Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

.« again over his reluctan t V-4. Jackie Germane, SonautoGaouloise's man, has plenty on h is plate fixing up Christian Sarron's bike agai n, and wondering how to stop the spate of crashes . . . , Racing fortunes ebb and £low, and these men will have their chances again this year. In 1987, there was definitely an elite, the top four, the · repository of all that is good in their; unusual craft. This entails being a combination of maintenance man and inspired designer, and the racing teams would be nothing without them. Jeremy Burgess Wayne Gardner (left) and tuner Jerry Burgess were the team to beat last season as they won the 500cc World Championship, GP crew chiefs Jerry Burgess, Kel 'Carruthers, En Kanemoto and Mike Sinclair The power brokers By Michael Scott Photos by Henny Ray Abrams & Paul Carruthers It m ay not be appropriate to 'describe GP road racers as th e cannon fodder of racing, but there is truth in the metaphor. They come, they go, th e 'n ex t batch takes their p lace. It is n o more correct to descnibe. G P roa d race team crew chiefs as the generals, or 42 even company commanders, although there is that in their ro le. They map the campaign, consult on strategy, are in charge o f intelligence. . . But there are nuts and bolts in their lives, too . Late nights slaving over a cold crankcase, puzzling over computer read-outs, or waiting for inspiration with a rats-tail file. Better to call them brokers of power, the intermediaries between rider and ,lJlachine, machine and factory. And behind every winning rider, there's a good one. Jeremy Burgess's day may start early, with the paddock -alowly coming to life around him. It is conference time in the tent. Burgess consults' with his cohorts '- ex~rienced Grand Prix mechanics hke himself - waiting ,to give his last word. Then Wayne Gardner comes bustling in, to add his opinion, or just generally fuss. Jerry knows a bad day when he sees one. "When we have to go and wake Wayne up at 10:30, to practice in half-an -hour, then I know he'll go quick. But if he's in here at 8:30, he'll be slow and we'll have prob lems." Over at Erv Kanemoto's Honda tent. he'll be checking over his oeloved data - tire charts. . temperature charts, rev readings, section times, wishing Freddie was there and like always, harikering after the old days, when he used to get his fingernails chipped tearing engines down, . modifyi~g them some . n ~w way, 'the!,! building them up ~gam. Now, he s more hke some kind of supermarket manager for Honda, wrapping the engines in plastic bags for shipment when they've run their service mileage, and unwrapping the new ones fresh from the factory shelves. If it wasn't for the data ... A more convivial atmosphere prevails in the Marlboro tent, where the great man Agostini lo unges cracking self-important jokes, while Italian mechanics £lash around the vivid red works Yamahas. Soon, someone will bring in a tray of little plastic cups of expresso coffee. In the midst of it all, gazing conternplatively at the recalcitrant carburetors of a stripped V-4, is Kel Carruthers, former Australian World Champion turned tuner and engineer. He looks small, in a big tent, surrounded by so many, 'ma ny bikes. There's a Great Man under the Lucky Strike awning too, but Kenny Roberts' wisecracks are saved for wisecrack-time, and he's up close with the equipment, outstaring a bare ly visible snag mark on a front fork tube, and nodding as he listens to Mike Sinclair's murmured explanation. Sinclair, another Antipodean, always talks quietly and not a great deal. But he listens very carefully, and thinks a lot, and his best Yamaha was second to none in '87. They are 'no t the only ones, these four. Under the Elf flag , pot-bellied Serge Rosset brings a pragmatic and businesslike approach; over by the Suzuki truck, small , bespectacled and energetic Steve Moore is sighing Burgess, now 34, from near Adelaide in Australia, took up with motorcycles when he was preparing to go to college to study civi l e n g i n ee r i n g . " I took a ' year off ... and never went back. Looks lik e I've left it too lat e now." Burgess, a voluble bearded character, whose face is set in a sort of surprised grin, raced various bikes, including a 750cc three cylinder Kawasaki, before graduating to a Suzuki RG500. Then Yamaha's TZ700 came along- faster but lacking the refinement and good engi neering of the Suzuki. At the same time, a racing friend was kill ed. " I los t interest in riding." But not in racing, for soon afterwards he embarked quite casually o n the . career that would 'take over the next decade of his life. There was already a strong Australian presence round the works team's work benches, and it was partly through this that his application to join the Suzuki G P team , working for Ra ndy Marnola, was successful. "They knew that my R G Suzu ki had always been q uick and well-prepared. " Burgess spent three years with the legendary Erv Kane rno to, and alongside littl e Geor~e Vukmanovich, "one of the all-lime great guys of racing." O h yes, they won the World Championship too . At the end of that year, HRC offered him leadersh ip of Wayne Gardner's team. He took the job wi thout any ti tle, believing collective effort. " Everybody is essential. Mick drives the motorhome and mixes the gas, but if he mixes it wrong, my engine's no good." He is still feeling his way as a development engineer, and as a result raised no complai nt abou t Honda's policy that all development work is done in Japan, though others complain that although H RC will listen to suggestions and good ideas, they often seem to disappear into oblivion, to emerge changed beyond recognition some time .later. . "There's not a day gone by that I don't look at something on the bike, and wonder if it couldn't be made better." Putting his bike together is the easy part. "There's only one way it fits. Dialing in suspension and carburetor settings is what takes experience. You also have to know the rider, and understand how to interpret his impressions. Wayne is very good that way . he knows what he wants, and he taught me a lot." Wha t he didn't want was the 1986 V-4 H ond a; with its tro u blesome handling. "We knew the bike was no good. The handling was unp redictab le. It would understeer on some bends, arid oversteer on ot hers. We discovered that engine torque was . lifting the front of the bike at hig h revs." A word in Honda's ear, and the direction of rotation was changed in 1987. T his major element of redesign seems to have escaped most peo ple's notice, but transformed the NSR 's handling. Mike Sinc lair and Randy Mamola finished second in the title chase last year; this year Sinclair will work with Kevin Magee and Wayne Rainey. Suzuki team, during which time they took Mamola to the first of a number of GP wins, then left at the end of 1982, returning the next year expecting to join a privateer team, prepared to abandon the relatively easy life of expenses-paid hotels. When he got , a call, from a Japanese-sounding voice , offering him a mechanic's slot on the works team with Ron Haslam, " I thought someone was'winding me up." Not so, and his subsequent career with HRC saw him wield wrenches for Haslam, Mamola again, and the greatest prize of all - Freddie Spencer. He looks back on 1985 as a happy time, working for the The administration (all tea m chiefs keep voluminous records) he tosses aside lig h tl y. "That's just shu££Iing papers. Anyone could do that. The crux is getting the guys together and mo tivated, so that during the seaso n they give everythi ng they've got to Wayne Gardner." He is ha p py to cede engine development to the factory. "The way it is now, if you put it together right, it's tu ned. I'm perfectly capable of doing experiments, but at a race track that only shows you are getting desperate. . " I'd rather tellHlcC about what we need, and let them gri nd the cylinders and test them on the dyno. "

• Cover