Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

erace • Wes Coo'ey"~rev;ews Ja~an's biggest i The Suzuka Eight Hour By Wes Cooley O ~ c<"') ...E:' ::s ~ Wes Cooley teamed with Mik e Baldwin to win the 1978 Suzuka Eight HOUT Endurance Race at Suz uka City, Japa n, in [ront of a crowd of 70,000. The pair rod e a YoshimuTa Suz uki Superb ike and annihilated th e vau nt ed Europ ean H onda endurance teams , in cluding reig ning Endurance WOTld Cham pions Christian L eon andJean Claude Chema rin. Th e iTony of that is that Cooley and Baldwin weTen't considered a threat-s the organizers didn 't even include th eir pictu res in t he program. Of CO UTse, nobody ex pected th e Mo Tiwaki Ka wasaki t eam of Kiwi GTaeme Crosby and AustTalian Tony Hatton to finish third, nOT David Emde and a japanese rider to finis h second on a TZ750, with Emde setting f ast time in qualifying. You see, Suzuka Circuit is own ed by Honda . Honda RSC is located in the track inf ield, part of a g iant amusement com plex called Hondaland, in a city that is essentially a Honda fac tory town. Honda retaliat ed J OT th e 19 78 slap in th e fac e by mounting a massive assault on Suzuka last year, flying in Hatton and Mick Cole, David Aldana and Dale Singleton, Englishmen Alex George and R on Haslam to rid e RCBs. Cooley t eamed wit h Ron Pierce and had nothing but problems with th e pr ototype Yoshimura Suzuki F·1 bik e, and no other AmeTicans started the race. Hatt on and Cole won, George and Haslamfinishing second. Suzuka 1980 happensJuly 27 . Th e U.S.A . will be repr esent ed by Cooley, Richard Sch lacht er, David A ldana , David Emde, ' MaTty Lunde, Gina Booaird , Freddie Spen cer, Ron Pierce, J ef Han ey, Eddie Lawson and John Ulrich. All th e hoi f Europ ean team s will be th ere, as well as everyJapan ese rider eligi ble. H ere, Cooley tells what it's lik e to race at Suzuka, his stragety , an d his predictions. P ops Yoshimura initiated it all in 1978 , when he asked if I'd like to race at Suzuka with Mike Baldwin. Suzuka be ing in 20 J apan , it's pretty much Pops ' home territory. We had run th e 1978 Onta rio Six H ou r-vl rode wit h Ron Pierce and Ga ry Fisher--a nd went fairly well . And Suzuka is just like Onta rio . It ma y be an eig ht- hour, but it's exactl y like Ontario , It 's not an end u ranc e ra ce. It 's more of a sprint ra ce . A long spri nt race is wha t it rea lly comes down to . At a 24 hour endurance ra ce you have to set up a pa ce that you want to work by, Ma ybe you 're able to turn a 2 minute 20 second lap , and in the race you drop back to 2:24 just to sav e th e engine. But in an eight hour that's not really necessary. In the six and eight hour races you get on the motorcycle and you go as hard and as fast as you can for your hour and 15 minutes or whatever--however long your session is-vand th en you rest for the hour and 15 m inutes that your co-rider does , and th en you get back on the bike and go as hard and as fast as you can aga in , In 1978 we had a lot of problem s. The Suzuki Superbike we rode was brand new that yea r and we had clutch problems. Practice started on Tuesday at Suzuka and by Saturday we had gone through eight clutch assemblies , Suzuki kept trying to fix th e problem bu ilding entire new cl ut ches , m a ki ng them better each time. But it was really good that we even qual ified second , because we'd go three or fou r laps and end up doing in the clutch and we'd have to change it. We figured that we'd do four or five laps in the ra ce and the clutch would go again , But Suzuki put together a clutch right before the last practice before the st a rt of the race, and it worked really fine. We started th e ra ce , and it went as smooth as glass except for a front axl e holder bol t t ha t I snapped off with an air wrench during a whe el change. but we fixed that. I rode a cou p le of easy la ps while the pit crew ground down one side of a spare clamp. so that what was left of the bo lt would stick out and we could thread a nut on . I pitted again , they cha nged the clamp and it work ed . Now last yea r we started OUI with the new frames and everything and it was more difficul t. I wish we had ridden th e Superbike last ye a~ , be cause the new fra me j ust wasn t right. They were trying to get us as co m petitive as we wer e the yea r before and it wasn't wo rk in g . Plus the 1979 race was more co m petitive . H on d a got beat in 1978 and th a t really pu t il to 'em , so in 1979 th ey had some thi ng like five teams on RCBs and th ey hired a lot of riders, a nd even Kaw asaki ha d go tten int erested and entered a couple of mon oshock 1000 cc fou r stro kes. T he n another th ing t hat ham pered us was the fact tha t in th ese long end u ra nc e races--these long sprint races--you have to ha ve a teammate who is real compatible with you . What I mean is that you have to h ave com pa tible riding styles, posit ioning of th e handlebars, clutch and brake levers , seating position , stu ff like that . Mike Baldwin and I were real com pat ib le in 1978 . and if I liked something, he liked it too . And if he liked something and I tri ed it , I usually ended up liking it too . which made it really good . I rode with Ron Pierce last year . a nd while I like Ron a lot a nd he's a rider , we weren 't really good com pa tib le . Something I migh t like , he wouldn't want to ride . Like I'd set up the suspensi on and he wouldn't particularly like it , or it wouldn't work for h im . In these endurance sp rint races , you have to have two rid ers whose tim es are really competitive and close . An ex a m ple of that is that at this yea r's Ontario six hour, m y teammate Rich Schlachter go t to Ca lifornia on the Friday night before th e ra ce and had never ridden the b ike before , It came to Saturday practice and Nabe (Suehiro Watanabe , chief Yoshimura R&D mechanic) wanted me to set th e motorcycle up , because I was already used to it. They had me on it more than Rich , which I think was wrong . When we go t down to tracing, Rich's times were a minimum of three or four seconds slower than mine were per lap . So everything I m ight make up in m y stint, he would more or less drop it back a little bit when he rode his action. That's why you hav e to have two people who are really close in lap times , so one's not making up extra tim e just to have it given away by the next rider . At Suzuka last year I had t he same ' problem , Ron's times were about five seconds slower than m ine were, fou r or five seconds. It just doesn't work. It's just really hard to race knowing that you 'll be making up time just to jump off and have the other guy lose it for you. It kind of does you in . But I'm not trying to fault anybody, because everybody tried hard . In 1979 the fram e wasn't right , it was all thrown tog ether a t the last m inute, We had problems from tire selection and zhey were trying to put together a cra n ksha ft that would last 24 hours, and that's what we end ed up breaking since th ey used too hard a materi al and it got brit tle . But his year I'm riding wit h G ra eme Crosby and he 's obviously very fast. He had pol e position at Suzuka last year, and in '78 he qualified right behind me by on ly a couple of 10th of a second , I think t ha t' ll make a good team . I don't ride any race that I don't think I can win- -I have to have that kind of attitude. Crosby a nd I a re d efin itel y going to be in th e hunt . He's a good rider, he 's consisten t, and he's strong. I feel good, This yea r's been going really good for me , and that's one thing that's helping me. Every time I race, I feel really good , Yes, Crosby can win this race, very easi ly. I know that Freddie Spencer had a kind of long look on his face wh en he heard that Crosby was going to ride with me inst ead of Rich , as was or iginally planned. If everyt hi ng goe s smoothly for us, it shou ld be no problem. Our strategy will be to j ust go ou t the re a n d race ha rd . You do ha ve to consider tire wear . And I ca n a lready see some co nflicts because I like to use Goo dye ars--I like that parti cula r type of tire--and C rosby ru ns Du nlops. He doesn't like the Goodyea rs . I th ink the Goodyea r with A21 co mpou nd will p ro bably go four hours . I t hi nk you hav e to set the m otorcycle up where it will go fla t ou t for eight hours, and if that ta kes using a little harder tire , th en do so . Because one sm a ll m istake will put you out of th e winning spot. Just something like th rowing a chain or som eth ing ridiculous like that. I think tire wear is not going to be a big problem because you have to cha nge th e rear tire for sure, Brake pad wea r was been a problem at Suzuka in the past. In '78 when Mike and I won , we wer e extremely close to having no front brakes at th e finish , They were almost down to the pads , metal -to -metal contact. We've got good brakes now , It's just a matter of ge tt ing a pad that will hold up for the eigh t hours of real ha rd b raking. Suzuka is a fast cou rse, but there are still quite a few places where you're really on the brakes prett y ha rd . Yeah an eight hour ra ce is just flat out , a long sprint race. You just have to ride them hard and hope you don't hav e anything go wrong. In a 24 -hour race you can have something go wrong and you've got 24 hours to make it up. But in eight hours you ca n't get away with anything. Everything ha s to go real smooth. One thing that will make th is year's race a little harder is the new rule requ iring an alternator . I was talking to Fujio Yoshimura and he said that the bike will probably weigh about 35 pounds more than what mine does now , which is quite a bit more but I don't think that it will be that much of a hinderance to us . The alternator will be sticking out on the left side, so I guess we'll have to just hang off the seat farther. I don't know . I've had problems with ground clearance. I seem to more or less throw a motorcycle into a corner instead of just kind of peeling off and letting it rid e in real easy, and m y style lends itsel f to let me drag the case and stuff. So it's something we'll have to work around , Suzuka is real hot and humid , b ut I ha ven't really been doing any special preparations for the race. Atl anta was really hot and sticky, pretty much like Japan is. But I didn't have any problems at Atlanta until I stopped , When I'm riding the motorcycle, I'm OK , I mean, I'm not but I can still function and everyt hing. But as soon as I come to a stop , it just builds up on me real quick and I usually have to sit in t he shower or something to get my body temperature back down , The co m pet ition this year will be tough. All the Europeans are corn ing. including Leon and Chemerin . Now , if this were a 24 ,hour race , I could name a lot of people that I think cou ld be real com petitive and be a real threat and a real problem , But this being an eigh t· hour definitely changes th is thing around . It 's a sprint race , and as fa r as I'm concerned I think tha t Crosb y and I will be as fast, if not faster , than a nybod y else th ere. So as long as we ha ve everything work smooth for eigh t hours, we should win it. I think that a lot of Americans are going to be running up front , and let 's take a look at teams with Americans riding, Rich Schlachte r/M ick Co le -Yoshimura Suzuki I think that Rich and Mick will be real com petitive, within the top five or six at least. The onl y disadvantage that th ey'll ha ve is that ne ither one of th em ha s eve r ridd en th e motorcycle before , Mick rode Su zuka last year, and he won , What more can you sa y? He was rea l consistent , and his parmer . T ony Hatton was consistent . They wer en 't t he fastest . Bu t then again, tha t doesn't a lwa ys necessa ril y pay off. You ha ve to be real consiste nt . R ichard is go ing to be com petiti ve. He ha s ridden a four-stroke before , so it's nothing like getting off his Yamaha and getting onto something tha t he 's ne ver ridden. He rode the Kawasaki Superbikes last yc:ar, It 's just a matter of those riders being compatible and seeing how well they can ride the motorcycled . I th ink that Graeme and I will be able to out-ride Rich and Mick, but then again , consistency can payoff and it's just something that you have to see how it goes , Everybody can ride just as fast as the other person on any given day , It 's just a matter of how well the team is set up, how they feel. It may be a matter of how everybody can help them get used to the bike. Pops is pretty good at that. He understands and knows what to do if you tell him tha t t he motorcycle is doing this or that to you . Pops understands what's going on and has a good chance of making it right for you, David Aldana/David EmdeCastre/Moriwaki Kawasak i David Aldana has been going really fast lately. He's had a few bad moments on the track, but he has been going real qu ick . T hen again , ne ither Aldana or Emde have ridden the motorcycle tha t they'll be riding. It will be a whole new thing for both of them , and they usually don't ride bikes with alternators, either. As far as I'm concerned , David Emde has really slacked off the last couple of times that I've seen him ride , He really hasn't been up to par, not like he was in '78 when he rode and finished second at Suzuka . I don't know what it is. I think we all go through it, paying our du es. I think that Davi d Aldana will be co mpetitive in the beginning of the race. Bu t I think that this team will have t hat problem where one rider will be going fas ter th a n th e othe r , wit h times that aren't perfectly compatib le , I think that is where David Em de will be a little bit of a hinderance, I don't know if Emde's times will be as q uick as Aldana's. They might lose there,

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