Rider Kevin Schwantz, who won 25 GPs and the 1993 championship at the peak of Suzuki’s second coming, paid tribute.“He was by far the most important person at Suzuki during my grand prix career, and the driving force at Suzuki at the time… completely focused on how to make their grand prix bike better.”He also had a human side. “Such a nice, laid-back easy-going guy. With Mr Ito you could go and have a beer and talk about what happened in the last race. I think that jovial way he had comes from having been a racer. I think he realised about racing – that it’s a pretty high-stress job, but you also need to have fun.”Schwantz’s reminiscences were coloured with affection andrespect: “The way I remember Suzuki’s mentality was …to go out and try to be the best, you had to work harder than anybody else. They may have been a little bit slower on the reaction times and being able to solve problems but … we will get it done.“It is one of my beliefs that the people at Suzuki were some of the smartest there were, but they just took longer to react because the department was so much smaller than Honda or Yamaha.“With Mr Ito, my dad would say that of all the people in racing, you could sit down with him and say … this is what we’re looking for, and he would go – okay. If it wasn’t off the wall or out of the ball-park, he wasn’t going to play games.“He was like: we need to get this done and get focused on racing. Let’s do it.”Taylor, whose incumbency as team manager spanned the years from Barry Sheene through Kevin Schwantz to Suzuki’s last 500cc champion Kenny Roberts Junior, agrees that there was always a deadly serious side.“He could be hard and ruthless, if he thought something was happening that wasn’t in Suzuki’s best interest. He certainly expressed himself, and it was always Suzuki’s point of view. He never lost his rag in public, but he still boiled about it afterwards.“He was brilliant, because he had a rider’s perspective. So, he was able to chivvy them up when they needed it and be very respectfully supportive when they needed it.“He was always the man to go to, the man you ffirst met. He was very aware of having to keep senior management at Suzuki on board. Life was a lot easier when he was on the team. He would say: ‘We go racing to win’ and would do anything to help that.“One of his big strengths was that he knew how to overcome the differences between Western, Japanese and rider cultures, which at that time was pretty unique.”Ito-San became the first member of the Japanese federation’s new Hall of Fame in December last year.26TEAM SUZUKI RACING NEwS2019 Issue #1 - SummerPERSON AT SUZUKI DURING MY GRAND PRIX CAREER, AND THE DRIvING FORCE AT SUZUKI AT THE TIME… COMPLETELY FOCUSED ON HOW TO MAKE THEIR GRAND PRIX BIKE BETTER.”“HE WAS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT
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