Soup :: Interview Steve Whitlock

AMASuperbike.com Interview:
Steve Whitlock
World Superbike Tech Inspector
by dean adams (2000)
Steve Whitlock has been around the national and international racing scene since before many of you were born. For instance, in 1971 he was part of the huge Team Hansen Kawasaki effort as tuner and mechanic for Yvon DuHamel, current Honda Superstar Miguel DuHamel's father. That was a pretty storied team back then as Whitlock tuned for Yvon, a man named Erv Kanemoto tuned for 1967 AMA champion Gary Nixon and yet another man, this one Kevin Cameron (yes, that one) tuned for Cliff Carr.
thanks. KC

Whitlock tuned for DuHamel until the middle seventies, then swapped to Suzuki for a while and then left America for Europe. He worked in motocross for Honda, then nabbed a keen job as an employee of HRC in the eighties, and now, for the past two seasons he has been the World Superbike technical inspector. In World Superbike, Whitlock's word is law and he has respect from everyone in the paddock. He is the only person who has total access to all the garages, and even the Honda wrenches step back when he muscles by, that's rare.

Whitlock talked exclusively with AMASuperbike.com about his duties in World Superbike, working with Kanemoto, Nixon and Cameron at Team Hansen, Miguel DuHamel as a child and what separates the good from the merely competent.

Q. You worked with Yvon DuHamel on H1Rs for several years in the 1970s, what was that like?

A. Yvon was an incredible rider. We did the H1R and then the H2R together, several years anyway, and then in 1974 everybody went their separate ways.

Miguel was about three years old when i met him the first time. He was riding a mini-bike in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn at Loudon. Miguel, even then was dreaming of becoming a racer like his dad. I remember that he wanted to have more of a racer-like last name for some reason, so we used to call him Miguel Spagettio and his brother Mario Spagettio. The Spagettio Brothers!

You could see then that he was special, Miguel, Mario too. I'm a firm believer that the gene pool has a lot to do with the skill that the rider has. It makes a difference. The way they think the way their brain works, their hand and eye coordination, it's all in the gene pool, their DNA. Yvon's genes are pretty strong and they carried right along to Miguel. If you look at the way they look, Miguel and Yvon are very similar. Their stature and mentality are the same, and their desire and their win at any cost attitude are the same. To me, guys like that are the best riders as a mechanic to work for. Because you know that they're giving you 100%. Sure, you're going to get your bike back in back of a truck once in a while, or in a little ball, but on the other hand you're always going to have a good chance at being in victory circle. That's what i liked about working with Yvon.

The thing that always amazed me is that at the end of each racing season we'd bid Yvon a fond farewell, we'd relax a little and then get ready for the next season. Yvon would go to Canada and race snowmobiles during the off-season. I wouldn't see him at all until we tested at Daytona months later. And when i did see him he'd be huge! You'd send him away at the end of the roadracing season and he nice little stout, yet slim, guy; and when he came back, he'd be a little monster. Big arms, shoulders that were huge, he was like a little power-lifter. Riding those snowmobiles was so demanding on his upper body he would come back in the Spring and be a different looking person than what you last saw the previous fall. I remember just standing there in awe one year at Daytona, looking at him going ...'Holy shit, you're so strong it scares me'. He was just a solid little chunk of muscle. He was standing their just vibrating, blood coursing through his body. You see that in Miguel as well.

Q. Their riding styles are very similar, aren't they?

A. Almost identical. They ride the same way.

Q. Gary Nixon was on that team too. Were DuHamel and Nixon close then? Opinions vary.

A. They were friendly. They had good races and they would chat back and forth, there was no real animosity that I remember.

Q. It's neat to see them together again, in that Yvon follows Miguel around, and Gary Nixon is a mentor of Nicky Hayden's, so they're always at the pit wall now that Miguel and Nicky are teamed together.

A. They had good races and they were friendly, like I say. But there was competition. It was Yvon and I versus Erv Kanemoto and Nixon, kind of.

Q. Team Hansen Kawasaki went on to influence racing more than anyone really imagines. It was you, Erv, Yvon, Nixon, and wasn't Kevin Cameron on that team too?

A. Yep, and a fellow named Harold Sellers who was a big tuner in the 1970s, he tuned Eddie Wirth's BSAs. (Interviewer note: other team members then were Dave Ray, who later tuned for Al Salaveria and John Cornwell, and Eau Claire's Red Skamser (rip).

Q. I was reminded by Gary Rand a while back that Yvon rode a Kawasaki F5 Bighorn 350cc roadrace machine in the 250 class for a season or so. You built that bike, right? (Kawasaki made a 350cc single two-stroke enduro in the 1970s that Team Hansen morphed into a roadracer).

A. Yes. I can't remember if we ever won a race on it. I know we finished second on it a bunch of times. I remember either wining or finishing second on it at Kent, Washington.

After the race we loaded up the bikes and drove down to Axtell's shop and we ran my 500 and my Bighorn on the dyno. Axtell was amazed that a two-stroke would run so nice and even on his dyno; and then the Bighorn really amazed him. It made 45.5 horsepower and it didn't have a hiccup or a belch in it at all. We ran then exactly as they were raced at Kent too, no tuning at all after that.

Return to Features