‘Working with Schwantz was a wild ride and an unbelievable privilege’

“One of my regular post-race functions was to have a plastic bag full of ice cubes — to kill the pain — discreetly ready for him when he came back to the garage. Discreetly, because he didn’t want to let his competitors know he was hurting.

“I remember when he crashed at Assen and did a kneecap, which the doctors wired back together. The very next weekend, in bad weather, he crashed on the sighting lap. The guys managed to get the bike fixed and he finished well, all things considered. When he arrived back in the garage he basically fell off the bike – he had broken a collarbone in the warm-up crash!”

Schwantz was unbelievably talented and also a bit rowdy, unlike Rainey and Doohan, who were laser-focused machines. Taylor was lucky that his wild, young thing had his mum and dad with him, driving the motorhome, helping behind the scenes and generally keeping his feet on the ground.

“Many young riders get distracted by the opportunities when they first make it: women, parties, all of that, so they end up going off the rails. One of Kevin’s big strengths was having Jim and Shirley, so all he had to do was concentrate on riding the bike, then every day he’d go back to the motorhome, to two great people he trusted.”

Of course, rival factories often tried to snatch Schwantz away from Suzuki, so Taylor devised a plan to thwart their advances. This was particularly tricky because Suzuki’s commitment to racing always wavered. And it still does, the factory has quit MotoGP twice in the last dozen years, at the end of 2011 and at the end of last year.

“I made rolling contracts with our sponsors and riders, so whenever a Suzuki boss came up to me and said, ‘Next year, we are not so sure about going racing…’, I’d say, ‘Oh yes we are sure, because we’ve got a contract with [title sponsor] Lucky Strike and a contract with Kevin’.

“I also had two-year contracts with Kevin, written so that him and Rainey were never available at the same time. The chances of Wayne wanting to leave Marlboro Team Roberts Yamaha were slim, but the chances of Marlboro wanting to sign Kevin alongside him was a risk we didn’t want to take.”

Schwantz and Suzuki finally won the title in 1993, their sixth year together in GPs. Schwantz still attributes much of that success to engineer Stuart Shenton, who Taylor took from Honda in 1992. Shenton fixed many of the RGV’s problems, creating a title-challenger for 1993.

“Stuart and I already knew each other very well and got on well. I knew I had to find somebody and there’s an old adage in racing: you hire people not only for what they can do for you, but to stop them doing it for somebody else. Stuart was very successful at Suzuki. If I have one skill I’m still quite proud of, it was choosing the right people to have on the team.”

Schwantz and the much-improved RGV duked it out with Rainey for the ’93 title, until Rainey crashed at Misano. The accident paralysed the Californian from the chest down, ending one of the sport’s greatest rivalries. His sudden exit had a massive effect on the paddock.

“Something beautiful had been broken, not just Wayne’s body, but the illusion that these gods could take huge risks, have terrifying crashes and the consequences were always relatively minor. After Wayne’s accident the game changed for a lot of us in the paddock and it really troubled Kevin.

“Although I was devastated when Kevin told us he was retiring in ’95, I was relieved that he was getting out relatively unscathed. I remember him telling us that he’d got to the stage where he was, ‘Out there just looking with one eye for the safest places to crash’.”

Of course, Schwantz’s retirement was a nightmare for Taylor and Suzuki – how do you replace someone like that?

“I was also distraught: ‘Holy shit, what are we going to do now?’. The team was essentially based around Kevin, he was always the main man.”

Taylor signed former World Superbike champion Scott Russell, but the American had some issues, so that didn’t last long. For 1997 Taylor signed Australian Anthony Gobert, who in some ways was like Schwantz: wild and very naturally talented. However, Goey had no one to keep him from going off the rails.

“Gobert [who died on 17th January] was a troubled boy with huge potential. When we flew to Australia to sign him, he arrived with a bandage around his leg, because he’d written off his brand-new Porsche on his way to the signing – he had jumped a red light and T-boned a car.”

Gobert had all kinds of demons, including drugs.

“We got Stu Avant [former GP rider] to nursemaid Anthony. I can’t believe we even started the ’97 season with him because he’d already failed a few drug tests. He was cunning – during one urine test he used a Ziplock bag full of someone else’s piss, but the doctor caught him out.”

No surprise Gobert didn’t last the season, which had Taylor on the hunt once again. At the end of 1998 he signed Kenny Roberts Junior, son of ‘King’ Kenny. Junior had done three seasons with his dad’s team, the last two with the uncompetitive Modenas/Proton triple, so he was desperate for a V4.

The RGV still wasn’t as good as the Honda or Yamaha, but with Junior came genius Team Roberts engineer Warren Willing, who fixed the RGV, using his Team Roberts knowhow. Junior, Willing and Suzuki won their first GP together in 1999 and took the 2000 title, beating rookie Valentino Rossi.

“Junior’s potential was obvious and his pedigree was amazing. Imagine family weekends when he was a kid… his legend of a father having his mates around for some dirt track at his ranch, a BBQ and some brews.

“To be brought up in that ultra-competitive atmosphere honed his need to win. He told me that when he was a kid he used to race his dad on minibikes, ducking and diving, and every so often dad would come up the inside and kick his front wheel out from under him, just to get him used to the inevitable. Not your average household!”

In 2002 the sport switched to 990cc MotoGP four-strokes. Suzuki was ill-prepared, its GSV-R hopelessly out-classed by Honda’s RC211V, so Taylor tried to pressure Suzuki into trying harder.

“We were slipping back down the grid, but when I complained I was reminded that I was ‘only a consultant’ and should do as I was told. I was desperate to get Kevin involved in a senior role, even as team manager, but I was warned off proposing it. My belief is that they were frightened of Kevin’s power because he was the Suzuki world champion and they’d have to respect him. Not getting him on board was a massive missed opportunity.”

Taylor retired at the end of the 2004 season, which Suzuki finished in fifth place, behind Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and Kawasaki.

“When MotoGP went to four-strokes all the two-stroke people I’d grown up with and for whom I had huge admiration had gone, plus I had a young daughter at home and my health had been deteriorating.”

Taylor found the return to normal life like doing cold turkey.

“Racing is a drug. You love doing it and everyone else loves doing it. I hardly remember anyone in the team being off sick in my thirty years in the job. It’s a real privilege to work in that world, because you’re working with the best doctors, the best mechanics, the best engineers and the best riders. Then you come back to the real world where you’re contending with plumbers and electricians who don’t even turn up to work. Life outside the GP paddock is a let-down, because in racing you’re working with the very best.”