Team Roberts' Chuck Aksland sees light at the end of the tunnel for their MotoGP effort. image--thanks, team roberts

The Roberts and Aksland families have been intertwined for over thirty years, with the relationship starting decades ago when young Kenny and his father, Buster, walked into the Aksland shop looking for motorcycle parts. Bud Aksland went on to be Roberts' first sponsor and tuner, and now his son, Chuck, manages Team Roberts for King Kenny Roberts.

Interviewed last week via telephone, Aksland talked about his life and the current status of the Roberts project.

Q First, could I get the Aksland/Roberts family history?

A The family history. Well, I guess it started a long time ago when Kenny [Senior] was an up-and-coming dirt tracker riding around Lodi. He must've been about 15 years old or so. My dad had a Suzuki shop in Manteca, and Buster and Kenny came in needing some parts. One thing led to another, and my dad ended up being probably Kenny's first sponsor, in return for Kenny sort of sweeping the shop every now and again.

Q And that's the only "real job" he's ever had.

A Well, it's still related to motorcycles, so I don't know. Anything related to motorcycles, you can say, is more a fun hobby than real work, I suppose.

Q So when did you first meet Kenny Roberts?

A Probably when I was about five years old. Somewhere around then. I have no idea what actual age I was. But obviously my grandfather and my father were big into the racing scene. We lived on a ranch where we had a motocross track and a dirt track. I used to race around on my little Mini Enduro 60. I think at that time Kenny probably had one too, and he'd be there riding and training and stuff. So I just more or less grew up with him all through my childhood, riding with him and so forth. So he's kind of been in my life forever, I suppose.

Q Can you remember him not being around?

A No, actually, I can't. [Laughing.] I remember, because in those days when Kenny was a junior dirt tracker, and first year expert and all that, my dad and he would go and throw the bikes in the back of a van and take off and go back East. I remember them coming back from one trip, East Coast swing, and they had two little dogs that came from Gary Nixon's house. One was for Kenny and one was mine. Mine ended up running off and getting hit on the highway, and Kenny ended up giving me his dog. So it was way back. I must've been, like I said, seven or eight years old. That was one of my first pets.

Q. What does ex-racer Skip Aksland, your uncle, do now?

A He got out of racing and went to work for Federal Express for a while, which he got me in there for a few years. Some of my non-motorcycle working days were with Skip, actually, at FedEx. We were racing around in their vans delivering packages. And I went back to work for Kenny, and Skip decided to start his own courier business in Modesto, which I think he just sold it off about two years ago. And now he's a sales rep for a title company in Modesto.

So his job is to go out and schmooze and play golf, which he thoroughly enjoys that.

Q Current events. What's happening with Team Roberts right now?

A We had a good, positive test in Jerez, for all of us. It showed that the combination with our chassis and our setup and the KTM engine holds a lot of potential. It has created quite a lot of interest. Although we don't have any sponsorship finalized yet, fingers crossed, there's a lot more discussion going on now than there was previous to the test. So we're just trying to put it all together, basically, and hopefully - I don't know if we'll have everything in place before the end of the year or not, but we'll certainly do our best to try and do that.

Q Is KTM looking at it as an active partner, or do they just want to lease engines?

A For us, there are a few different options on the table, but right now it looks like KTM will provide us with engines, be an engine supplier, and we'll develop and manufacture the chassis and operate the racing team. So they'll continue development on the engine, and we'll do the chassis side, and take care of the riders, and so forth. Which works out pretty good. For what we tried to do over the last couple of years with the engine, trying to do everything ourselves, really was - for the time scales that we faced and the budget that we had, it was pretty overwhelming. Once we started off with something that needed work from the beginning, we just never could get caught up.

Q I can only imagine that the cost in developing a four-stroke, trying to maintain and develop it at the same time, has got to be huge.

A When we started the first engine the first time, right off the bat we had problems with seizures and stuff. If we wouldn't have had those problems, there probably would've been a lot better outcome. But right away, we're into troubleshooting and redeveloping, and the first race is coming up, and okay, we've got to get the two-strokes ready now, and we're trying to fix the problems, and then as soon as we made the decision to take it to the racetrack, then it was just such a job to turn the engines around, let alone build engines that you could actually develop with. So yeah, it's quite a task, and we were limited in resource and the number of people we could put at it.

And then we went into this winter with the redesign of the cylinder head, which computer simulations told us we'd be starting the season with 210, 215 horsepower, something like that, and when we put that package together, it was worse than what we started with. So that just kind of put us on the back foot.

We had John Barnard develop the chassis, all that side of it was fine, but without the power plant sufficient enough, it made it for a very trying season, that's for sure.

Q I've often wondered if a team that relies a lot on computer simulation and forecasting, do you find often that things that you're told by the computer actually aren't the case in the real world?

A I think there are situations when some have been the case and some haven't. I think over the last few years since we've become a manufacturer, probably us and Ducati are really the only people to look down developing things the bike way, and also develop things the Formula 1 way. There is a mix in there that works, and it's probably not directed one way or the other completely.

But I think you also need to rely a lot on practical experience and judge that against your computer simulations. Because if you have a few numbers off in a simulation, really, the whole package is off. And that was part of the problem we encountered.

Q Is the KR V5 project dead, or just shelved?

A We're building—obviously, we have a lot of parts and so forth, and we're building up as many engines as we can and putting them in the box, because we never know, really, what the future will bring. But I doubt if we'll see it out on the racetrack again.

Q For comparative purposes, you've had two revisions on your V5; how many revisions have there been on the KTM?

A It's at the very first stage. They built a certain number of prototype engines, which I think there's only three in circulation right now, and that's... they're very limited on parts. For instance, when we went to the test in Jerez, there was only one gearbox ratio, and that ratio was actually for Barcelona. But it's on its very first stage, basically, and there are more stages in planning, obviously.

Q What's the power output difference between the two? Is it huge? Some people point to the fact that you finally got Michelins at the last tests, and that was a big help as well.

A No, I think you're looking probably at a horsepower difference of about 30 to 40 horsepower, at least. And the thing is, the powerband is better. The KTM package needs more time on the racetrack. In Jerez, it was only the second time it had been on the track. And after the second day there, Jeremy did a :43 flat, which was pretty respectable, we think. The third day, we had Gregorio Lavilla ride it, and he worked through a lot of the mapping issues and stuff that Jeremy encountered during the first two days, and sorted a few other things out. I think if Jeremy had been back on it, say a day four, he probably would've dropped another second easily.

Q Which raises the tantalizing question, what if you had a front-row-of-the-grid rider on the bike?

A Well, the rider's always in the equation, but that's something we can't control at all times. We have to do the best we can with what we have and who we're able to put on it. Certainly, the engine - with more track time, it's only going to get better. The potential's all there. It's clear to see.

Q It was kind of presented like you guys just kind of bolted this KTM engine in and started lapping. It couldn't have been that simple just to get the thing in the chassis, could it?

A Well, we - from when we made the agreement with KTM to do the test in Portugal, which was in September, we had six weeks to redesign the chassis and put the engine in. We got finished just in time and took it to Portugal, and found a few issues with the character of the motor. Those issues were resolved by the time we got to Jerez. So yeah, I mean, our guys did a great job to turn the thing around quickly. We tried to use as many carryover parts as we could from the V5, but obviously the engine mounting positions are different, and the radiator, and the engine heights—it's a different engine. So it did entail quite a bit of redesign.

Q What's the short-term plan now? Just waiting?

A Just waiting, trying to raise the money to go. To make the program happen.

Q Figures have been thrown around of $15,000,000 to $18,000,000 needed. Is that factual, for a year, to make it happen?

A I think - well, I think if you went to Honda and asked them what their budget is for the year, it's a lot more than that. So it's not an unrealistic figure. And when you start putting rider salaries and engineering and so forth together, it's an expensive sport now.

Q What's your single biggest expense that people would be surprised to know?

A Well, I think in most companies, your personnel is one of the highest. We have, at our peak, about 60 people. But it's cut between the factory and the racing team. So what's different about us is, every team's got a group of guys that go to the races that try and make the best product they can, but we have a fully staffed, purpose-built facility here in Banbury that's part of the overhead as well.

Q Any other items to tie up in the short term?

A No, not really. It's all step by step, putting everything together. We want to make sure something happens, because we have the most competitive bike that we've probably ever had, or something that definitely has more potential than anything we've had in a long time. Next year will be the 20th year of Team Roberts participating in either the 500 or MotoGP World Championship, and you've got the U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna, so there's a lot of things that we're shooting for, and it's quite important that we're on track.

Q It would be mind-blowingly ironic if that project would have to stop now after everything you guys have endured, and how seemingly close to competitiveness it is now.

A It is kind of strange, because generally we're able to go out and raise the finance to pursue the project, and then we try and make the project the best we can. And right now, we're sitting on probably the best bike we've had, to start with, and it's raising the money that's the challenge. So it's different, but hopefully, people have heard what the bike is potentially capable of, and will have faith in us, and we'll get it down the racetrack.