Randy Mamola came out of San Jose, California in 1979 to line up compete in the FIM 500cc World Championship.
Forty-seven years later, the four-time 500cc MotoGP World Championship runner-up, is still firmly holding station in the MotoGP paddock.
A spectacular, fiercely determined racer, Mamola ultimately won 13 Grands Prix and stood on the podium and snagged FIM medals 57 times throughout his 13-year World Championship assault. And after all was said and done and the Californian called time on his career, he formed Two Wheels for Life and Riders for Health to deliver healthcare in Africa.
To this day, a key member of the MotoGP culture and community, this coming weekend, Mamola will be posted up at the Monster Energy Grand Prix of Czechia at the Automotodrom Brno. It’s a Grand Prix the Yankee has a long affiliation with.
“1979 was my first year in the World Championship,” started Mamola on Friday. “I’ve been inside the paddock for 47 years. It just so happens that I still was one of the youngest guys to be able to ride on the track in Brno when it was the old circuit and 11 kilometers long, so almost seven and a half miles long. Parts of that circuit still exists and goes through the town and up through the road. You have to imagine someone like me back then.
“I’m 19 years old and I’m in the back of a caravan that’s being towed by a Mercedes and racing for a guy called Serge Zago in the 250cc class and the 500cc class. When we got to the border there it was a four and a half hour crossing to get through the border. Why? Because it was an Eastern Bloc nation where East Germans could come and see the races and so on and so forth. There were armed people around the paddock. There were armed people when you had to pull your passport out. When I mean armed people I don’t want to say that they were aiming the gun at you. They just had guns. You have to think about it.
“The Iron Curtain still existed in East Germany and so on,” Mamola continued. “I go out for the first practice and I go trough the town and it is literally just hay bales making chicanes. We were going through these apartment blocks and going into the forest. It was amazing on Sunday. I opened up the caravan that we were sleeping in and there were 250,000 people there. I’ve never seen anything like that. The colors, the vibrance and everything. Riding on that type of circuit, and it was still a street circuit, it was something very, very special and something that I will never forget.”
Mamola explained what he now does within the sport of MotoGP.
“It’s now 15 years that I’ve been with Monster Energy,” explained Mamola. “Before that, don’t forget, I was doing a lot of testing and things like that. Then it was riding the two-seat bike for nearly 20 years with Ducati. I did more than 6,000 passengers in the 20 years that I did it. One of the things that I love is that during the practice sessions on Saturday, I get to take two journalists out.
“I take them out one at a time on a scooter and we get to get to go see these guys drag their elbows, their shoulders, and sometimes their helmets if they go down. There is nothing like it that I know of. It is me, who has been around here for 47 years, bringing somebody on the racetrack. Obviously, these people are journalists and they write for magazines. Anything that is outside of our sport I love because that’s who we’re trying to reach. We’re trying to reach more people. I’ve also been working with Gabriele Mazzarolo and Alpinestars for 49 years.”
Mamola is very much a part of fabric of the entire globetrotting MotoGP scene.
“Yeah, the funny thing is that the press love to say things to me and they always want to hear a crack from me,” nodded Mamola. “In terms of the teams, all of the teams grace me to walk in the garage and say hello and all of that. That makes me feel prestigious with it. Listen it’s a sport. I mean there are things that I dislike. For sure. I mean there are a lot of people that are conversating about the things that we should change and not change. I just think that we all have to wear a seatbelt and hold down and slowly but surely these things will change.
“Let’s see what happens in 2027 when the 850s come out. Maybe there will be different riding styles and different performances amongst the original OEMs and machinery. That’s going to be exciting to see what Honda can do and what Yamaha can do against the Aprilia and the Ducati and the KTM.”
The race machinery has evolved during Mamola’s time in the sport.
“We started in 2002 with the four-strokes,” said Mamola. “The Honda five-cylinder was just a blessing. On the racetrack you could just smoke the tire and everything. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see too much smoke anymore out of the tires because the wings are trying to hold these things down. Let me just tell you… Imagine riding your motorcycle and you’re doing 358 kilometers an hour, which is 228 miles an hour. The amount of aero that is pushing the front end down is the equivalent of 90 to 100 pounds.
“So imagine going down the straight and trying to swerve to miss something when you’ve got something that has 90 pounds or 100 pounds pushing down on it on the front tire,” he noted. “When you think about the accidents that we’ve had lately, like the one in Barcelona and the one that was in Budapest just a couple of weeks ago, things are definitely going to change. Before the end of the summer, I believe they’re going to take away the way they push the fork down and make it much more human to be able to do the starts, as opposed to something that’s artificial.”
Mamola finished second in the championship four times.
“The cool thing about my career is that, yes, I finished second in the World Championship four different times,” Mamola said. “Two times with Suzuki, one time with Honda and one time with Yamaha. I’ve beaten every World Champion that beat me. Kenny beat me in 1980 and I beat him in 1981, however I finished second to Marco Luchinelli. In 1983 Freddie Spencer won, Kenny was second, I was third and Eddie Lawson was fourth. You try to beat that. That was the energy we were up against. And the cool thing about it is were all still very close friends with Wayne Rainey and Kenny and Eddie and Kevin Schwantz and even Doug Chandler. I think the Americans brought so much character inside the sport. You just know how we were. Looking back at that, it was great. There was tobacco money. It was about the rider and talent, not about you bringing money. That was super important. It was just something very, very special.”
In 2018, Mamola was inducted into the MotoGP Legends Hall of Fame.
“I’m proud of the things I was able to do,” he said. “I was not a single rider and single bike rider that stayed in the World Championship with just one manufacturer. I was lucky enough to be on the podium with four different manufacturers in the 500 class. Looking back at all that, I’ve had a full circle and then somebody that has a charity that’s the charity for MotoGP, DORNA and the FIM has been remarkable.
“And the guys I raced against, they were all such unique people. Like Kenny. I still have a photograph with him when he was 21 and I was 15. We were at the Cow Palace in San Francisco doing the indoor race. And then actually having to face to face against kenny in the 1980s was amazing. I still say he’s the absolute best when it comes down to riding a TT at the Houston Astrodome or Ascot.
“Those kind of races were just insane,” he added. “That’s what I was up against. That was just something very, very special. My life has just been full of expectations and happiness. I know there are people who will always say, ‘Yeah, too bad you just never won a World Championship. Listen, there are people that never even get a medal. There are people that never even get on the podium and I’ve been up there 57 times.”
