The 1993 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz, spoke to RACER editor David Malsher about what we can expect to see in the 2015 MotoGP season which starts this weekend in Qatar.

David Malsher: Before we get to teams and riders, is the Circuit Of Wales going to be viable, and as a four-time winner of the British Grand Prix how do you feel about the race going back to Silverstone rather than Donington?

Kevin Schwantz: Well on a personal level, I’ve got strong affection for Donington. That was the venue for the British Grand Prix in my day and it was good to me. I did a vintage event there last year, using the track that cuts out the Melbourne Loop. The Loop added something for us in my era because it gave us a chance to make up time on the brakes, but it’s also a fun track without it.

I don’t know enough about the situation surround the Circuit of Wales to comment, other than if it gets finished, I will always welcome a new racetrack, so long as it’s challenging and safe. But I do think Silverstone is a good track for MotoGP and they’ve done a lot to try and keep it there.

OK, is the pace of Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso [RIGHT, battling with Rossi at Indy last year, IMS photo] that we’ve seen through the winter for real?

Well we saw this even last year. They’re good for a lap or two but then they struggle in the races, so although I think that is genuine pace they’ve been showing, trying to do it over a race distance…I don’t think they’re there yet.

If the bike is up to it, could those two guys give Honda and Yamaha riders something to think about?

No… Pretty simple answer, huh? Dovi and Iannone are good riders, but not at that elite level of Marquez, Rossi and Lorenzo.

How about your old buddies at Suzuki? From the first open test where they looked way off, they seem to have made real progress, with lots of flashes of speed. Could Maverick Vinales and Aleix Espargaro be regular top-five contenders in their first year back?

Hmmm… Regularly, I don’t think so but they could get there on occasion, maybe even get a podium or two. You see, it’s tough to come back into a series when the level of riders and competition is so high and with such huge restrictions on private testing. You never have the opportunity to gain on the track because everyone’s confined to testing with everyone else. No one gets “extra” days. When I raced, we went testing the day after a race and not everyone came with us.

Yamaha had a very low-key off-season – as if it’s slipped back from Honda. Are Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo just sandbagging?

No, I don’t think so. It’s very hard to match Honda, but I think both Rossi and Lorenzo are up to the task of taking the fight to Honda. They can certainly win several races. Whether they’re strong enough to beat Marc Marquez week in, week out, I don’t know.

Valentino Rossi (BELOW, LAT photo) has spent the past couple of seasons re-educating himself, learning to ride like Marquez and last year he really started to manage it and became Marc’s main rival. Can the self-education continue to the extent where Rossi could be champ?

Well first of all, let’s say that I don’t know what happened to Lorenzo (BOTTOM, LAT photo) in the first half of last year but certainly he wasn’t delivering in the way we’ve all come to know, and I think if he’s on form, it’ll be him, not Rossi who challenges Marquez most often…as he should have last year.

But Rossi, man, that guy is 36 now and he is still there to take advantage of whenever his teammate or Marquez isn’t at 100 percent. Is he the man to take the fight to Marquez every weekend? No, I don’t think so, and therefore I don’t think he can be classified as a title contender. There’ll be days like at Misano last year where he’s untouchable, but I think they’re going to be the exception rather than the rule. Having said that, he’s done plenty other things that surprise me, so I wouldn’t be totally surprised to see him beating on Marquez each weekend!

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Is this the last year that Marquez can dominate before Michelin becomes the spec tire next year, and maybe compresses the field, as a lot of people have speculated will happen?

Well, Marquez has definitely figured out the Bridgestones. Throw a new tire into the equation, and there could be a shakeup in the order, yes, because it’s real easy for a manufacturer to follow the feedback of just one rider, and a tire that suits, say, Rossi, isn’t going to suit everyone.

When I raced, even when we used the same brands, we probably only used the same compound a couple of times in a 15-race season. Yamaha needed something different from Honda needed something different from Suzuki. It’s gotten so generic now that you can’t make a choice of compound to suit your bike. Instead, what you have is a choice between soft or hard, and that’s made the racing predictable.

Twenty-five years ago, you’d have a choice of maybe giving a little bit up in terms of ultimate grip in the first half of a race in order to have more consistent levels of grip for the entire duration. Sometimes you’d have to restrain yourself, just let them go and maybe slip back to sixth, seventh or eighth, but then at half distance you’d have more grip to spare, and start charging forward. Did you have enough to get all the way to the front? That was the question for both the riders and the fans. There was that element of uncertainty which is missing now.

Yeah, I suppose Marc Marquez’s bad starts have been something of a savior over the last couple of years because we’ve been able to watch him charge forward.

Well that’s because he’s the only one who’s figured out how to make passes. Too many of the others seem to have this mindset of, ‘What I’ve got is what I’ve got and I can’t do anything about the guy in front. If Marquez drops back to ninth or whatever, he gets excited and shows us a skill he wouldn’t get to show if he just disappeared into the distance each race.

But should Marquez fans be worried that he seemed to make quite a few mistakes in the final quarter of last year? Did he take his eye off the ball once the title was clinched, or did he just throw caution to the wind?

No need to worry, I’d say. I look at it as a kid in command of that championship from pretty early on, and then he took some risks once it was wrapped up. Maybe he wasn’t thinking the races through in the way that you do when your focus is locked onto the championship, and he started living for the moment, trying to do things that nobody else could do. I’d say credit to him for trying.

That race in the rain at Aragon, I guess we were all thinking, ‘Man why doesn’t he pit for the wet-tired bike? What is he thinking?!’ But you make a decision like that – to stay out on slicks in the rain – and then you get to a certain point where you’ve got to commit otherwise you get a bad result whether you fall or finish. So…he fell. But at least he did it after the title was out of reach of the others. I look back at myself in 1989 when I was fastest most weekends but I either won, finished second, or was nowhere. A smarter, more calculating rider could have won the championship on that Suzuki…

Then look at Misano. You could see the Yamahas were way faster off the corners, but Marquez just kept on going for it, trying to win, and I tip my hat to the guy, even though he went down eventually. He doesn’t want to win titles by just collecting seconds and thirds; he wants to win it properly, and that means fighting hard every single weekend, whatever the circumstances.

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Is there any coming back for Dani Pedrosa (ABOVE, LAT photo) mentally after being smacked around the head for two years by his rookie and then sophomore teammate Marquez?

You know, I was at a dinner in Motegi last year and Mick Doohan said to me, “I can’t believe that guy – Pedrosa – has kept his job.” And Mick’s right, it is hard to believe. Nine years he’s been on a factory Honda – this is his 10th – and apart from 2012 when he ran Lorenzo pretty close for the title, he’s never looked like getting the championship won. Now that is a hell of a lot of opportunities. There used to be days where he’d show his talent, he’d get a good start, and then just pull away from everybody, but that just doesn’t happen any more… and he’s on a bike that’s the best most of the time. He wins a couple of races, does just enough to keep his job…

We had riders like that in my day, and the one I think of immediately is Luca Cadalora. He’d be nowhere all year, and you’d get to the British Grand Prix, two-thirds of the way into the season, and he’d be right there, fighting for the win. I’d think, ‘Holy %^&*, where did this guy come from? I haven’t had to race him all year long!’ Then he’d win, get a contract signed and go back to being sixth or seventh. Unbelievable. I mean, on 250cc bikes, Luca was one of the best there ever was, but on 500cc, he’d struggle most of the year and then excel when he needed to.

Yeah, it seems unusually unambitious for Honda to keep employing Pedrosa when there is so much talent on non-factory bikes. If you can virtually guarantee Marquez will be a title contender, why not take a risk with the second bike and at least find out what other talent is or isn’t out there?

Right. And I saw Shuhei Nakamoto (ABOVE, LAT photo) at an event in Japan and I wanted to say to him, ‘Why don’t you give a chance to Stefan Bradl or Scott Redding?’ But it was a meet and greet and I just posed for a picture with him and walked away thinking, ‘Damn, that was a missed opportunity…’

Aprilia seem to be struggling. Is that just because of the reasons you’ve already stated – that they’re just not able to claw time back to the top teams because they’re always testing together?

Hmmm, I’d say it’s more a case of, ‘They’ve made their bed, now they’ve got to sleep in it,’ and by that I mean the personnel. Marco Melandri is probably a good guy for testing, but I don’t know he’s the right guy to throw into the heat of battle in MotoGP. Alvaro Bautista… I like him and wish him well, but I don’t know that the management picked the right staff or the right riders to get their program up and running.

You need a young, motivated vivacious rider on there. By contrast I think Suzuki has done a good job of picking riders – Vinales and Aleix Espargaro may tear up a bunch of equipment and I’m not sure they’re great development riders because they don’t know what a great bike is like. But you know they will be riding like they mean it, trying to prove a point.

Is there any hope of wins for non-factory bikes? Tech 3 Yamahas of Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro, Cal Crutchlow (RIGHT, Autosport) on the LCR Honda or Scott Redding on the Marc VDS Honda look the strongest so far. Should I keep hoping Crutchlow is the new Schwantz?

Ha! Cal, I hope has found the answer at LCR. He has a ton of talent and he could threaten the four guys at the top, but let’s see how these first races go. He’s as mentally and physically tough as anyone out there, and if he’s got the equipment, he might surprise us. But we haven’t seen him on something consistently competitive yet.

The guy I have really high hopes for out of the non-factory bikes is Redding (BELOW, Autosport). He’s learned the ropes, he’s on a better bike now and he’s back with the team that he finished runner-up in Moto2 with a couple of years ago. I think it’s time for Scott to step up and I think he has the ability to do that – top five regularly, occasional podium and if the stars align, threatening for the win.

To further its appeal, I think the sport really needs American, British and Australian riders to be mixing it with the Spanish and Italians, and in the absence of Americans, I’m counting on Redding and Crutchlow to do that!

Speaking of Australians, how about Aussie wonder-child, Jack Miller? Alex Marquez, the guy who beat him to the Moto3 title last year, has gone for a year in Moto2, whereas Miller’s jumped right into MotoGP. Has he moved up too soon?

Absolutely not. If MotoGP is where you want to be, get there as soon as possible and start learning. He’s in the Open class so he’s not going to be a threat to the guys at the front and he’s not going to be under a massive amount of pressure, but it’s experience at the top level and that’s always going to be useful, more useful than a season in Moto2.

Having said that, I actually think that Moto2 was better for Alex Marquez than making the same jump as Jack, whose bigger stature will help him with the MotoGP bike. Alex has now got a chance to mature physically as well as go for the Moto2 title and improve his race craft.

The guys I’d expect to give Jack Miller the hardest time in the Open Class are Karel Abraham [AB Motoracing] – he looked really good in testing – and Stefan Bradl should be good on the Forward Racing Yamaha. Nicky Hayden? I keep hoping. He’s not riding for his job: he still has the desire and the talent.

Hey, I’ve just noticed we were talking about ‘Who can beat Marc Marquez?’ rather than, ‘Here are five riders who are going to be in championship contention and here’s Kevin Schwantz’s pick for the title.’ Is that a reflection of his status, after just two years at in MotoGP, both times champion? Is Marquez head and shoulders above the rest?

Yes, I think so. If he gets that early season momentum, he could win 10 races in a row again. He has the talent, he has the bike, he has the racer’s attitude and now he’s even stronger because he has the experience too! We can hope it’s going to be the year Yamaha riders fight back consistently, or that Ducati become regular winners, or that the private teams take the fight to the factory efforts. And yes, as a fan, I hope there’s a lot of competition. But that kid on the #93 Honda has got them all covered at the moment.

So for the sake of the racing at the front of the pack, we need to keep hoping Marquez makes bad starts and has to work his way through?

Right!

(BELOW: Marquez leads Lorenzo and Rossi at Indy last year. IMS photo)