Larry Lawrence | May 3, 2017
Carmelo Ezpeleta, CEO of Dorna Sports, Kenny Roberts and Kenny Roberts Jr. at the MotoGP Legends ceremony at COTA. (Photo by Larry Lawrence)
For Kenny Roberts, Jr. his racing days were relatively simple.
“I had a training schedule every day and I raced,” he said. “For the most part I had people taking care of my day-to-day life. Life’s more complicated today.”
That is the confession of the former 500cc Grand Prix World Champion. Take it from Roberts, post-racing life can often move just as fast and have even more challenges than their days of being a world-class racer.
Roberts Jr. was honored during the MotoGP weekend at the Circuit of the Americas as the newest Legend in the MotoGP World Championship Hall of Fame. On hand for his induction was his family, including legendary father Kenny Roberts. Junior made history with his title victory in 2000, becoming half of the only father and son duo to both win 500cc World Championships.
Coming back to be honored was a bit surreal for Roberts.
“I haven’t been up here for a long time,” he said. “This is an extremely special moment and I didn’t write a speech or anything because I wanted the raw emotion of the day, with my dad and Carmelo up here. Now, being able to celebrate here with my wife Rochelle and our kids, her family, some of my family and friends, my dad…words don’t help because you can’t describe it. As a kid you say ‘I have this dream to do this one day’ but then maybe it doesn’t work out or the right people aren’t there that you want to be there when something like this finally happens, in 20 or 25 years.”
As a racer Roberts said his single focus was to train and to do what he had to do to improve as a racer with the goal of winning races and ultimately championships.
“That took priority over everything,” Roberts recalls. “At the same time it was amazing how simplified life was. It was get up and train, ride a bike, do your press conferences and try to get out of as much of B.S. stuff as you can. Now you look back and I drove my own motorhome here, I was setting up a bunch of stuff and you think, ‘Man, that’s a lot of work!’ Trying to get Wayne (Rainey), Kevin (Schwantz), my dad and myself up on a stage all at the same time at one of these events… man! I look back and we were always trying to get out of those kinds of things and now I’m the one setting them up and it’s like, ‘No, I need you there!’ You finally see all the stuff, the hospitality and that kind of thing, that goes into making one of these events happen. All the behind the scenes stuff I appreciate it more now than I ever did when I was racing.”
Roberts began his professional road racing career at 17 in 1991 riding the WERA Pro Formula Two class (the main support class for Formula USA) for Wayne Rainey’s Otsuka Electronics Yamaha team. He then moved on to the AMA 250 Grand Prix class in 1992 before heading off to Europe to start his Grand Prix career.
He raced for his dad’s Marlboro-backed squads with Yamaha and then Modenas before moving over to Suzuki in 1999. With Suzuki Roberts found immediate success. He won his debut race with the team in Malaysia and followed that up with a second-straight victory in Japan. The Japanese victory in Motegi was especially memorable, since he beat Mick Doohan on the powerful Repsol Honda team straight up.
Kenny Roberts Jr. racing his way to a 500cc Grand Prix World Championship in 2000 aboard a Suzuki. (Photo by Henny Ray Abrams)
The ’99 season overall was a remarkable year for Roberts. From 1993 to 1998 Roberts had never even scored a podium in either the 250cc or 500cc classes. Then suddenly with Suzuki he scored eight rostrum finishes, including four victories en route to finishing second in the world championship to Àlex Crivillé.
The 2000 season was one of the most wide open in the history of the series. Eight different riders won, including a rookie named Valentino Rossi, but it was Roberts who took a series leading four wins and clinched the championship with two races remaining on the calendar.
Roberts said he knew halfway through the season, that if he were going to win the world championship he was going to have to get it done in 2000. He saw Rossi (who finished runner up to Roberts in his rookie premier class season) was coming up fast.
“We had a wet race in Donington, where Valentino won his first race,” Roberts recalled. “My dad and I talked and it’s like, ‘Hey this may be the only shot, because Valentino is going to start running the table with this bike and this team.’”
Roberts could see the writing on the wall with Rossi being a very strong rider on the best team. “It’s very hard to find a weakness in that.”
Their predictions on Rossi proved correct and Roberts, as they say, got while the gettin’ was good.
Surprisingly, when Roberts hung up his helmet after retiring in 2007, he really hung it up. “I did not put a helmet on to ride again, even casually, until 2013 and I did not ride in an airplane from 2007 to 2013, even in America. That part I don’t miss – the airline travel and the jetlag.”
Roberts has been away from the sport long enough, it’s been suggested that now maybe the time is right for him to return in some capacity, perhaps as owner of a team.
“It just seems like when we hit places like this and we’re around my dad and his friends and our friends a lot traveling, we’re always meeting in fun environments,” Roberts says. “So if I can keep it fun and it’s with MotoGP or with MotoAmerica, I’m open to anything.”
