SuperBike Magazine September 2020

71
Freddie Spencer 1985
Belgium Grand Prix on
the Honda NSR250
and help load the truck – he wanted
to be part of the gang.”
After Schwantz retired, Suzuki
got lost in the wilderness. They had
a high turnover of riders and no one
leading development. After Daryl Beattie
came former World Superbike
champ Scott Russell, who joined Suzuki
halfway through 1995, to replace
Schwantz.
“Scott was an interesting character
– a lovely guy but a bit all over the
place. We were doing a winter test at
Eastern Creek. I get a phone call in
the middle of the night and it’s Scott.
Oh, where are you, downstairs in the
lobby? ‘No, I’m still in America.’ What
are you doing in America? ‘I don’t
think I can do this anymore.’ Look,
get yourself on a plane and we’ll have
a talk. It was only later I realised that
some of his recreational pursuits
make you a bit edgy and paranoid and
doubt yourself.”
After Russell there was Anthony
Gobert, who joined Suzuki for 1997.
Out of the frying pan and into the
fire…
“Gobert was one of these guys
who you get every now and then:
don’t change anything on the bike,
I’ll just ride it. By then we had data.
He’d come in and you’d see that he
was so hard on the brakes that the
suspension’s bottomed out and he’s
just hanging onto it. So we said we
can put stronger springs in there or
more oil. ‘Nah mate, don’t change
anything’.
“We saw the most incredible
brake temperatures with Gobert. If
he had been able to apply himself
and turn up every weekend, fit and
healthy, with the right sort of focus,
he would’ve absolutely been something.
“I always knew it was going to be
an interesting relationship. I hadn’t
met him but [Suzuki team manager]
Garry Taylor and [Suzuki race boss]
Mistuo Itoh went to Australia to
sign him. On his way to signing the
contract he wrote off his brand-new
$250,000 Porsche by jumping a red
light and it hadn’t fazed him in the
slightest.”
Shenton met his new rider after
the final 1996 race at Eastern Creek.
“We were packing up our garage and
a scruffy urchin with a few mates in
tow was hanging around the back of
the garage. Then one of them says to
me: ‘g’day Stuart, I’m your new rider,
I hope you’re fucking ready for me!’
And that was Anthony Gobert.
“At our first test with him at Eastern
Creek we were doing his first debrief,
with all the Japanese engineers
sitting there, pens hovering, waiting
to take notes and get his first impression
of the bike. And he says, ‘Well, I
need two things: I need a cage in the
back of the garage with a dancing girl
in it and we’ve got to get some beers
in the fridge’. Then he gets up and