Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

E • ~ E IAbovel Crosby rode the Daytona 200 on a Yosh F1 bike. but DNF.IBelowl Croz shares the Superbike wlnner's circle with Cooley and Pops Yoshimura. Graeme Crosby Up front racer from Down Under By Chris Carter Graeme Crosby is considered rightly to be one of if not the best four-stroke road racer in the world. But can the New Zealander repeat his success in the Grand Prix world? "Of course I can. There's not much diffe.rence. A motorcycle is a motorcycle; two-stroke or four-stroke. It's just a question 30 of Netting used to.chem," says G~ae!"e. LaSt season's 500cc World Championship Series is the perfect example. I started the season thinking ] was going to have trouble even qualifying, and ended the year with a second place at the West German GP," added Graeme. "If .I can start next year, where I left off this season, what's to stop me." Graeme rejects the suggestion that his GP performances would have been better if he had abandoned his fourstroke ra-cing. "My rate of progress would have still bttn the same with the RG500. I'd never done any GPs before, so I was susceptible to all those dodgey little things that put every rider off in the World Championships, like new circuits, new bikes, new mechanics, new competition, new system, and even a new life," explained Graeme. "At four-stroke meetings, even if the circuit was new to me like Daytona, I had plenty of practice and there were no real dramas. "At GPs you have just two hours practice. In that time you have to learn the circuit, set the bike up, and qualify on the front TOW. And in my case, beca usc; I'd never even ridden a 500 before, I had umpteen other little things to worry about" said Graeme_ "Gearing particularly was a problem. I'd had no experienced with the Suzuki, so it just didn't know what alternative gearing I would have. Anyone who attended the early season GPs knows that even before the 500cc race began the Kiwi was in trouble setting up the bike. There were disagreements between Croz and the Japanese technicians. "The problem was basically I didn't know what I wanted, and the bikes to me always felt too soft, and I couldn't get enough feel through the frame," explained Graeme. "That's not to say that the fourstroke is easier to ride. The 500 is more refined and more delicate as far as steering goes, and all that son of stuff. "The only real difference between the two bikes I ride is the weight and the power characteristics. The problem in adapting was that my ideas of setting up a bike were way different to the majority of other people. That didn't exactly make me wrong, but it did mue me unconventional," said Graeme. "I like hard suspension. but the Japanese factories usually go for a very good safety margin in their suspension settings. They find out where maximum load on a tire is, and then calculate out how' much suspension movement you should have, with the . rider sitting on it --. with the suspension taken up. "Generally that runs to a fairly soft machine, but I'm not used to running soft machines, so for the first three of four Grands Prix, while trying to sort out that, and cope with all the other new things it was difficult to make good results," said Graeme. For every rider. confidel)ce is the key note and Croz suffered a lack of it in th~ early season races. "The main problem was getting confidence. Having people say to me, great, that was a good ride, or good stuff, was important. But at the start of the year there weren't two people in the team, there was one and a half, and I was the half. trying to struggle along," admits Graeme. Suddenly, at the French Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit in France at the end of May Graeme began to look at his results even more critically. ''I'd finished fifth in the race there, with works bikes all ahead of me.' I thought to myself there's got to be something wrong. I'd got the best bike, so I've got to do something. It just started to fall into place there" said Graeme. "Purely because I'd got my confidence back, and other people showed a lot more confidence in me." Boosted with his superb victory at Daytona, when he came from the back of the grid to win the Bell Helmets Superbike 100, Graeme fell into the trap of believing that Grand Prix racing was going to be easier than it .turned out to be. "I made it worse on myself by having bad grid positions in those early races. That was the biggest lesson I learned, that it is essential to be on the first two rows of the grid, and with the front runners at the first corner. "1£ you can do that, you can break away from that blmch of top line privateers like Philippe Coulon. If you get mixed up with them you can't do anything. These are the men who are going hard on good production bikes. If you get stuck with them, even on a works bike its bloody near impossible to..break away from them. t,rc1~v..;t

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