newspage

(APRIL 2001 ) Billy has signed for Team Roberts and will ride under the the Team KR banner throughout the 2001 season. This was announced in a press conference in Banbury on March 27th.Billy is hoping that this will help speedway broaden its horizons and create a link between mainstream motorcycle sport and speedway. Kenny Roberts was inspired by Billy and his mechanical sidekick Craig Cummings who have been developing a visionary bike fairing and by Speedways television coverage on Sky Sports.

(31/03/01) Greg has been jetting back to the States between the Oxford & Poole matches for a couple of meetings that may yield some new sponsorship backing in the coming months."I went to pick up some stuff and meet with a few sponsors. Billy and me have kind of taken a break this year from being a partnership, and he has his own deal going on. I am doing the same and I am working on one or two things. I am working on some pretty big companies and it might take a year to get them involved.It only happened late in the winter but they are big names and if the work out, I will be a happy man."

Greg Hancock wrote off the Berlin GP as a bad experience, and one he doesn't particularly want to endure again. He admits that he found it difficult coming to terms with some far from agreeable track conditions."I couldn't get myself focused or motivated to the conditions and I am bitter with myself for that, but track conditions were atrocious. I am not making excuses but some of the guys just put their heads down and went for it.A lot of the riders agreed track conditions were not right and I certainly wasn't in the right frame of mind.It was very,very close to being called off and under the circumstances I feel the riders deserve a lot of credit for going ahead with the meeting.I can't knock the organisers with whats going on with speedway these days and I think they did a fabulous job with the stadium. But I am upset a little with the way the conditions were dealt with. It could easily been called off at heat 11, though that would have been unfair on the guys who had gone out and fought their way through the programme to the main event.But I don't think it was dealt with in a professional manner.We are all professionals and I believe we need to be careful on what boundaries we step over. I believe all the riders deserve a lot of respect for going out there and putting on a show.Bo Wirebrand (the chairman of the GP riders' association) also did a fine job acting on behalf of the riders.There were certain issues that needed and still need to be resolved but we are optomistic that it will come together before the next round. Bo will continue to work with the FIM in order to get a better working relationship for both parties. Cardiff is another one-off but fortunatly we won't have a weather problem there because of the roof.There is a long way to go and I will have myself in a different frame of mind for the next round".

Billy Hamill feels mistakes were made in the Berlin GP and also feels that lessons must be learnt with another new Grand Prix venue at the Millenium Stadium next on the World Championship agenda. Hamill was one of the large posse of riders who were less than happy with the condition of the track at the Ludwig Jahn Stadium. He said "As a rider all you look for is the stage to go out and do what you know to do best. You leave it to the organisers for that and on this occasion I feel they came up short.I think the shape of the track was probably the worst thing, but we seemed to have everything rolled into one. Not only the shape, we had the bad weather as well. The shape of the track was not a race track.I was off gate one twice and in such circumstances the format sucks. You are just given a gate rather than having to earn one or pick your gate .If the gates aren't fair , then it becomes a pretty unfair format. I tried my best to do something but I just went backwards.Either my hand fell off the handlebars or I was dodging the safety fence.There was just no room for recovery. I would have been better off just tootling around the line. But my instinct is to go racing and that's what I was there for. But the track didn't provide the platform to do that.We need a race track rather than a track to ride. I feel a little bit cheated as I had the horsepower underneath me.At the end of the day,I am the one to blame but you could probably talk to 23 riders and they would all have the same story about the track. I know we have to compromise a little in these new stadiums but there has to be a limit.Saturday night was perhaps beyond the limit.There must be a concern that we still have two more new tracks in this year's series. I would like to think the organisers can learn form Berlin and get it right in Cardiff & Stockholm."