May the Schwantz Be With You
May the Schwantz be With You
Remedial riding at the Kevin Schwantz Suzuki School
JOHN BURNS
NO STORY AT THE BIG MAGAZINE IS COMPLETE without the proper photography. "Why don't you two," says photograher Riles to Schwantz and myself, "ride together, really tight, so I can get you both in the frame thrOugh Turn 4." That would've been the time for me to suggest to Kev that I take the point, but I figured I could keep up with him. Hell, he’s nearly as old as me now.
First lap past the camera, Schwantz is 10 yards out front, puttering along while I give it everything I dare on cold tires. Down Road Atlanta’s long, long back straight, I wring the GSX-R600 for all it’s worth, pull up in the draft a bit and think, in my typical selfless pursuit of duty, “Shirley I can close up on him on the brakes a bit down here...,” just before it hits me. DUHHH...that’s Kevin-freakingSchwantz!
Under the bridge, down the front straight, Schwantz checks his mirrors and lets me close it up, right on his back tire through 1 and 2, but dammit man, even at his most merciful pace he flips into Turn 3 like I can’t do even when being pursued by my wife-and the 10-yard gap reopens just in time to sail past Nikon Riles crouched trackside.
Er, how about a nice setting-sun portrait or something then?
Luckily, I was quickly able to forget all about photography and also the fact that I was here to do a story-also that I have no life insurance.
Mere details. What matters now is, there’s the familiar Schwantz leathers and helmet, the distinctive posture on the bike, and there comes the foot off the peg for the pigeon-toed downshift. I’ll get the bastard in Tum 1 then...
Really there are two reasons to attend performance-riding schools like this one: 1) You want to learn to ride your motorcycle faster and safer; or 2) you just want to rub shoulders with an idol like Schwantz. Either is perfectly acceptable. As for myself, at 42 years of age Eve been around enough tracks and had enough expert instruction to realize that my speed, what little there ever was of it, may have already passed its sell-by date. By now I know how to go fast in theory; problems crop up in the implementation of that knowledge due to a lack of mental/physical coordination when the pace increases to the point at which a Schwantz is only coming on the pipe. In one way that’s a bummer, because I’ll never sign a GP contract. On the other hand, it’s enhanced my appreciation for the spectacle of roadracing tremendously. I’ve progressed from, “Well, that looks easy enough,” to “How in hell do they do that?” Also, watching a race on the tube from a track you’ve ridden makes it ever so more entertaining. You don’t have any idea how steep the hill is when you pop out from under the bridge at Road Atlanta until you’ve popped out from under the bridge and felt the negative g’s. They could train astronauts here.
But then the government would have to get involved and 3there the fun would go. As my friend Hatch observed after a couple of Schwantz School sessions, “It’s really amazing this is legal.” You do have to sign a bunch of waivers. Once the legalities are out of the way, though, it’s cudgel time. I’ve been to Reg Pridmore’s CLASS school, I’ve been to a Team Hammer school (at Daytona, even!) and though I’ve never been to Freddie’s school, I’ve been tutored by Spencer and his men at various Honda events (talk about your perks). Those schools are all good, but Schwantz classroom instructor Lance Holst, being the analytical sort that he is, does the best job deconstructing the components of carrying speed around a racetrack.
Most of this stuff I already know, said John, polishing his nails on his lapel, but come to think of it, the reason I know it is because I did Jason Pridmore’s STAR school a couple of years ago when Lance taught there-and I did pick up a chunk of speed after that one. Mainly, lift your eyes, pilgrim: The way you reduce the sensation of speed is by raising your gaze as far beyond your front wheel as you can. Clip the current apex with your peripheral vision; if you’re not already focussing on the exit and the next turn-in by now, you’re toast. When you inevitably get into a corner too hot, you overcome panic by looking where you want to go instead of where you’re afraid you’re going to go.
Holst even tries to push panic away with logic: Once they learn the track, most advanced riders, he says, do laps that fall within a second or two of each other. At a 2.5-mile track like Road Atlanta, that means your speed through a given comer varies by less than about 2 mph most of the time. Just knowing that you haven’t miraculously come into the comer this time with what feels like 20 mph more steam than last time, strangely enough, helps to keep you from Freaking a Big One. Trust your tires, relax, be smooth, and chances are you’ll make it through. (Oh, yeah, this is how I know I’m getting old; I didn’t give myself a good scare the entire weekend.)
The classroom instruction is solid, but the sled-side manner of its on-track instructors is what makes the Schwantz Suzuki School (www.schwantzschool.com) worth its hefty tuition-and, really, $1290 for two days isn’t that bad considering Suzuki provides professionally maintained bikes (by Kevin’s former GP wrench Mick Roberts, no less) and fresh Michelins. There’s former World Champion Schwantz. There’s former AMA Superbike champ Jamie James, former WERA champ Tray Batey, current AMA Superstock top-runner Lee Aeree and 600 Supersport upand-comer Opie Caylor. They’re here not just because they’re all great riders, but also because they all have a talent for ’splainin’ to people, in an articulate and personable manner, how to go faster. (Matter of fact, they’re all so nice it gave me the idea to launch a tougher, bootcamp style school; Someday I’ll get Mladin, Ed Lawson and Dick Mann to teach what I shall call the “Cruel School.” One drill might consist of flinging a mannequin in Wayne Gardner attire under each student’s wheels occasionally.)
While Lance makes like Tony Robbins to the Advanced people in the classroom, the Beginning students are on the track and vice versa-half-an-hour of instruction and rehydration, half-an-hour on the track. By the end of the day, four hours of track time feels like plenty, and being able to back up freshly acquired (or reacquired) knowledge the second day pounds lessons home in a way that one day can’t. (They do a three-day course once a year, too; I passed on it, thinking I’d either be unable to get out of bed by day three or so overconfident I’d be bound to crash.)
Video is an excellent training tool. An instructor gets behind you and tapes your every move for a lap or two, which is then played back immediately in your next classroom session (in my case, with Schwantz leading the way, very cool). The school being a pricey proposition and its students therefore mostly affluent and capable of doing little wrong, the excuses for blown apexes, wonky lines, etc., are downright amusing. Right, there was some sticky stuff on the grip of that particular bike that made it difficult to modulate the throttle. Yeah, ahh, my beeper went off right then. A new bump appeared on the track on that lap-no one alerted me that Atlanta is so seismically active....
Anyway, a fine time was had by all. My buddy Jimbo the Fishstick, who mostly tears it up on a WR400 Yamaha but lacks pavement confidence, got his knee down for the first time by the end of day one and will be forever indebted to embarrass himself. And I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys having the most fun were Schwantz and James. At the height of his career (whoa, 10 years ago...), Schwantz couldn’t walk around Europe or Japan without drawing a crowd. Now, as long-time mechanic Roberts points out, nobody in Texas knows Schwantz from Adam’s housecat.
That must’ve been a nice change at first. Now it seems Kevin gets a charge out of fan contact, seeing how many people remember and love him. If you do the school, please don’t be afraid to go up and schmooze. I, too, was in awe of Schwantz when I first met him a couple years ago, but after he began flinging wine-sodden bread rolls across the room, I realized Kev is just a big kid like the rest of us who happens to have extraordinary moto-skills.
The bottom line is that these guys love motorcycles, and there’s still nothing James and Schwantz enjoy more than flying around a racetrack, especially now the pressure’s off. “I think I could still get back out there and do all right,” James drawls, “but I know what it takes to run up front, and I’d either have to be up front or crash.”
The pressure’s off now. Or is it? Down the long back straight with my SV650S pulling for all it’s worth, I sense a disturbance behind me. I steal a glance behind. Schwantz is on my tail like a boil, on another SV. I flip him the bird and keep it pinned. He drafts alongside, hits my killswitch and pulls away. Why I oughtta... Into the fast downhill braking zone for Turn 10,1 box him in behind a couple of backmarkers, sail inside and take the lead. Take that, GP boy! Round we go again, another 2.5 miles of hot Schwantz breath down my neck. The back straight again, and I look behind to see nothing but Schwantz-replica Arai full of Schwantzschnoz. Dammit! Head down again into 10,1 lay off the brakes until the last possible millimeter, man and metal straining, veins pulsating, sphincter shredding vinyl, lips peeled back-everything learned right out the window, basically-and realize the Schwantzinator was only waiting to offer me a demonstration of what’s truly meant by late-braking. Say, Kev, you can’t possibly hope to make the comer...oh! ahhhh!gulp!... well, yes, I guess you can after all. Point taken.
I’ve still got a lot to leam. Why not keep plugging away long as they’ll let me on the track? I’m with Jimbo, though, this is way too fun to be legal.
