This season, Honda will have a new face in their paddock, as Ron Heben was recently hired as the company’s road racing team manager—a job that was previously handled by Chuck Miller, who also overseas the entire U.S. motorsports program. Actually, Ron’s not really a new face, as he worked with Honda years ago and has worked in various capacities for Kawasaki and KTM in recent years. We gave Ron a call this morning to get up to speed on his new job.
By CJ

RRX: Hi, Ron; happy New Year.
Happy New Year to you, Chris. It’s going to be a good year, I think.

How’s the new gig treating you?
Actually, quite well. Coming to Honda is welcome because you’ve got a lot of talented guys here, and they’ve got a great program that they’ve established. Hopefully I can take some of my experience and compliment them. I started on December 20 and had some time off for the holidays. There’s not a lot of time off in racing, but you can we got a little time off.

I went down to Daytona for the tire test [before I officially started]. It was my first introduction to all the team guys down there. Being that Daytona is our first event and such a premier event, it only made sense for me to go down there and see how things were going. Everything went very well. The Dunlop guys worked very hard. They had a lot of new tire configurations for us to try, and both Jake and Miguel seemed to be pretty happy coming out of that test.

When did you last work in road racing?
I’ve been around road racing quite a bit. I worked here at Honda in the early ‘90s for a little bit. When I was at Kawasaki, I kind of worked with the Kinko’s team and was sort of a liaisons between Kawasaki and Muzzy. I was the Team Green Manager, which involved a lot of different racing programs, from off-road, to road racing, to ATVs, to shifter karts. Not only were we racing, but we were a marketing program as well.

And then from there you went to KTM for a while.
Yes.

Did Chuck Miller feel like he was getting spread too thin, overseeing all of motorsports and also managing the road race team?
I think it’s something where I can focus on the road racing part of it and be a tier down from what he does. Erik Kehoe takes care of the motocross and supercross program, and I’ll essentially be doing the same thing in road racing, as well as working with the Erion team.

The program is really quite established, so it’s something that’s going to evolve over the next three to six months. I’ll get more responsibility as I understand what works and maybe have ideas for what could work a little bit better.

When I worked at Honda before, Chuck was working in another department, but I’ve actually had a lot of experience working with him when he was a desert racer.

Is it good to be back in road racing?
Actually, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to focusing on one type of racing. The AMA series is continuing to grow, and with things we saw last year with the GP at Laguna Seca, it really helps bring awareness to the talented riders we have in the United States.

With more players participating in Superbike, which is the premier class, it obviously makes the competition tougher, but it also makes the wins a little bit sweeter.

I understand that Erion’s program is getting stepped up this season, with them taking over Honda’s Formula Xtreme effort.
I don’t know all the details, but it appears that the commitment from Honda has been stepped up to provide increased support for the Erion guys. They’re going to be the guys campaigning the Xtreme class in the series. That’s an important class for Honda to campaign, and we’d like to win that championship again—instead of with the in-house guys, with our Erion riders.

You and I both have motocross backgrounds, and it’s almost like Honda is following the motocross model with road racing. Over there, you have the Supercross team run in-house, whereas Factory Connection handles most of the Lites effort.
If you look at referencing supercross, the Lites class, as it’s called now, is developing into outside teams. Factories still want to have involvement, and those are really important classes to win—whether it’s Lites or Formula Xtreme. It allows us to focus more of our attention and efforts in Superbike, which has been established as the premier class. Working with Erion also allows them to go work with their sponsors to be showcased, and it allows us to develop new riders. If you establish a tier level, it might be a great opportunity to start looking at riders who are going to fill the shoes of your Superbike team. It’s going to take some steps that Honda is establishing this year to start putting that in place and letting it grow.

Supersport has been a great class, but it’s such an important class for all the manufacturers to win that all the A guys are out there campaigning it as well. I don’t know if it’s necessary or not [in road racing], but in supercross, you have some eligibility parameters to keep some of the top guys out of the Lites class, to allow the future superstars to develop. I think that’s something that has to be looked at. What’s in the best interests of the sport? How we continue to bring new blood into the program is really important. How can we develop guys within our own grassroots system, and not outside of the U.S.?

Also, the costs constantly increase in racing. Doing it this way might allow the manufacturers to offset some of the costs, to allow outside sponsors to come in and showcase their products with competitive riders, but they’re still going to insure that they have competitive equipment, because Honda is still going to be involved there to support it. When you’ve got a big commitment [from a sponsor], you’ve got to make sure to follow through on that commitment, so that they can go out there and contract the good riders to come to a good, quality team.

In some other forms of racing, programs get their start, but they’ve only got part of their package together. The most important part of the program is the equipment and the people behind the equipment, to insure that week-in and week-out. That’s one of our goals. Erion has already established himself—look at how many great riders he has brought up—but it’s just a little bit of increased equipment to make that program stronger.

Having worked in motocross, road racing, Supermoto, and off-road, do you feel that there are many differences from genre to genre, from a management perspective?
Well, since I’ve been involved with such a variety of different types of racing, I myself think it’s an advantage. On the other hand, there are a lot of guys out there who have only been involved with one type of racing, and I have a lot of respect for those individuals, for what they’ve been able to achieve. On the other hand, racing is racing, and whether it’s road racing or Supermoto, or off-road, or motocross, to be successful really starts with a company that’s behind you. It’s important to have talented riders, the staffing, and the commitment to go racing. It’s the same in any form of racing. Sometimes, by being involved with the other types of racing, you get to look at other ways things are done. Some of them work well and others not so well, but you can apply some of those to road racing. Again, it’s not like Honda road racing is a start-up program. It’s already a program that works really well; we’re just going to look and see if we can help it along some.

How has the 2006 superbike program been going?
I’m still trying to get myself acclimated. It’s great to see so many inspired people working at a common goal. We’ve got a test coming up next week at Laguna that we’re looking forward to, and after that there’s one in Fontana. We have a pretty detailed test schedule this season. We’re getting ready for Daytona, which will kick off everything, and once Daytona happens, things will start happening pretty quick.

Your team will be racing the Daytona 200. How are preparations going for that?
Daytona’s such a unique race. Getting everything ready for both classes—because both Jake and Miguel will race both Superbike and Formula Xtreme. This year, Yamaha is coming into Formula Xtreme, and for every manufacturer, winning Daytona really kind of bump-starts the whole year and gets you going. It’s such an important race, not only for the United States, but for the whole world.

You might not be the right person to ask, but how do you feel about Honda’s taking its superbike program mostly in-house?
I’m not that well-versed on it right at this point, but speaking with the guys, it’s just a new chapter in Honda’s racing efforts. Obviously, the relationship is not completely severed with Honda Japan and HRC and HGA. They’re still a big part of Honda’s racing and commitment. In the program here, you’ve got a lot of talented in-house guys with a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience, and a lot of contacts. Last year was the beginning of the process, and as it evolves more and more, it will just become a regular part of how the racing business is done for Honda in the United States.

From the outside, it would seem that your hiring—as well as giving Erion the Formula Xtreme effort—is an example of Honda taking this new type of program seriously.
If you look at Honda’s track record, when they make a commitment, they accomplish that goal. The challenges we have now is that in Superbike, there’s a lot of great teams and riders racing now. It’s not just “Oh, we’re going to do this one little class; no one’s campaigning it and we can win easily.” That would have been the easy way to do it, but that’s not always the best way. Like I said earlier, when you win and beat everybody, the victory is that much sweeter. That’s what we’re working on this season. It’s a work in progress. Fortunately, we can still rely on support when we need it, but we really want to make it work ourselves.

Thanks, Ron. It will be good having you in the paddock.
Okay, see you at Anaheim.