In this installment of the Merlyn Plumlee interview he touches on working for Muzzy Kawasaki, his former rider Mike Hale and working for Rumi Honda when HRC came World Superbike racing.

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Q: Could you tell me what is the "Plumlee way" of dealing with riders?

A: Well, I don't know if I can describe my way. I know I'm not as good at being a buddy to them as I wish I were. Because I know there's a lot of guys like Al (Ludington), for instance, he gets "in" with the riders, and a lot of the mechanics have that ability and I just don't do that. I know that hurts (me) sometimes.

I'm maybe not as good at being a buddy to them, but I think I'm able to ask them direction questions that we can go in the right way. I think that I'm pretty good at allowing them to kind of learn what the bike does and making them think about what the bike's doing and try to understand it. It's kind of hard for me to put a finger on it.

Q: Do you teach them or do you just point them?

A: A little bit of both. I mean, there's some stuff that you try to draw on things that you've learned either from other young riders or other good riders. So you go ?What's the bike do over here? Does it do this?' and if they say ?Yeah' then, you go ?Okay, that's probably because maybe we have too much rebound and so the thing's packing down here, making the back stay low and losing steering'.

Most of the guys you're going to work with at this level even though they are young; they catch that stuff right away. Be it Benny (Bostrom), Nicky (Hayden), Eric (Bostrom), or all those guys; they understand it right away. So it's a little bit of both. You try to teach them a little bit of what the bike is doing and then you try to also teach them to look for what the bike is doing.

Q: Do you act as any kind of a motivational source with them?

A: No, that's goes back to, far and away, my weakest side. I don't think I'm good from a motivational side. I really need a rider that is completely self-igniting, like Nicky's that way. You don't need to light a match under him; he's already lit. I think that's where I failed with Eric (Bostrom) last year. I think Eric needed somebody that was a little better motivationally and I let him down on that. But that's something I just don't have in me and I don't think that I will probably ever have it.

In that aspect, I enjoy working with guys obviously that don't need it, like Simon Crafar needs none of that. He wants you to discuss what the bike's doing and he'll take care of the motivation. Nicky's that way too.

Q: A lot of the riders you first worked with were self-motivating, Merkel, etc.

A: Exactly. Even Benny, I think, was more of a self-motivator maybe than Eric was. I feel really bad because I know I let the kid down last year.

Q: What's your theory on bike setup, etc. working with the motorcycle?

A: I'd say my theory is there are no magic numbers. I'm a strong believer that that's a fallacy. Because you can have someone that goes as fast as Miguel sitting in the truck with Ben, when both of them were healthy, they were going the same speed, and the bikes are so much different you'd swear they were different brands.

Obviously, it's important to know dimensions of different bikes that you've had success with but I think what's most important is to make the bike make the rider happy that day. Sometimes at the same racetrack the same settings don't even work. It's what he rode last week a lot of times that he's used to that maybe works for him this week.

I just try to go in the direction of making the rider happy and watching the stopwatch, because sometimes those two things don't agree. Sometimes the bike, when it's really happy for the guy, isn't the best thing on the stopwatch and you have to watch that line a little bit, I think. My feeling is more you just always work on that day's problems for that rider and don't worry so much about some ideal numbers.

Q: You and I were both very big Mike Hale supporters and Mike Hale fans. I'm very stymied to see him now not riding and to have seemingly abandoned his roadracing career. I frankly don't understand what happened. Can you enlighten from your standpoint?

A: No, I'm as confused as you are. You know, I think Mike is a great guy and he had bags of talent. All of us know that. by dean adams, wsc laguna 1996He didn't do what he did in '95 out of luck. He rode that bike really well.

What happened to him in Europe to make him lose his confidence and end up where he is... I've got no idea. It's just one of the great losses for the sport because the guy had a huge talent. But as so far as to say what went wrong, I'm as lost as you are.

Q: Would you concur that desire is a big part of the game from a rider standpoint and if you're not there one hundred percent, then you might as well not be out there?

A: Yeah. Desire and the mental thing. We've all seen where you can take a guy whose got the mental desire to want to do it and the confidence in himself and he'll take a bike that's the fifth place bike and run it right to the front. Then exactly the opposite can happen. You can give a guy whose lost his game plan for whatever reason. He's off his game plan, he's lost his confidence and he may still have the desire, he may still talk the desire, but the confidence desire is not there. You can give him the finest bike on the grid and he'll struggle. The rider's mental thing is so important at this level.

Q: Dale Rathwell once said that he can see it in rider's eyes the moment they fully realize that they can die doing this. When they fully realize that, they're done, the show is over.

A: Exactly. They're done. Actually that's been a quote that you go back through racing in movies and all kinds of things it comes up and it's a true thing. Those guys, the best guys, don't really understand that they could get hurt and they believe they won't and that's what makes them be good.

Q: You left Honda in 1987 when there was that real big reorganization in the racing department?

A: Yes, in '87. Actually I bailed just before. I was a little bit unhappy with what I was doing right then, with the way a lot of things were going on and I had met a lady I really liked and so we went back to Colorado for three years.

Q: You then worked at the dealer level, right?

A: Yeah, right. Went back to work for the same guy I used to work for, Bill Brokaw, it was wonderful.

In the end, my wife knew that I needed to be racing. Rob (Muzzy) called up in the fall of '89 and said, ?Let's do this Superbike thing'. I wanted to do it and Marta said ?Yeah, we should do this again' and I'm really glad that Rob called because it's been a good thing.

Q: You were there for one year.

A: I went to work for Rob in '90 for one year with Doug (Chandler). Doug was, let's say, the lead rider. Scott (Russell) was there, (John) Ashmead was there. Doug won the Superbike title. Scott won the Supersport title. You know we had a really good year. (But) we were really stretching it. Rob had everything mortgaged to the hilt. He had spent every penny he had in order for us to have the tools to do the job. Doug rode really well. We were pretty dominant that year: We won two World Superbike rounds—one round at Brainerd, one round at Sugo.

Q: From the other side of the banners, it looked like there was some friction between you and Rob.

A: Yeah, there was. I mean, ultimately there was the second time I went back to his team. I think the world of Rob, I really like him as a person, but his way of approaching things and my way are just enough different that we would always clash a little bit. I have a ton of respect for him and I believe he has a ton of respect for me, but that doesn't mean that we can work together. There was definitely friction and life's too short to do that. The sport's too much fun to not have fun in it. So it was better to leave.

A: 1992. I worked for him in '90. I went to Europe in '91 to work with Merkel and at that time Rob was just starting to put together his program in Europe a little more heavily and so I would see him at a couple of races and we talked. He had moved to Bend, Oregon which was pretty tempting for me. Being a Colorado boy, Bend Oregon is a pretty cool place to be. The chance to work with Scott Russell was kind of tempting, so I signed up and went up there to Bend in '92. Again, we had a good year. We won the AMA Superbike championship. We did quite a few races in the World Superbike Championship. We didn't win any, but they knew we were there.

Q: Just to get Scott's feet wet?

A: Yes, exactly. That set the basis for the next year. I think we did all of that. We got Europe's attention. We got Japan's attention. We had a good year, but it was obviously there was still the underlining of a difference of opinion between Rob and I.

I had a chance to go back over and run the Rumi (Honda) program for the next couple of years and I decided that's what I wanted to do, because I did really enjoy Europe. Europe's a wonderful thing.

Q: You went to Europe in '91 with Merkel, which was one of his final years with Honda, correct?

A: Correct. I don't remember, but I think we didn't have the number one plate that year. I believe Raymond (Roche) had won it the year before for Ducati. We were still on the RC30.

We struggled because, you know, the RC30 was well past it's prime. It was an enjoyable year from living there, but it was frustrating competitive-wise because the bike was really not up to it. Fred rode well but we just weren't in it.

Q: Then you came back here to work for Rob, then you went back and ran the whole team for Oscar Rumi?

A: Yes, the first year back over we still had to use the RC30 but that was the year we knew was going to be not very productive on the racetrack but it was a good time to build the race shop because we built a brand new shop.

We did a lot of work on the program, Tripp (Nobles) rode the bike. He rode it really well for us. We actually got fourth at Monza which was by far and away the best an RC30 was going to ever do in those days. Tripp rode well.

The following year we got the RC45. We were supposed to be the same program as the previous year, but the previous year there hadn't been an HRC team. For Honda there had been Jean d'Holander out of Belgium, the Castrol Honda boys which were based out of the UK and then Honda of Italy ran Oscar (Rumi). They were all like factory level bikes of equal stature and you got parts and maybe a little bit of money, I don't know about the money, but we got parts and support and that was supposed to happen with the RC45.

We got the letter (from HRC), 'Yeah, that's what we're going to do, we have sponsors lined up, pretty good chance of having Aaron Slight ride the bike' and then ... silence for about a month and then the announcement that HRC is coming racing came. That day I told Oscar 'We're sunk. We are not going to get any works parts if those guys come.' And we didn't, we got kit stuff.

Luckily he hired Simon (Crafar). He has some people in Italy that were doing some engine work for us that were pretty on the ball and Simon rode the bike really well. In fact, we beat those guys: we didn't beat Aaron so much, but we beat Doug (Polen) a lot and we beat Aaron occasionally. We finished fifth in the World Championship on a privateer bike.

It was a great year. It was, it was really good, but the financial strain on Oscar was huge so that was it. I would loved to have stayed, but the financial strain on Oscar was just huge, there was no way that we could do it again.

Q: How long did you stay there?

A: Two years. One year with Tripp and then one year with Simon. I would love to have stayed longer but we just ran out of money, there was no way.

Q: You lived in Italy. Do you speak Italian fluently?

A: No, because of everybody on the team did, I didn't have to. Oscar's wife actually was born in Canada, raised in Scotland; she speaks perfect English. We had all either Australian or Kiwi or American mechanics, a Kiwi rider and then Brian Morrison. So I was lazy, I didn't have to learn. I learned enough to get by. But it's not a pretty sight to watch me speak Italian.

Q: But you were able to live over there for two full years?!

A: Yeah, you can get by because Italy is such a cool country that they will put up with you. If you just know a little bit and you're into racing, that's it: everything's covered. They'll take care of you from there.

My wife got really good at it because she had to go out and buy groceries and do that stuff.