Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

amazing insights in this game of road raci ng . And whe n I pick up th e sli ck Pops Club Japanese magazines th at so handso m ely celebrate road ra cing there, Sh eldon 's impressions come back, tha t Japan is a fiercely nationali stic count ry that has adopted th e sport of motorcycle road ra cing to the fullest. " 200,000 specta tors at a race bike event is normal there," Sheldon said, telling abou t his last seaso n's trips. "You have all th ese kid s growing up throughout that li llie co un try, with mot orcycle road raci ng literally as popular to them as footba ll is to us. So you ha ve these kids coming up who are better tha n good - they are terrific! And for Doug to &0 over the re and duke it o ut with those n ders is go ing to be quite interesting. " What is it here, disrespect for th e sport? I wondered. Sheldon's answer was , " No, I don 't think we're suffering from a di srespectful attitude towards th e sport. We ar e suffering here from a sport that has historically gotten UTa natio nal press outside of motorcycle publicauons: Perh a ps less than one-tenth o f o ne percent of Americans are even aware of mo torcycle road racing . Compare tha t to J apan ! I would love to bet th at 25 percent of the J apanese po p ulatio n is very well aware of mo torcycle road racing." Do ug comes o u t of the dyno room and telephones Diane at home, then breaks fo r order-in pizza - a whole one! " I ca n actually lose weight burni n~ this up in metabolism!" he laughs, cumg me that he 's ready to talk again. About what 's clos est at hand. Daytona. " In 1987, when I finished third at Dayto na, there were a few more people who had better equipment in th at situation. Rainey won. Sujim o to was secon d . And I finished third. Sh obert was in th e race, too , and Schwantz, who was leading and crashed . Then , in 1988, there was basica lly just Kevin. And I had to o utrun th e rest of th e gu ys. But the main threat was Kevin, and if he didn't fall , he would finish in front of me. Everything went right for him - he had differ ent eq u ip ment and stuff like that. So I fini shed second. And now th is year I'm suppo sed to be, from what I unde rstand, the oddson favorite, just from past history and who's in the race. If the race goes fine for me this year , I'll get mileage just like Kevin did last year: I think that I'll be able to win the race. Daytona's Daytona. And that's th e whole thing." He laughs, polishing off a no th er pizza wedge. " Daytona 's like goi ng to a big rock co ncert, and it's intense all the tim e. And this rock co ncert lasts six days , Tuesday through Sunday. But I never get into that a nyway. I ca n shut it o ut. I'll go out with peo p le, I just won 't dr ink anythi ng . I Just won't participate a long those lines . T hey understand. T hey realize. I know what I am doing, I know what I gotta do. " What was it Sh eldon had said? " Dayton a? Hey, we are o ut to win this race. But we made a decision to basically go for the Formula One in Japan and try and make o ur mark there, and the reason for that is th e. GP 500 series is owned, with the exceptio n of th e Itafi an effort, by th e Japanese. They put up millions of dollars to su ppo rt GP 500 worldwide. The energy for th is support is all based o ut of J apan. So just common sense dictated tha t if Doug Pol en went over to J apan and raced right under th eir o wn noses, and just kicked some ass, big time, they wou ld be forced to take maj or not ice a nd put him o n th e GP 500. So we decided to do th a t. At the same tim e, in or der to do tha t, we had to gi ve up the o ppo rt unity to win the AMA Superbike Series, whi ch everyo ne though t would be Dou g's lega cy th is year since he was th at clo se last year." Sheldo n looks a t it thi s wa y: " If Dou g can win Dayton a , which is th e premi er American road race, then no mailer who wins the Superbike Series, it will a lwa ys be remembered that Do ug Polen won th e big o ne. Tha t's a ll we need. T ha t will lake care of o ur vanity and our egos ." And now Polen, after demol ish in g the pizza, wa nts 10 expound upon riding, racing, doin g it th e way he does it. Logicall y, based o n elementary physics and a sing le-m indedness to ride that lim it li ne and win, "There are all kinds of fo rces developed on a motorcycle. Gyroscop ic. Fricti on . Speed, If you un derstand how forces move and work, and why th ey Tire profiles. Gearing. Now you add in a bunch of things. And you have to be abl e to maximize each elemen t, You have to run the new tir e to its lim it. If yo u don 't run eeerv thing to th e limit, then th e tire is not the lim it an ymore, yo u are. I go a t my raci ng th e same wa y every tim e I go o UL I ru n right a t my record tim es, every time, everyw here I go, every weeken d. Because it's not an emotional thi ng. All these excu ses wh y someo ne can't ride today. Ba-Io-n ey! Tha t had nothin g to do with it! That's emotion! A person who rides with emotio n has nothing to do wit h how hard you can go to th is comer, ho w fast you can go through th e middle of th e comer, how much you can get into the throttle when you come o ut. Emotion has no thing to do with that-But it does have to do with keeping your mind tuned in on that situation. Polen tells me that his emotional control is h is physical p lus. " It all has to do with ho w mentally' disciplined are you, that you can recognize you need to do one thi ng when you 're doing this, and you need to think about ano ther thing when you're doing that, Whe n I 'get on the track and I get on the bike, I'm not thinking about anythi ng else bu t what I am doing. And that's why my results come out the same every time. It 's kin d of like a computer too k and ran a bike around the track ..:.... it would be so ' smoorh . . because it's changing a n d holding it right at the limit th e whole time. "When your riding adjustments are too quick, it takes too long to recover from th e result. The more progressively it 's don e, the easier it reaches that f":'lk, so th e resu lt behind it is a h igher performance throughout, say, through . th e corner. It didn 't ha ve to recover from something that went a little bit too far. If it goes over, th en you have to go under, to co rrect and to get back on line again. In o rder to get back o n line you have to go slo wer. Draw a graph, a line of performance. If you go above th e limit line, you have to sometime on that line go below it to get it back. So th e guy ' wh o ca n keep it o n th e line, from start to fini sh . will fini sh ah ead. Add it up with minus and pluses: This is what I do in practice. I go out and test th e line. I go o ver th e lin e and test it everywhere, o n th e wh ol e track. I want to see where the lin e is. I know how to &0 over it to wh ere I can come back to n, or below it. Then - Boom! I've established an area wh ere the lin e is. Then yo u stan hu nting, to find out exac tly where the precise line is itself. That's what is going o n inside ' of my head when I'm on a race track. It doesn't loo k like it, bu t that's it." Like Doug and Rod ney, maybe, testing the same ki nd of limit li ne in winni ng th eir deals? Doug Polen grins big for a moment, then says, " It is. That's what Rod ney and I feel is going to be the deal with us. If we want a ticket to the .500 deal, that's the quickest way. It's a matter of time. A simple matter of tim e." t f In November, Polen married Diana. The two will be traveling back 'and forth from Japan during the season. . Postscript: Polen 's manager is Rodney Sheldon. She ldon has helped Polen secure a GP ride for the Japanese opener. do what th ey do , then you can understa nd how to direct th em in the direct io n that you need th em to go to get th e result 'yo u want, That 's the explana tio n of it all. And I learned a lot of that ou t of just o ne ph ysics class I took in college. " Mot orcycle raci ng is a science, II simply is no t emotional. When someone is ridi ng aggressively or very emotionally, just chargi ng, all they're doi ng is elimin atin g so meth ing they fcel they shou ldn 't really do. T hey ca ll th ai fear?" Doug treats the word as if it's n ot pan of his vocabulary, a remo te latinate, o r some a lien sound. " If you do n't think you sho uld jump off the bridge becau se you thi nk you might get hun, th en you don't - even though you maybe cou ld j ump off of it, and do it, and .no t get hurt. You still do n 't do it beca use yo u th ink you might, OK? So it' s th e same th in g wi th a bike. When yo u go into a co mer, yo u m igh t say, 'I don 't think I'm goi ng to go that deep, because I don't think I can make it!' But some guy wi ll slide in by yo u, and brak e, and mak e the co rn er. And he's o n th e exact same setup you 've gOL Obvio usly it 's possible. Yo u can app ly the bra ke that lat e. It can a ll be calc ula ted. Thro ugh the kinetic energy, the friction coefficients , hea t, heat loss, everything . Wh y can th is guy go faster into th e corne r than th at gu y? Wh y? There is a scient ific reaso n, period. Nobod y can say he was tryin g hard er. Wro ng! T his gu y just did n 't max imize hi s pote ntial as far as his eq u ip men t is concerned. T ha t's it. If you ca n hold il at the limi t the who le way arou nd the race track, the who le race, you will win . Nobody is go ing to invent a way to mak e you go faster than what the physics will allo w. It 's just no t going to happen. " O f cour se there ar e a lot of factors invo lved arou nd tha t, T ire compounds, We are a t Willow Springs, California. The desert su n is high. The track temp warm, nearl y up to wh at Daytona might be. And Dou g Pol en is really hummin' - gettin' it o n in testing. Riding the Yoshimura /Suzuki su perb ike that Schwantz rod e to last year's Daytona win. But Schw antz has -since moved into GP 500s, and, with evolving R&D for this year's effort, th e old '88 Suzuki is working better th an ever. Nabe is smi li ng . And Pol en , after so m e hot laps o n th e Mich elins, sits o n th e race bik e talking to frien ds, cond ucting the d iscussion like a n o rch estra lea der. The su bj ect is creepi ng sta ndard ization in Ame rican motorcycle ra cing - the few pros a nd many co ns of it all - and what we here in America m ight po ssibly do to bring spec ta tor in terest and exci tement up to what th ey ar e toda y o verseas. T he ' suggestio ns are ma ny, th e sto ry too lon g to tell here, thi s time. And one o ther thi ng, Just yesterday, Rod ney Sheldon received a fax from Suzuki in J apan. The message was sho rt, and o h so sweet. Dou~ Polen , a great new hope for thi s pr om ising new seaso n, has been given a Suzuki factory ride for the 500cc G ran d Prix opener Mar ch 26 a t Swub. . Looks like Pol en 's La w is pa ying off. •

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