achieve.
• 27:43
  We'll get to his five world titles in a moment, but that phase of your career working with Mick Doohan had the full gamut of emotions, mate, didn't it?
• 27:50
  Because he was badly injured in 92.
• 27:53
  The operation was botched, gangrene, set in in the leg.
• 27:58
  Did you think that it was all over before he'd even won his first world title?
• 28:01
  And he was damn close to winning it that year too, wasn't he?
• 28:03
  Oh, absolutely.
• 28:04
  You know, it's...
• 28:07
  Yeah, it's a year you'll forget for the rest of your life.
• 28:11
  You can't.
• 28:12
  Yeah, it was an absolute tragedy.
• 28:15
  We were 57-odd points in front.
• 28:18
  Wayne Rainey was on a plane back to America.
• 28:20
  Mick crashes in us and in the second practice, Kevin Schwanz also.
• 28:25
  uh a bike limps back into the paddock with water oozing out from underneath it so you pretty much got a good idea of what's going on who caused it uh mick said to me he said he he broke his leg by rolling over um the leg was trapped under the under the bike so it was like a spiral fracture low down on the ankle um and then
• 28:47
  It was sort of badly handled from there.
• 28:50
  And to see Mick in hospital in Bologna with the necrosis having set in and the bone exposed and then to see him go through the leg crossover to save his foot, you know, it's just staggering, you know.
• 29:08
  It was a remarkable decision for them to go down that path and to save him, to save the leg in that regard, wasn't it?
• 29:16
  Yes, well, I think, you know, Dr Costa could see that there was not enough blood flow to the foot and this was away.
• 29:24
  Mick was keen to get back to race and perhaps in a sense that was what...
• 29:29
  Drove him.
• 29:30
  Yeah, I mean, the fact that he wanted it plated immediately and so he could get back so quickly.
• 29:36
  the doctor may have been put under more pressure than he was capable of handling.
• 29:41
  And, yeah, look, it was just a series of errors, I think.
• 29:47
  And fortunately, though, the bright side was that Mick was able to recover satisfactorily to win five world titles.
• 29:59
  This is Greg Rust, and you're listening to Rusty's Garage.
• 30:02
  More with Jeremy Burgess in a moment.
• 30:06
  In this series, I speak to some of the most passionate riders, drivers, designers and collectors I know.
• 30:13
  Like Supercar's Hall of Famer, Glenn Seaton, the two-time champion who opens up on a frightening crash in the latter part of his career that he never really recovered from.
• 30:23
  It sort of really rattled me, this...
• 30:26
  I suppose I'm a person that when those sort of things are put in place or those things happen to you, you then start to think about death.
• 30:34
  And those things, once you're a race driver, you start to think about those things all the time or when you get under another situation when the race is wet again and you're in that wet condition, you're thinking about those things.
• 30:46
  So I probably struggled from then on.
• 30:49
  Listen to the full episode with Glenn Seaton here on Rusty's Garage.
• 30:58
  double clutch, mainly for shifting gears in vehicles with an unsynchronized manual gearbox.
• 31:03
  Instead of shifting once, the driver engages the clutch, shifts to neutral, releases the clutch, then engages it again for the final part of the shift, also known as the double shuffle.
• 31:13
  Did any of that make sense?
• 31:16
  It's been described as one of the greatest comebacks in world sport.
• 31:19
  Not many work out.
• 31:20
  I mean, doing to come back and win five in a row, as you said, I mean, Honda clearly had a good bike, but you were big on that whole 80-20 theory, weren't you?
• 31:30
  Just explain that.
• 31:32
  Yeah, look, I think the bike was 20% of it in those days, and the rider was 80%.
• 31:39
  The bikes were all difficult to ride.
• 31:42
  But the riders who had the fitness and the skill and the stamina, more than anything, to be still competitive towards the end of the race, the Eddie Lawsons, the McDoans, the Wayne Gardeners, you know, the Spencers, they were the guys.
• 31:55
  And, of course, Wayne Rainey and...
• 31:58
  so forth other guys could win races but these guys could win multiple races and hence championships um not an easy not an easy craft in anyone's language but those guys could do it what modifications did you make you know along the way to the bike that perhaps helped him did you did you do things that helps suit him
• 32:17
  I think the thing that was most important was that Mick could see that the 93 bike wasn't as good as the 92 bike.
• 32:25
  And he could see that visually by watching Ito and Daryl.
• 32:29
  And they're always a metre offline.
• 32:32
  The fuel injection that we had in the beginning of the season didn't work.
• 32:36
  And he battled through 93, never happy with the bike.
• 32:42
  But I think to a degree, there was a lot of us thinking that perhaps the leg was more the issue than perhaps the bike.
• 32:52
  However, once we started in 1994, we did some testing and Mick Stool wasn't happy with the bike.
• 32:58
  It was better in some ways, but there were things that needed to be done.
• 33:02
  And we went to a test in Harama and we tried the suspension from 1992 in the front and it was...
• 33:11
  and transformed the bike completely and then Mick said right let's put the 92 shock in the rear and they did that and away we went and we'd been battling prior to that the Japanese workings of is it the same as last year yes yes it's the same yeah
• 33:30
  Yes, yes, we think it gives the same character as last year, but it's made in a different way.
• 33:36
  And Mick was sensitive enough to be able to pick all this up.
• 33:39
  And once we got that changed, he just dominated 94.
• 33:43
  Darryl often talks about, Darryl Beattie you mentioned before often talks about that understanding what the Japanese are wanting to do with the development of the bike but ensuring that it was what the rider needed and that's a juggle that isn't it?
• 33:55
  It is, you know, to control engineers and that was the good thing that Mick did in 93.
• 34:01
  Essentially he told, he and Aguma,
• 34:04
  came up with a, they said, we won't change the bike for you.
• 34:08
  We want you, but we'll keep the bike the same, which we did.
• 34:11
  Then we changed the suspension only, and the rest is history, so to speak.
• 34:16
  So we were close.
• 34:18
  We had to control from then on what the Japanese did.
• 34:22
  The fact that Mick wasn't changing the bike a lot didn't excite the chassis department in Honda because suddenly...
• 34:30
  But clearly you'd finessed it.
• 34:31
  You'd got it the way you wanted it.
• 34:32
  It was still a 500cc V4 engine producing more or less the same horsepower, so radical changes weren't necessary.
• 34:39
  And Mr Hortori, who ran the chassis department, sort of had to let about nine guys go out of the chassis department because there was nothing to do, you know.
• 34:49
  And...
• 34:51
  The bike didn't change until Valentino changed the engine position for 2001.
• 34:56
  We'll talk more about Valentino in a second, but that was a phenomenal period.
• 35:01
  In the last two questions, you've rattled off some incredible names.
• 35:05
  Schwantz, Lawson, Rainey, Doohan.
• 35:08
  You can throw Darryl Beattie into that mix.
• 35:10
  It was a great chapter, mate, wasn't it, for the sport?
• 35:13
  It was.
• 35:14
  You never...
• 35:16
  You never really quite knew who was going to win.
• 35:19
  We'd put Mick on pole position and, well, if he wasn't on pole position, he was a man who was pretty aggro about the situation.
• 35:34
  And we used to... How did you go about controlling that?
• 35:36
  How did you deal with that?
• 35:38
  There's a sort of comedic value to it because when we would get him onto pole position, he'd go into the first corner in sixth.
• 35:47
  And then he'd win the race.
• 35:48
  But if he qualified second, third or fourth, it was like the end of the world.
• 35:53
  Were you reminding him of this?
• 35:55
  Well, you didn't say too much to Mick.
• 35:58
  You just said it amongst the boys in the garage.
• 36:03
  But Mick now is probably, as far as motorcycling is concerned, a lot more relaxed than he was in those days.
• 36:14
  We have some good laughs about it.
• 36:16
  People talk about it being a mind game, JB, as much as the bike, as much as the physical aspect of the riding and the stamina that you talked about before that you need.
• 36:25
  Doin and Valentino Rossi seem like they are masters of that side?
• 36:30
  Are they, from what you've witnessed, or is it more that their record, their presence, perhaps make rivals stumble in some respect, that they are a little bit daunted by those guys?
• 36:41
  Well, I think it can be a combination of both.
• 36:45
  I mean, without question, you look at 54 Grand Prix wins for Mick and somewhere near 115, 116 MotoGP wins for Valentino.
• 36:56
  They're better than the other guys.
• 36:57
  There's no question.
• 36:58
  And Mick, in the five years he was there, at the top, he won a lot of Grands.
• 37:04
  He didn't just win the championship.
• 37:06
  except for the one year perhaps that Daryl pushed him on the Suzuki.
• 37:10
  And Mick made a few mistakes earlier in the season that year that he perhaps shouldn't have made.
• 37:16
  And Daryl, being an Australian, probably put a little bit of extra pressure on Mick.
• 37:23
  And Daryl was probably laughing all the time.
• 37:25
  Knowing what Daryl's like, I'm sure that was the case.
• 37:30
  Injury ultimately ended Mick's reign.
• 37:32
  Yeah.
• 37:32
  Did you contemplate stopping then, or how did the whole Valentino Rossi thing come about?
• 37:38
  No, I mean, it's been reported that I contemplated, but a lot of things have been reported that I said.
• 37:45
  And, no, I hadn't even thought about it.
• 37:47
  When Mick was hurt in Jerez in...
• 37:49
  In 1999, I essentially went home.
• 37:52
  There wasn't Mac to do.
• 37:53
  We didn't know when Mick was going to come back.
• 37:54
  And then around August, Mick sort of made the decision that he wasn't going to return.
• 38:00
  Mick was then at that point going to run a team with money from Shell, I believe.
• 38:05
  And at the end of the season, Honda let me go.
• 38:08
  And they said, you can go and work with Mick Doohan in his team.
• 38:14
  And I thought, oh, that'll be all right.
• 38:15
  So I'll still be under the Honda banner.
• 38:18
  And then a couple of the other blokes in the team had decided to do the same thing, or Honda had told them, Dickie, for one, that it wasn't required and that we're shipping you over to Mick Doohan's team, which was good.
• 38:35
  Nobody worried.
• 38:36
  It was still in Grand Prix, still in the Honda thing, probably have better working conditions and more money, so it was all going to look pretty good.
• 38:45
  And then it all fell about and I remember Alex Briggs, who was also one of the guys who'd come across, ringing me up and saying, JB, what are we going to do?
• 38:56
  And I said, well,
• 38:59
  I was sweating a bit because these kids had mortgages and families and everything else and they'd made the call to come across.
• 39:08
  And I sort of got my head together and I worked out that they didn't have anybody to run Valentino if the McDewan team had collapsed anyway.
• 39:17
  So essentially they weren't going to let Valentino go and they needed the people to run him.
• 39:23
  He came in incredibly well credentialed, mate, from a 1-2-5 title win, a 2-50 title win before he joined you guys.
• 39:31
  How polished was he as a rider at that time?
• 39:33
  And what were your first sort of recollections of working with one of the greatest of all time now?
• 39:38
  Absolutely brilliant.
• 39:39
  There's no question about it.
• 39:40
  He, from the first moment, he got on the bike.
• 39:43
  his ability to understand.
• 39:45
  And you have to remember that Valentino was coming from an Italian team with an Italian bike to race with an Australian team on a Japanese bike.
• 39:55
  He was the one making the biggest commitment.
• 39:57
  And I said to the guys, I said, the only way this is going to get messed up is if we mess it up.
• 40:02
  So we've got to make sure we give him exactly what he wants when he wants it.
• 40:09
  I have to thank Aprilia and all those people for supporting
• 40:12
  schooling Valentino and shaping him in the right way and when you get to meet his parents you understand that you know they are very level-headed people and Valentino had a very good grounding all the way through just brilliant the moment he got on the bike he everything he brought from his days in the 125 to the days in the 250 like simple things like getting off the bike and
• 40:36
  telling me what the temperature is and i say you don't have to do that you know and talking about too much pressure on this helmet because the screen's not in the right position because he's learned that on the 125s you know so he knew how to maximize every little bit of the bike to make it how he had been taught that it should be having
• 40:56
  Myself never worked on 125s.
• 40:58
  You know, this was all something new to me.
• 41:00
  I used to say to Mick and Wayne at Hockenheim and the high-speed circuits to get your feet up on the pegs on the straights rather than have a couple of air brakes hanging out the side and that would pick you up two, three, four kilometres an hour.
• 41:12
  But Valentino was doing this on the 125 and automatically.
• 41:16
  So a very, very unique young man and an absolute pleasure to work with.
• 41:21
  That must have made you guys feel better in the sense that there was all this uncertainty going in.
• 41:26
  And here you had this superstar on the rise, everything coming together.
• 41:30
  And he was, you know, gelling straight away, wasn't he?
• 41:34
  Absolutely.
• 41:35
  It was a fantastic little team.
• 41:37
  You know, we had a beer sponsor, which was important for the Australians.
• 41:42
  We weren't allowed to be part of the factory team.
• 41:45
  I had to put the team together with Dick and Alex Briggs, and I hired Gary Coleman from Newcastle to be the helper and truck driver.
• 41:57
  So it was pretty much an all-Australian team.
• 42:01
  And we had one Japanese mechanic, sorry, engineer with us, and Bernard Anzio, Wayne Rainey's old mechanic, who was a Belgian.
• 42:10
  And we were based in Belgium, so everything just clicked.
• 42:14
  And...
• 42:16
  Because of the contract with Honda and Repsol, we couldn't have anything to do with them.
• 42:23
  And we'd watch the chaos in the garages next door and we just plugged away with our first year Grand Prix 500 rider and listened to what he said.
• 42:31
  And we finished second in the championship.
• 42:34
  Just quietly making noise next door and doing your own thing.
• 42:37
  Well, they looked on very closely, though, didn't they?
• 42:41
  Yeah, they were in a lot of trouble.
• 42:43
  Alex Greville had won the championship.
• 42:45
  They had Sede Jibanao as well and Okada, I think, if my memory serves me.
• 42:50
  But, you know, they couldn't find the cause of why they didn't think the bike was any good and they changed everything from swing arm to frames and it was an engine character in the porting.
• 43:03
  So everything they'd changed, we just kept...
• 43:05
  Valentino on the same bike got the right porting in the cylinders and a little bit later than the other guys but we hadn't made the confusion they'd made earlier on and we had a good bike and the Japanese could see that the future was to back Valentino going forward.
• 43:24
  Among the many special places he has in the record books, he got the last 500cc world title, then the first of the new four-stroke era MotoGP.
• 43:33
  Did you miss the 500cc two-strokes or were you just impressed by the new direction, the new bikes?
• 43:38
  Yes.
• 43:39
  I didn't miss them.
• 43:40
  I mean, you look back and you miss things about them, but I'd worked with the four-strokes, the RVF and the eight-hour races, which was a very, very special bike built by Honda, and I could see how good these four-strokes were going to be, and I always looked at the bike as just being a tool for allowing the rider to achieve what he wants to achieve.
• 44:01
  Two-stroke or four-stroke didn't worry me much at all.
• 44:06
  And away we went, you know, with the Mr Yoshimura from Honda got me involved in the RC211.
• 44:15
  It was one of the first people to see that it was a V5, which was pretty impressive.
• 44:21
  And we tested it after the eight hour race in 2001.
• 44:27
  And there were some significant things that Valentino didn't like about it.
• 44:32
  Honda had built it with very little cowling and very little wind protection because they knew how powerful it was and they knew that they didn't need to go too far.
• 44:41
  But it was very difficult for Valentino to ride it, talking about the pressure on his helmet, that sort of thing.
• 44:47
  Did that require wind tunnel stuff?
• 44:49
  What did you do?
• 44:50
  No, we started lifting the screens higher and higher, but Honda didn't want to do it because the styling department was involved and there was various issues like that.
• 44:58
  You weren't just dealing with the race department at Honda, you're dealing with what's this bike going to do for our sales.
• 45:05
  And so they'd gone on a concept and to Yoshimura's credit, we had a list of nine things which were seriously no good.
• 45:14
  as far as we were concerned.
• 45:15
  By the time we tested it in December in Jerez that year, all but one of them had been fixed.
• 45:21
  And Valentino had indicated that he wanted to ride his 500 in the 2002 championship.
• 45:28
  And Yoshimura was smart enough to say...
• 45:31
  to the engineering group and to myself that it's our job to make the four stroke so that Valentino has no choice so he has to go that way and that's exactly what happened he he catto the the rider who was um
• 45:47
  unfortunately killed some years later in in suzuka was riding the 500 at the end of 2001 in jerez and valentino cat was on the four stroke the rc211 and he came into me and he said i'm gonna have to ride the four stroke
• 46:04
  He said the advantage of the two-stroke in the corner and in the braking area is outweighed by the fact that I don't pass the two-stroke in that area.
• 46:16
  I pass it in third and fourth gear on the straight.
• 46:19
  So the power was just a no-brainer.
• 46:23
  Although the bike was going to be more difficult to stop and turn, probably not as nice off the corner initially in its infancy.
• 46:31
  he would have been gobbled up by everybody on the fourth straight on the third, fourth, fifth gear shifts.
• 46:37
  So from that point we tried to make sure that we could make the RC211 as comfortable for Valentino as we could.
• 46:46
  In addition to the engine change and the power that you talk about there, what other technical innovations were you seeing come in at that time?
• 46:53
  Because it was a great period of growth for bike racing, wasn't it?
• 46:56
  It was.
• 46:57
  The Japanese, through their four-strike technology and Formula One, they knew what was available.
• 47:04
  It was only at a test before the last race of the season in 2002 that we got fly-by-wire throttle with traction control and Valentino came in and said, don't tell anybody about this.
• 47:22
  It's almost cheating.
• 47:26
  Were you staggered about what the bike could do when you look back at different things?
• 47:31
  I was, well, having worked with four strokes, you know, I wasn't staggered, but I think the people who had the biggest job was Michelin, the tyre company, to develop tyres so quickly for these bikes.
• 47:43
  And they did a magnificent job.
• 47:44
  They were still having to build tyres for the 500s because they could run.
• 47:50
  in the same race at that time but uh you know the four stroke was clearly an advantage over the two stroke so very quickly the manufacturers built more four strokes um and um yeah we uh away we went but their technology
• 48:08
  That was the biggest thing that year was that.
• 48:11
  And, you know, working with slipper clutches, which, to be fair, the Honda one at that time wasn't particularly good.
• 48:19
  The corner entry was difficult.
• 48:21
  Sometimes we didn't use a slipper clutch.
• 48:23
  We used a normal fixed clutch.
• 48:25
  But that could bring problems mid-corner.
• 48:28
  So, you know, we had to refine everything.
• 48:32
  So it was a good time for all.
• 48:33
  Valentino stayed with Honda until the end of 2003 before the high-profile move, the defection, if you like, to Yamaha.
• 48:42
  How much of Valentino's decision contributed to what you ultimately decided to do?
• 48:48
  Because you had been with Honda for 20 years.
• 48:52
  That mustn't have been an easy call to make to decide to leave.
• 48:56
  No, it wasn't easy.
• 48:57
  I mean, I was, when the rumours were getting around that Valentino was leaving and Valentino had sort of tentatively spoken to me and said, you know, if I was to leave, what would you do?
• 49:10
  And, you know, I didn't sort of...
• 49:14
  Commit.
• 49:15
  Didn't think, you know, why are you going to leave?
• 49:18
  You've just won three world titles.
• 49:20
  We've got the bike, we've got the team.
• 49:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:23
  And when it started to get more serious, I was given the brief by Tachikawa of Honda to convince Valentino to stay.
• 49:31
  And, you know, we know now in hindsight that Valentino had signed an agreement, I think as early as April or something, to go to Yamaha or wherever.
• 49:43
  Where did Honda err there in your opinion?
• 49:46
  You know, pretty much they said...
• 49:51
  that they were going to build more RC211s and they were going to give them to more riders and all bikes would be the same.
• 49:58
  Valentino felt, quite rightly, that he'd won them three championships and he perhaps deserved something a little bit better, which, to be perfectly honest, he would have got.
• 50:09
  But Honda can't say that when they're trying to farm these bikes out to customers.
• 50:13
  They're all going to be the same.
• 50:16
  Anyway, I think there was some issues.
• 50:19
  Valentino wasn't happy and he made the decision to go.
• 50:23
  And when I asked him, well, I said to him exactly what I just said before, you know, we've got the bike, we've got the rider, we've got the team.
• 50:30
  And his words to me were, it's more than that, Gerry.
• 50:33
  Okay, so we end up in Japan and this is where it really came to a head.
• 50:38
  Valentino was given the Honda contract to sign and had it all weekend and before the warm-up on Sunday morning he brings the contract down and hands it to Carlo Ferrani who looks at it and it's not signed.
• 50:57
  hands it to Honda, who look at it, and it's not signed.
• 51:00
  And I believe the Honda people said, oh, but it's not signed.
• 51:05
  This is heavy, mate, on race day.
• 51:07
  Yeah, and Carlisle says, yeah, it's not signed.
• 51:10
  And I think then they realised that he was gone.
• 51:13
  But I think the smart ones knew probably before, because I don't believe the factories don't communicate to a degree.
• 51:21
  But from my side, getting back to the original question, I went into his cabin in that morning and he was a bit down in the dumps.
• 51:30
  You know, it was been a high-pressure weekend for him.
• 51:32
  We got chatting and I said...
• 51:36
  or something, he said, well, if you think it'll make any difference, I'll come with you.
• 51:40
  And Ucho and him, the next minute, they're like euphoric.
• 51:45
  You know, he might not think that now, but he was absolutely, you know, that was like the biggest relief he could have had.
• 51:54
  You clearly didn't decide that on a whim, though, mate.
• 51:56
  That wasn't an easy call.
• 51:57
  I did.
• 51:57
  I said it straight off the top of my head, you know.
• 52:00
  Wow.
• 52:01
  And I wasn't really doing anything at Honda than I hadn't done before.
• 52:04
  It's just a repetitive exercise.
• 52:07
  This would be a new challenge.
• 52:08
  But I did realise clearly that crossing that bridge to Yamaha, if it doesn't work, there's no going back.
• 52:17
  So I went into the garage and I said to the boys, Gary and Alex and Bernie, I said, I'm going to Yamaha.
• 52:27
  And Briggsie said, well, if you're going, JB, I'm going too.
• 52:33
  I'll learn more over there with you than I will by staying here.
• 52:38
  So from that point, next race was Phillip Island, and we had the clandestine meetings with the Yamaha hierarchy, and the rest is road race history, so to speak.
• 52:51
  Amazing.
• 52:52
  The Yamaha is immediately successful in Rossi's hands.
• 52:56
  It seems like fairy tale stuff, but in some ways, was that proof of your 80-20 theory?
• 53:00
  Because it wasn't quite the perfect bike to begin with, was it?
• 53:03
  No, it wasn't, but it wasn't that bad either.
• 53:07
  I think what Yamaha had at the time was perhaps not the Yamaha, the Yamaha side was trying to help their riders.
• 53:13
  Their riders at the time were Max Biaggi and Millandry.
• 53:16
  Mark and Millandry.
• 53:18
  Mark and Millandry.
• 53:19
  And on the other side of the garage I think they had Carlos Cheka and... That's right, they did too.
• 53:26
  Arbe.
• 53:26
  Arbe.
• 53:29
  And we got there and I went to a test in November in Sepang, but they wouldn't let Valentino test.
• 53:38
  Honda wouldn't let Valentino test until January.
• 53:41
  But the whole thing was...
• 53:45
  Very much well organised by Yamaha.
• 53:48
  We can deliver this by this date, this by that date, this by that date, but we promise we'll do it.
• 53:54
  Okay.
• 53:55
  And they had some systems like guillotine-type slide arrangements in their throttle bodies, which are not good on a motorcycle but are quite good on a Formula 2 car.
• 54:07
  So there were things that I could obviously see were needed to be, not could be fixed, but they also knew, which is, you know, I think it's out there in the public domain.
• 54:16
  Everybody should know it.
• 54:17
  So they got on the wrong track in some ways by trying to help the riders.
• 54:22
  too much but probably most of the credit would have to go to Mr Furusawa who was pretty much the Mr Fix-It who looked at all of obviously had the ear of the board and he could look at all the factions of Yamaha that worked and didn't work and could pretty much say we need to spend another 30 million over there or whatever.
• 54:44
  So, yeah, we get into testing and Valentino does about eight laps on it and he says, you know, it's not so bad.
• 54:55
  And, you know, I'd been hearing from the Italian mechanics that were working in the garage that we'd never beat Honda and everything else.
• 55:03
  I see a bit of this happening right now in Yamaha.
• 55:06
  It's the same listening to what I hear.
• 55:08
  It's the same spiral.
• 55:09
  It's a belief that other people have got better than what you've got.
• 55:12
  That has to be dispelled straight away.
• 55:15
  And that's what I started to do.
• 55:17
  I started to say to these Italian mechanics, how do you know that when you don't know what Honda have got?
• 55:22
  Yeah.
• 55:23
  But they were just going, oh, you won't beat Honda.
• 55:27
  And I said, you know, people came up to me and they said, you'll never win with an inline four against a V4.
• 55:37
  And I go to all my engineering books and I go, well, there's nothing in here that says that.
• 55:42
  I've got less friction in an inline four.
• 55:46
  We had a 1600 cast iron BMW engine in Formula One in the turbo years spanking everything that was out there.
• 55:54
  So, you know, the engine's not the issue.
• 56:00
  So, you know, we just started work.
• 56:02
  And I clearly remember Valentino, as I said, saying it's not so bad.
• 56:07
  He said, but I'm locking the brake.
• 56:11
  And I said, fantastic.
• 56:13
  That's easy fix.
• 56:14
  And he looked at me and he said, you know, in his blank stare, as did the Japanese engineer.
• 56:21
  I said, well, engineers, because there was 30 of them around him after his first ride.
• 56:27
  And I said, well, that's the only part of this motorcycle that's the same as we had on the Honda.
• 56:34
  320 Brembo brakes.
• 56:36
  And we never locked the Honda brakes.
• 56:38
  wheel I said we're going to lift the bike 20 millimetres and the Japanese sucking their teeth we lift it 20 millimetres he said perfect he said that's it uh the Japanese Yamaha chassis guys are very clever so the next test we did we had another 20 mil in the swing arm so if they like to keep the front axle centre position rear wheel position centre of mass yes in a particular
• 57:05
  So if you lengthen one, you've got to do something to the other.
• 57:09
  So that was pretty much it.
• 57:11
  And then tested at Phillip Island in 2004.
• 57:15
  The new throttle bodies came.
• 57:18
  Went across to Wilcombe in South Africa and qualified fastest in the first practice, fastest in the second, third, warm up.
• 57:28
  We only had to replicate it in the race, which was the big unknown.
• 57:32
  And probably saw one of the best battles between two riders.
• 57:37
  Max Biagi and Valentino and Valentino on top.
• 57:40
  It was a phenomenal race, unforgettable in many respects.
• 57:44
  What did that mean to Yamaha and what did it mean to even to Valentino, I guess, you know, such a significant break from Honda and to go across and to achieve that with a different manufacturer?
• 57:55
  Look, it meant a lot to Valentino and it certainly excited us.
• 58:00
  The Yamaha Japanese that I work very closely with had expected to win two or three races towards the end of the season.
• 58:10
  Okay.
• 58:10
  So they just went, you know, the party that night was pretty good.
• 58:16
  But it was only one race.
• 58:18
  You know, we had to see what could happen.
• 58:20
  And having come from that brilliant race in Wellcome to go to Jerez in the rain, you know, the engine characteristic of this Yamaha, which allowed Valentino to get off the line very well with a very torquey body.
• 58:34
  and caused us horrible problems in the rain.
• 58:37
  So, you know, I set about then realising that we could be going for the championship at Phillip Island in the rain.
• 58:47
  And we practised in the rain, but fortunately we never had another wet race ever.
• 58:53
  in the season, but we had a lot of wet practices.
• 58:56
  So we were able to work on the bike, get the power of the engine, the power delivery more linear to the throttle for the engines for 2005.
• 59:06
  So, you know, we had the...
• 59:10
  two groups the groups working to win in 2004 which was the people with round eyes yes and the group from japan wanting to win in 2005 which was yamaha's 50th anniversary which was part of the whole process of push but i could see them starting to give up uh thinking about giving up
• 59:33
  and not continuing to develop for the 2004 bike and focus everything on 2005 and yet we were within sight of winning the championship and i was really really scared that they were going to because all the engineering group was pretty much working for the future it was quite a worrying period how'd you control all that or handle it with it
• 59:56
  Yeah, well, you know, I think you spoke to people and they nodded their heads, but you didn't really know if what they were going to be doing that.
• 1:00:06
  And there was no way we were going to win the race in Qatar in that heat because we had fuel pumps on top of engines and the bike was pretty much incapable of running the whole distance.
• 1:00:17
  So when the fuel in the tank, the last few litres got very hot,
• 1:00:22
  the fuel pumps wouldn't work so we couldn't keep the fuel cool because it was 47 degrees anyway other issues took place before that and he didn't finish the race regardless so but he was determined that said a jibber now would never beat him again and to this day that stands true true
• 1:00:48
  The seven-year stint that you guys had with Yamaha bears plenty of fruit, mate.
• 1:00:52
  That's in the record books.
• 1:00:54
  Valentino ultimately decided to then go to Ducati, an Italian on an Italian bike.
• 1:00:59
  It seems like a match made in heaven.
• 1:01:01
  You go to the core group, go to Casey Stoner had won a title on a Ducati.
• 1:01:06
  Everyone thought Valentino would do the same, and it wasn't to be.
• 1:01:12
  Looking back on it now, what was missing?
• 1:01:15
  A lot of things were missing, but we can know the brilliance of Casey as a rider.
• 1:01:21
  In 2008, 7, when he won the title, it was a new era of the 800, and clearly the Ducati was a better bike.
• 1:01:31
  The Bridgestone tyres, which Valentino subsequently changed over to, it had Casey Stoner, although he wasn't the one they expected to win the title, it was Loris.
• 1:01:42
  And they had massive electronic component, and neither of the two Japanese companies, Yamaha or Honda.
• 1:01:51
  appeared to want to spend that sort of money so quickly they knew it was coming but it's it tells me beyond doubt that those companies do talk to each other about how much they're going to spend in racing because honda could have brought in all of those electronics and more um written the check written the check anymore but i think their intention was to introduce it
• 1:02:14
  over the next four or five years, a little by little each year, and then arrive at that point.
• 1:02:21
  Casey proved beyond all doubt he's a brilliant rider by backing that up by riding the Honda to a title in 2011.
• 1:02:31
  So it goes without saying.
• 1:02:32
  But I think the tyres, the bike, the rider was the perfect situation in 2007.
• 1:02:40
  In 2008, we'd gone to the Bridgestone tyre.
• 1:02:43
  We had about another six guys in the garage electronics and Valentino wins eight and nine.
• 1:02:49
  So the response was very quick.
• 1:02:52
  Yes.
• 1:02:53
  I just would have loved to have been...
• 1:02:56
  I fly on the wall in Ducati in 2006 when they had the whiteboard out to design the bike, I'm going to design for 2007 and work on all these electronics and fuel saving and freezing fuel and all the things that became normal after Ducati.
• 1:03:16
  They did it first, and it's so good to see a small company get up.
• 1:03:21
  It keeps us all interested in racing.
• 1:03:24
  But that was it.
• 1:03:25
  Yamaha win the next three.
• 1:03:27
  Casey wins on the Honda in the next one.
• 1:03:30
  So, yeah, it was fairly short-lived.
• 1:03:32
  But for us going to Ducati...
• 1:03:38
  At that time, the GFC was having its effect on the Japanese companies and they told Valentino, we can no longer afford to pay you the money we've been paying you and we're going to have to reduce.
• 1:03:53
  But on the other hand, Lorenzo, who was probably on something significantly less, was given an increase.
• 1:04:00
  And Valentino, I think, felt that taking money from him and giving it,
• 1:04:06
  to Lorenzo when he'd made such a big contribution and absolutely so he I mean I know that Valentino had agreed to go to Ducati very early in the season because I know when Ducati spoke to me it was very very early in in fact it was one day after the first race in Europe
• 1:04:29
  So, yeah, everything was in place.
• 1:04:33
  And Valentino, as we discussed as the year went on, he said, well, we know how fast Nicky goes.
• 1:04:40
  We've been with a team with Nicky.
• 1:04:43
  We'll be half a second faster than Nicky.
• 1:04:47
  But Valentino injured his shoulder in a motocross accident, so he was never good all year.
• 1:04:51
  He had the operation at the end of the year.
• 1:04:53
  We knew it was going to be five or six months till that was at full strength, which was going to be May.
• 1:05:00
  But he didn't like the bike from the moment he got on it.
• 1:05:03
  It just was not him.
• 1:05:05
  Can you put that down to one thing, or not really?
• 1:05:07
  Is it a combination?
• 1:05:08
  I think mainly engine character.
• 1:05:10
  OK. Because a lot of, and this is what we found when we went to Yamaha,
• 1:05:15
  Melandria Max, they couldn't establish one said it was the engine, one said it was the chassis.
• 1:05:20
  But that connection with the throttle, which starts to load the chassis, load the rear suspension, and allow the power to be put down is so critical.
• 1:05:30
  And it isn't really easy to determine if the bike is handling badly or the engine is causing the bike to handle badly.
• 1:05:39
  And I still see today a Ducati that is capable of winning, where it can use its superior strength of passing on the straightaway, but in other places it struggles.
• 1:05:52
  And Casey always won his races from the front.
• 1:05:55
  In the latter years after 2007, you know, he'd make a good start and that'd be it.
• 1:06:01
  But if he had to fight, as we saw in Laguna Seca, it was never going to be that way for him.
• 1:06:07
  So...
• 1:06:08
  Yeah, all said and done.
• 1:06:12
  The people at Ducati were lovely, really great, great people, but a bit of a culture there that surprised me as much as they think that they do things the same way as the Japanese people.
• 1:06:24
  When I arrived there in December of 2010, we started to build the bikes.
• 1:06:30
  And I said to Filippo, these will be the test bikes.
• 1:06:32
  He said, no, these are your race bikes.
• 1:06:34
  And I said, Valentino hasn't even ridden a bike yet.
• 1:06:37
  Where's the prototype?
• 1:06:38
  So, you know, these are your bikes.
• 1:06:41
  You go and race them.
• 1:06:43
  And Nicky and Juan on the other side of the garage, they were happy to do their job and
• 1:06:50
  Time and time again, they just put the bike back to where it was the year before, whereas we wanted to develop the bike.
• 1:06:55
  We wanted to...
• 1:06:57
  we just didn't want to be there riding the bike so you know we spend a lot of time with a different bike trying different things going in different directions pretty much to now of our he is back now with with Yamaha Valentin I'm talking about you stopped working with him at the end of 2013 to use your words at the time you were you were blindsided by that call now that the dust has settled how do you how do you feel about all that
• 1:07:23
  Pretty much as I thought it would pan out.
• 1:07:25
  I always felt, I'd said prior to parting ways at the end of that season when Valentino and I discussed the future about three weeks before, I said I wasn't interested in signing any more multi-year contracts.
• 1:07:38
  I'd go year by year and as long as he wanted me there.
• 1:07:42
  And he was fine with that.
• 1:07:45
  And then I think he probably thought, well, if I'm going to change at the end of next year, I might as well change now.
• 1:07:50
  And something had to change.
• 1:07:52
  And for me, I was happy with what I'd done.
• 1:07:57
  As you should be.
• 1:07:58
  And we were only ever repeating ourselves.
• 1:08:01
  And I was too old and didn't want to commit five years to taking on a young rider.
• 1:08:07
  As soon as I got home here, I had two offers to go back to MotoGP with different teams and one offer as a manager in a world superbike.
• 1:08:16
  So I, you know, again, everything was the same.
• 1:08:20
  I don't want to commit to the five years.
• 1:08:22
  I was 60 years old at the time.
• 1:08:25
  I clearly, as you wind down, you don't just wind down in a month out of a job like that, you know, after several months, 10 months, 12 months.
• 1:08:34
  I realised that that sort of pressure is for guys in their 40s, not guys in their 60s.
• 1:08:39
  So I'd see them on the grid, you know, the weather's changing and one wrong call and you've ruined a guy's world championship.
• 1:08:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:46
  So the longer I was out of it, the happier I've been to be out of it.
• 1:08:52
  I enjoyed my time there and I think I've had a pretty sensible approach to retirement.
• 1:09:01
  The first thing I said, I always knew one day I'd retire, as everybody does.
• 1:09:06
  So don't be scared of it.
• 1:09:09
  Embrace it and find things to occupy your life.
• 1:09:13
  You know, just do those things you want to do.
• 1:09:15
  Don't vegetate.
• 1:09:16
  Just, you know, get out, pick up the golf sticks, do whatever.
• 1:09:20
  But have some interests.
• 1:09:22
  A bit of tennis and some car restoration, which we'll get to in a moment.
• 1:09:25
  A bit of tennis.
• 1:09:26
  A bit of tennis.
• 1:09:26
  Not very good tennis.
• 1:09:28
  Right.
• 1:09:29
  Before we talk cars, I'm going to throw some names at you.
• 1:09:31
  And in a few words, I want you to tell me the first thing that pops into your mind.
• 1:09:37
  Wayne Gardner.
• 1:09:38
  Tough.
• 1:09:40
  Darryl Beattie.
• 1:09:41
  Funny.
• 1:09:43
  McDewan.
• 1:09:45
  Determined.
• 1:09:46
  Valentino Rossi.
• 1:09:48
  Calm.
• 1:09:50
  Freddie Spencer.
• 1:09:51
  Brilliant.
• 1:09:52
  Kevin Schwantz.
• 1:09:57
  Great.
• 1:09:58
  I don't know.
• 1:09:59
  Schwantz seemed to be... Yeah, look...
• 1:10:04
  entertainer really he was an entertainer he entertained he had masses of followings crashes or not kevin was uh yeah he's entertainer for sure and finally casey stoner hard yeah hard in the sense that uh
• 1:10:23
  So hard on himself in many ways, you know, so relaxed in the airport to talk to about four drives or fishing or whatever.
• 1:10:31
  And then so hard on himself at the circuit.
• 1:10:36
  You almost say that, and probably Casey's the only one that could answer this, that you wish he'd stuck at it at Longer.
• 1:10:42
  I think a lot of people did, but Casey was always very honest.
• 1:10:46
  He said he wasn't going to be there for a long time.
• 1:10:48
  He used to spend a lot of time hanging at the front of our garage and chatting when he was riding 250 and on 25s.
• 1:10:55
  And, you know, he was very much in line to ride a Yamaha until I think Valentino put the kibosh on that.
• 1:11:04
  So I think that's probably where some of the angst between Valentino or Casey and Valentino comes from.
• 1:11:11
  You touched on Laguna Seca there before, and that was a flashpoint in their rivalry, an unbelievable pass by Valentino at the Corkscrew, and it's been replayed countless times since.
• 1:11:21
  Casey was aggrieved about it at the time.
• 1:11:25
  You're an Aussie in the Rossi camp, and there's another Aussie.
• 1:11:30
  miffed at the time was that did it become delicate in the paddock could you talk to Casey at that stage I can tell you the whole story Casey had been a second a lap faster than us all weekend and it's the first time I said to Valentino anything about any race strategy I said
• 1:11:49
  the one thing that Casey hasn't had to deal with is a bike in front of him.
• 1:11:53
  If you can get in front of him, he's got a whole different race on his hands.
• 1:11:59
  And Valentino just made sure for the beginning of that race, every time that Casey got past him on the straight, and it's very hard to pass on the straight at Laguna because it's a long curve.
• 1:12:09
  So even with a slower bike, you can actually make it very difficult.
• 1:12:13
  We were able to do that and Valentino rode probably one of the races of his life, if not the race of his life.
• 1:12:20
  And it clearly frustrated Casey or upset Casey to the point where he made a mistake.
• 1:12:29
  and I think we were 16 seconds clear of Christopher Muelen at the time.
• 1:12:33
  So from that point on was pretty easy, but it was an intense race, and it was cut and thrust on every lap.
• 1:12:40
  I think there was almost a pass on every lap and a repass on every lap.
• 1:12:45
  After the race in the Parc Fermet, Casey came over to me and sprayed me with something.
• 1:12:52
  It gave me a spray about...
• 1:12:55
  Not champagne.
• 1:12:56
  No, no.
• 1:12:57
  What did you think of that?
• 1:12:59
  And I just said, did he run into you?
• 1:13:01
  And apparently he never did.
• 1:13:03
  So that was the end of the conversation.
• 1:13:06
  Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  But, you know, we knew what we had to do was to put Casey in a situation that he felt uncomfortable with.
• 1:13:18
  We knew we didn't have the lap time that Casey could do on his own, but Casey could only do that lap time on his own when he had the racetrack to himself.
• 1:13:26
  There was nobody in front of him.
• 1:13:27
  In the garage is a Jaguar.
• 1:13:29
  I think you joked about it with Daryl, repair and despair.
• 1:13:35
  I sense that you love some of the post-war development that has filtered through to things like Jaguar.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah, I think, I mean, I got an interest in cars well before I had an interest in bikes.
• 1:13:48
  I mean, I used to follow car racing, Graham Hill and Jimmy Clark when I was a boy.
• 1:13:54
  But bikes became the means of transport and the affordable thing, and then they just took over.
• 1:14:00
  But I never lost the passion for cars.
• 1:14:03
  And the post-war era in the UK, when they'd been pumping so much money into the war effort
• 1:14:14
  sort of amounts of money to you know build the military that factory and the military sort of hardware we need and the xk engine by jaguar with a six-cylinder double overhead camshaft engine uh hemispherical combustion chambers and uh it is a great engine and i always loved the mark ii jag so uh and uh later part of my racing career i bought a mark ii jag and rebuilt it from the
• 1:14:43
  Tell us about it.
• 1:14:43
  Originally delivered in 1963 by Bryson's in Sydney, is that right?
• 1:14:48
  Yes, 64.
• 1:14:49
  64 by Bryson's in Sydney.
• 1:14:51
  How did you track it down?
• 1:14:52
  I mean, you're spending the better part of your racing career overseas every year.
• 1:14:56
  Are you on the internet tracking this thing down?
• 1:14:58
  What are you doing?
• 1:14:59
  Yeah, well there's a lot of time in hotel rooms and the internet was coming on fairly strong in those days.
• 1:15:06
  And I looked for years for a good one and there was a lot of rust
• 1:15:11
  So I went and bought a Triumph TR4 as my second choice because I couldn't find a good jag.
• 1:15:15
  But stupidly, I kept palming the papers and suddenly a jag came up here in Adelaide.
• 1:15:24
  And I thought it was too close not to have a look at it.
• 1:15:27
  So I went down and I lifted the boot up and lifted up the cover over the spare wheel and there was no rust there, so that was a good sign.
• 1:15:34
  So I progressed around the vehicle and the guy said to me, oh, you take it away, I know who you are, take it and bring it back when you want.
• 1:15:41
  So I took it to mate's place and had an ultra tune and we put it over the hoist, no rust underneath.
• 1:15:47
  Why is it?
• 1:15:48
  So I bought it, but I knew there would be rust in it, it's just that we couldn't see it, and I brought it home and I put the angled grinder in behind the front wheel arch and out came white dust, so it was full of bog.
• 1:16:01
  Then I just started to work on it and re-skin the doors and re-paint it and re-upholster it, and that's pretty much where we are today.
• 1:16:11
  Is it finished?
• 1:16:12
  Is it concourse spec?
• 1:16:13
  How long did it take?
• 1:16:16
  It took about three years.
• 1:16:18
  It's not concourse, it's very, very good.
• 1:16:22
  But it's never finished if you've got a classic car.
• 1:16:28
  There's always I could have a new wiring harness I want to put in it.
• 1:16:33
  But no, it's never finished and I've still got the TR4 as well, so I've got two vehicles that I spread my time between.
• 1:16:40
  Is the TR4 how far advanced on that project are you?
• 1:16:44
  If you and I got down there for half an hour, we could be driving it.
• 1:16:50
  I've just ordered some more parts from the UK this morning, before you came.
• 1:16:55
  The new trim for the door, inside the door, and a couple of little bits and pieces, but should be ready to go in a fortnight.
• 1:17:03
  Beautiful.
• 1:17:03
  And the Jag is something that you and your lovely wife, Claudine, just throw the cap and the scarf on and go down around the wineries.
• 1:17:10
  What do you do?
• 1:17:11
  No, not so much.
• 1:17:14
  I go out every second Wednesday with a few like-minded people.
• 1:17:18
  I've got out a guy who's got a...
• 1:17:20
  a Morgan and there's a 246 Dino and a couple of Cobras and a couple of bits and pieces so yeah we go out for a coffee or run them around they're pretty much spring and autumn cars you know because there's no no air conditioning in the Jag and the winter would make I don't like taking out on wet roads so something to do and it's not as selfish as a motorcycle you can take the wife and somebody else with you.
• 1:17:48
  Have you kept it absolutely original or true to its build?
• 1:17:54
  No, I mean, it's got wider triple-laced competition wire wheels on it, four-piston front callipers, and the paint's not an original Jaguar green, but it is Brooklyn's green, which is actually a Leyland colour, but not many people would know that.
• 1:18:11
  What about work still to be completed on it?
• 1:18:14
  I'd like to take the engine back out again.
• 1:18:18
  I've got another engine down there that I'd like to put in it with alloy flywheels and just trick it up a little bit.
• 1:18:29
  Beautiful.
• 1:18:30
  But, you know, it's a big job.
• 1:18:33
  And you've had the triumph longer, did you say?
• 1:18:34
  Where did you track that down?
• 1:18:35
  What's the history on that?
• 1:18:37
  The TR4, a friend of mine had it, and I noticed in an advertisement in the car sales that he had it, and he only lives over the hill here, so I went over with a few grand less than he had, and his daughter was no longer driving it to university, and she'd pick up a netball scholarship or something in Newcastle, so I made him an offer, and...
• 1:18:57
  Right at home.
• 1:18:57
  I love it.
• 1:18:58
  How much work has got to be done on that?
• 1:18:59
  I mean, you talked about the fact that we could get it going in half an hour, but what's the ultimate goal with it?
• 1:19:03
  Basically, it's done.
• 1:19:05
  I mean, yeah, just got to paint it.
• 1:19:06
  Oh, sorry.
• 1:19:07
  I painted it myself.
• 1:19:08
  First car I've ever painted.
• 1:19:10
  How'd you go with that?
• 1:19:12
  Everybody looks at it and says it's great, but I could see a lot of things that aren't great.
• 1:19:15
  You are a hard marker.
• 1:19:16
  Okay.
• 1:19:18
  But, yeah, you can get carried away and spend way too much money because it's probably only worth about $25,000 at the end.
• 1:19:26
  But, yeah, you've just got to be sensible about these things.
• 1:19:34
  Am I right in saying that to complete the British box set, you also want a Series 1 Land Rover too?
• 1:19:40
  Is that right?
• 1:19:40
  Well, that would give me the saloon, the soft top and the four-wheel drive component.
• 1:19:49
  So other than a motorcycle, a British motorcycle, a 69 Bonneville, that would be the full set, wouldn't it?
• 1:19:57
  It staggers me.
• 1:19:58
  Am I right in saying you don't have a bike project or you do?
• 1:20:00
  I don't have a bike project.
• 1:20:01
  Amazing.
• 1:20:02
  I do a lot of helping out with the guys running some classic Suzukis in New Zealand and Australia and that.
• 1:20:09
  But I'd be comfortable finding something like that, but I'd have to get rid of something.
• 1:20:15
  What bike would you go for if you could?
• 1:20:18
  Probably an old early 70s TR500 water-cooled Suzuki Grand Prix racer.
• 1:20:24
  Amazing.
• 1:20:25
  Almost back to where it all started, mate, in some ways.
• 1:20:27
  Close to, close to.
• 1:20:28
  Close to, yeah.
• 1:20:29
  Not the RG because they're beyond it.
• 1:20:32
  But it doesn't only involve the cost of that bike, of course, because then you've got to buy the high-oce van to run it around.
• 1:20:40
  So what starts out at a modest amount ends up double modest amounts.
• 1:20:46
  So a lot of thinking to be done.
• 1:20:48
  It's been fantastic to talk to you, mate.
• 1:20:50
  Thank you very, very much.
• 1:20:51
  Thank you, Rusty.
• 1:20:52
  Thank you very much.
• 1:20:54
  We're just about to start it.
• 1:20:55
  I hope it doesn't embarrass me and not start.
• 1:20:58
  The beautiful Mark II Jags.
• 1:21:00
  Stand by.
• 1:21:34
  On the next episode of Rusty's Garage, I talk to Shane Jacobson, Aussie comedian, actor and unabashed fan of just about anything with an engine and wheels.
• 1:21:45
  If you gave me the DeLorean now and said, Shane, where are we going?
• 1:21:49
  The answer would be back to when I was 18 to get rid of that freaking Tee Cortina because it's the most embarrassing thing as a car lover.
• 1:21:55
  We all know you can't help but go, you know.
• 1:21:58
  Learn about the classic Holdens in the Jacobson stable, including one that played a starring role in a movie of his, here on Rusty's Garage.
• 1:22:12
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:22:16
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:22:20
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:22:29
  Listener.