MotoGP Feature - The Anthony West Interview
27/07/2007
Bridgestone’s newest rider has come through the rough-and-ready side of racing. Like fellow Australians Casey Stoner and Chris Vermeulen (both also using Bridgestones for the factory Ducati and Suzuki teams respectively), Anthony cut his teeth in the teenage dirt-track racing. It was no place for the faint-hearted.
The young West was so successful when he tried his hand at road racing that the very next year he was snapped up for a new Australian-run grand prix 250 class. In his second year, he was number two in a factory-supported Honda team.
That was in 1999, when he was 17. Since then, West has taken the role of the most overlooked talent in the paddock, as MotoGP opportunities went elsewhere, and he spend the next years suffering from a series of broken promises and below-par machinery in the 500 and 250 class, a constant struggle. Even so, he managed to take a GP win in the wet at Assen, as well as other rostrum spots.
Overlooked … until 2007, when it all happened at once. His 250 machine was again below expectations, but he was called in as a relief rider for the factory-backed Yamaha World 600 Supersport championship. A close third at his first attempt, he won the next two races by miles. Finally recognised by a manufacturer, West was set to leave grand prix racing for the World Superbike and Supersport paddock.
Then came an even better chance. West stepped in to test the Bridgestone-shod factory MotoGP Kawasaki at Catalunya, when both team riders were injured. He so impressed the team with his pace and his feedback that he was invited to join the factory team for the rest of the year.
There could be no guarantees of anything more, but after the years of waiting, “It was too good a chance to miss,” said West.
His first race was the British GP, where he was fastest in wet race-morning warm-up, and was battling with the leaders in the rainy race when he slipped off, remounting to finish 11th. He gained strong finishes in Holland (ninth) Germany (eighth) and the USA (seventh), all in the dry.
West, a taciturn Gold Coast resident with a ready smile, only started racing because he did badly at school. “My dream was go-kart racing, and my Dad said: ‘If you get good grades I’ll get you a racing kart.’ And I didn’t, so …”
West regularly raced against Vermeulen in his dirt-track days, and laughingly remembers beating him as regularly. Pure talent took him to the top. There was no family motorcycle background.
“When I started road-racing, my dad was standing at a corner and he asked: ‘What’s he moving his foot for?’ To change gear. ‘They change gear? I thought they were all automatic.’ He had no idea at all.”
Although each has achieved good results in the dry (Vermeulen was second in the USA), both are almost unbeatable when it rains. The same is true of their younger compatriot Stoner.
“I guess it must be from dirt-track. The other Australians are fast also, and that’s what they did. It’s the only thing I can think of, because we didn’t road-race much in the wet in Australia. It didn’t rain very much.
“The first few times I had to ride in the rain at the GPs, I didn’t like it at all, but then it all seemed to be easy to go fast compared with the other people.”
Any special technique? “You ride basically the same as in the dry – the same lines and braking, almost the same points, but you can’t go with so much lean angle, so you have to lean off the bike more.
“You have to be really really smooth, and try and keep the bike as upright as you can to get on the good part of the tyre. Smooth is the biggest thing,” he says.
The excellent performance of the Bridgestone wet tyres meant West was able to show his prowess on the Kawasaki from the start.
West has had many revelations since moving from 250s to the 800cc MotoGP Kawasaki. The first was the amount of power. “It wants to pull your arms off on the straight,” was an early comment. The second was how easy it is to use the power, with the accurate throttle control.
Another was the progress in tyres since he last rode a 500, with his first experience of Bridgestones, and not just the levels of grip. “It’s really impressive how they keep working all the way through the race,” he said.
West’s future is uncertain, but gets rosier with each strong result. Right now, he’ll come back from the summer break for more living in the present, going lap by lap and race by race.
“I need to prove myself this year, I want to continue here, actually, but I know a lot of people want to ride in this team so I have to try to convince them that they should keep me.”