Highlights

Father and son champions face the motorcycling world

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-21 10:46

"Last year was a disaster of a sponsorship year and its going to take us a while to dig ourselves out of that.

"Everybody's sort of saying lets see how it goes and sitting on the fence but I think people are going to be genuinely surprised at how well this thing goes.

"After the KTM deal I think I'm much sharper than I was."

Roberts said there were pros and cons in having his son riding for him.

On the plus side, his expertise would pay immediate dividends in terms of technical feedback: "Racing against the best companies in the world, you really need someone on it that can guide you.

"We don't have all the resources that everybody else has so we've got to have better people, a better rider and better direction," said Roberts.

"But it's not easy having your son race for you. Quite frankly, it's not an easy sport. It's not as safe as golf. And half the time I'm hoping they slow down and half the time I need them to speed up."

VERY KEEN

Roberts cannot hope to match the big guns, Yamaha with Valentino Rossi and Honda with young guns Marco Melandri and Dani Pedrosa.

He can, however, still get satisfaction from taking them on and perhaps pulling off the odd upset.

"I don't get the same feeling out of anything that I used to get, so that's not going to change," he smiled wistfully.

"(The feeling) watching the motorcycle that I built go around the racetrack is still there, I'm still very keen on making it better than everything else.

"I don't think that there's anything that you can compare MotoGP with once you've been there and been lucky enough to ride at that kind of level."