Brant Russell 4-29-04
- Updated: April 29, 2004
Brant Russell of Team Yoshimura Suzuki is one of the key men behind the new Yoshimura Suzuki ATV racing team.
Many felt that Doug Gust’s lone Suzuki Z400 in this year’s GNC pro field of well over twenty contenders would be a big disadvantage against Yamaha’s mighty YFZ and Honda’s new 450R. Doug, American Suzuki and Yoshimura have proved a lot of people wrong. To say that Doug Gust and his Yoshimura Suzuki Z400 have been dominating lately is an enormous understatement at best. Gust leads the GNC MX series by a whopping 32 points. He’s won four straight nationals and placed second in the one race that he didn’t win (the Glen Helen GNC in California). How is he doing it? What is so special about his Suzuki?
To answer these questions and more we turned to Brant Russell of Yoshimura. Brant is the self proclaimed “Chief Conduit and Bottle Washer” of Team Yoshimura Suzuki. After getting to know Brant and seeing him “wash bottles” we feel it’s safe to say that he’s the guy that makes the new Yoshimura Suzuki ATV race team flow so smoothly. With that said, he’s also the guy that knows more details than just about anyone on the team.
ATV Scene: How and why did Yoshimura get involved with Suzuki?
Russell: This is our 50th year anniversary actually. The founder of Yoshimura, Hideo “Pops” Yoshimura, started the company 50 years ago. He formed a good sound relationship with Suzuki. Over the years it has flourished into what it is today. Now we’ve got a lot of racing efforts going. We’re involved in MX, road racing, Supercross, Super Motard, car racing – just about every type of racing you can imagine. Yoshimura definitely stands tall with a devotion to racing.
ATV Scene: It seems like the Yoshimura name goes hand in hand with Suzuki. You do make products for every brand though, correct?
Russell: Yep every make imaginable. However all of our factory racing efforts are primarily with Suzuki.
ATV Scene: Who is responsible for signing Doug Gust and forming this new Yoshimura Suzuki factory ATV race team?
Russell: When Suzuki approached us about fielding an ATV team, the first people we called were Gary Denton and Wayne Hinson. Wayne is now the team manager. Both are old friends of mine. They both instantly recommended Doug. Turns out this was a pretty darn good recommendation. Doug Roll of Roll Design and Scott Wright of IMS also had a lot to do with this thing actually happening.
“Digger” Doug Gust hammers down in route to his Gainesville, FL victory.
Yoshimura Suzuki is extremely happy with their ace, Doug Gust. For reasons on and off the track.
ATV Scene: Doug is dominating this year. What do you have to say about this?
Russell: I can’t say we expected this kind of instant success, but I will say that we’ve been working with that engine architecture for about five years now. Our engines are putting out about 55-56 horse power, so we knew our motor would be right there with anything on the track. Frame wise, with help from Wayne Hinson and Clark Jones (from Noleen J6), we made a lot of strides in the off season. We ended up cutting about five seconds off of Doug’s lap times during pre season testing. Because of the high end mainstream motorsports suspension people, Clark Jones primarily, our level of suspension is probably higher than anyone else’s on the track. And having Doug Gust as the rider helps a lot too.
ATV Scene: Can you talk more about Yoshimura’s motor?
Russell: You have to take many baby steps in order to get the most out of a four stroke engine. We have a bit of an advantage in this. We’ve been doing it for fifty years and we have two very expensive Onno Sokki dyno rooms and eight regular dyno rooms. We have a huge facility that Suzuki helped us build We can get the most out of these engines in a short amount of time. Not to mention, I think our engine technicians are probably a little better than most. They’re certainly paid more.
Yoshimura goes through plenty of this stuff. They are the largest sport bike aftermarket pipe manufacturer in the world!
ATV Scene: We understand that the Suzuki’s Z400 engine is more receptive to modification than most engines. Is there any truth to this?
Russell: The whole architecture of the LTZ engine lends itself well to ATV racing. It was purposely built for ATVs. It has a real strong and controllable torque curve. And you’re right, it takes very well to modification as we’ve proved. In my opinion it’s a clear advantage over the other bikes.
ATV Scene: OK above and beyond all of this, – is there something special going on in Doug’s motor? C-mon, share a secret with us.
Russell: Not at all. There’s no secrets to share. You can buy the exact Yoshimura kit off the shelf that Doug uses in his race quad, and it’s not that much money. Actually there’s nothing trick on the whole quad either. Everything on it can be purchased.
Yoshimura’s headquarters are in Chino, CABack to Doug Gust, you’ve worked with many factory backed professional racers, what’s your take on Doug?
ATV Scene: How does he compare to some of the bike racing superstars?
Russell: Doug reminds us a lot of an Australian road racer named Matt Mladin, he rides for us on our AMA Superbike team. He’s a multi time champion and current points leader like Doug. They both have incredible race crafting skills. Their work ethic is also incredible. It’s really gratifying to work with guys like this because no matter how hard our guys work the rider never lays down on you. Doug will give you everything he’s got in the name of producing the best product possible in order to win races. I like that in a team rider. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I mean, I was Jeremy McGrath’s first agent. I’ve been around. I’ll say this, Doug Gust is one of the easiest, most hard working and best guys I’ve ever worked with. But, I think that if Doug continues to do well. He should grow that mullet back though, don’t you think? He’s getting almost a little too corporate now that he’s a factory guy and all.
ATV Scene: Where do you think all this is going to go? Suzuki is showing everyone up on the motocross track. What do you think other OEMs will do to answer to your current success?
Russell: Subjectively I would like to think that all the factories will jump in and get really involved, but it’s not always that easy. The whole quad thing has a lot of ramifications. There’s legal issues and issues upon issues. So it takes time for all this to happen. We at Yoshimura just react to what Suzuki wants to do. I think that Suzuki is pretty excited that their quad is doing so well. And I hope they build on this and the other manufactures do the same. I sense that by this time next year we’ll have four factory backed teams all gunning to win. We’re going to do everything we can at Yoshimura to throw gasoline on that fire.
