Five Minutes with ... Miguel Duhamel
OCTOBER 29, 2007
photo: Dan Stenning
American Honda's Miguel Duhamel
By Lou Lopez and Danny Brault
While I met several interesting people at the 2007 Rockstar Energy Drink U.S. Open of Supercross, probably one of the coolest celebs taking in the action was American Honda road racer, Miguel Duhamel. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m an expert when it comes to road racing, but before this interview was conducted—with the help of Parts Unlimited’s Lou Lopez who asked most of the questions—I did know that Miguel was from Montreal, Quebec, and that he is a former pro motocrosser. So take a read through to learn a bit more about five-time AMA champ, five-time Daytona 200 winner, and one of Canada’s top motorcycling exports, Miguel Duhamel.
RXC: Miguel, how are you doing?
Miguel Duhamel: I’m doing great.
How is everything in Vegas?
Good.
You have a house here, right?
Yep, I have a house out here in Vegas and I’ve been living here for about seven years now.
How far are you from the stadium?
Twelve minutes exactly.
[Laughs] Did you walk? Bicycle? CBR1000?
[Laughs] No, I drove over here.
So the season this year, you had an injury …
Yes. First we had a tire go bad on us that caused the crash. Hitting the wall at 120 mph, I’m lucky to be only as injured as I was. Even though I had a collapsed lung, a punctured lung, a laceration on my liver and I crushed my ankle, it wasn’t so bad considering I hit the wall pretty hard. I had to end the season prematurely; I had six podiums and we were third in the championship when that happened. It was really disappointing not to be able to bring another podium in the championship to a Honda bike.
Obviously getting hurt is never a good thing, but it brought some light to a dangerous corner that a lot of people have been talking about. Think it will be fixed for next year?
Yeah, and I think the example was, always be careful. All of the riders, when ever we go through corner 12 in Road Atlanta, we always be careful. But that was a case where I was being careful, but the tire decided to overheat and bubbled up and there was a delamination of rubber that caused loss of traction. My point being, that even though you’re going through it safe—which for us, is at 120 mph—if something happens, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going onto the ground.
You’ve been running Dunlops for a long time now, and they’ve been good to you so obviously it’s a freak deal.
Yeah, I just wish that…. Like when I started with Dunlop, I was there go-to guy with regards to development. But to maybe save my career a little, I think I would like to have someone a little younger do that for us and then come up to me and go, ‘We have a really good tire for you to try—that went more than four laps!’
[Laughs] You need more Guinea pigs!
Well, yeah, you gotta pay your dues, right? So that went bad on us after four laps; it was really good until then but we don’t race four lap races anywhere. It was real unfortunate, the whole thing, but I’m all right.
So Neil Hodgkins with the Honda team. What do you think?
I think it’s going to be great. From what I can tell, from everybody that’s been talking a bit, Neil’s been doing some testing that I haven’t been able to do. The more that’s going on, it seems like Neil and I have maybe the same riding style or setup style. He rode my bike and enjoyed my bike setup. I’m sure there are little things he’s going to do different, but it seems like we’re going to be able to feed off of each other all year. And he’s a tough competitor. I know he’s really hungry after taking a year off.
Do you think that has something to do with experience/ age, that’s why you guys have a similar setup?
I don’t know. I think two good riders can go pretty fast on different setups. I would say my setup is preferred, not that Jake’s is unrideable or anything. Hopefully that’s how we keep developing. Being a world champion and all of the experience Neil has, it’s going to be great that we’re working together on the same team.
Tell us about your Moto GP ride. What is the difference between what you normally ride and that motorcycle?
Well, first of all, I didn’t get any testing on it at all. It’s one of those things where probably a lot of people would have turned it down, but I said, ‘Well, I’ll take a chance.’ We were hoping it would be a top 10 race or better, but it turned out to be a learning experience. They understand English pretty good, but they didn’t understand what I meant as far as setup. It was a great venture, and I thank them again for letting me ride the motorcycle; it’s a great piece of equipment. But the Bridgestone tires, unfortunately I think I was the only guy riding on 15-inch tires; everyone else was on 17-inch which offers more feedback and was my number one complaint at Laguna Seca. Hopefully we can do it again and I can get my revenge. Roger [Hayden] was a good example of that.
But that must have been an honour to you, to have those guys come to you with a $500 to 600,000 motorcycle to ride.
Yes, I think it was a good media blitz for them and their sponsors on that side. That’s’ why I was happy they did it because of the media side. All of the publicity got done before hand, but had I been able to score some good points, it would have been a good story. Hopefully we get another shot.
Switching gears: do you keep up with motocross and supercross racing?
I do. I follow it a lot. I started with motocross; I raced pro motocross and the Toronto and Montreal supercrosses. When I raced motocross, I always loved the supercross tracks because they weren’t that rough, other than whoops, and everything is just jumping. So if you like jumping, it’s really not that hard.
Do you still ride?
Yeah, I’m going to ride more this year. I’m going to get into this four-stroke craze [laughs]. I still have a CR250.
Here’s the classic Steve Matthes question: any good Ross Pederson stories?
Ross is a great competitor and he brought it to another level. You had to have a lot of respect for him; he would get up early every morning and jog and he was in great shape. The only great Ross Pederson story I have involves my brother when he made a bit of an aggressive move on him and Ross was no twinkle toes on the race track. He got up—I was standing near the fence—and I could see him still chewing on dirt and fuming about it. He actually caught up to my brother and they raced for the podium.
Thanks a lot, Miguel! It was great chatting with you.
Thanks.
