Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127407
they had." (H e neg lects to mention that he won two of the th ree long-haul races. ) " Whe n we got to Europe, everybody was ready - and we had tire problems. "That kinda worried me . .. It took Du nlop three or four races to turn it around. Even then , my confidence had been shaken so that every time the bike would vibrate I'd pull in , and maybe nothing wou ld be wrong. It was only after Austria (the seventh G P, won by Dooha n ) that I felt more confident, because there weren 't any more real high-speed track s. "T he Du nlops now seem to have two or three compounds that work, and that's the same as the Michelins were last year. " Bu t the Du n lop is a different tire. It gives more warning when it star ts to slide. It lets you ride more aggres sively, and tha t su its my style. But th ey had to work on a sidegrip problem so that the bikes cou ld still drive wh ile they were sliding. It 's im proved a lot, bu t you still need to be ahead of the Typically, he has the reason for that pinned down. " You can open the throttle earl ier in the corn er now , with the bike still ba!1ked; All you need is a little bi t of spin. ''I'm still riding the same , but the bike isn 't hanging out as mu ch . Before you had to slide mo re. Now it's just a few inches to complete the comer. Bu t if I'd have tried two years ago to slide at the high corner speed s we're using now , I'd be over the high side. " Certainly something has improved in the space of the last 12 months. This year's Czechoslovaki an GP is a good example - Rain ey won the race, over the same 77.09 miles and in similar co n ditions , in 47 mi nutes, 32.169 seconds. This was 18 seconds faster than last year. Meanwhile, secondp laced Doohan , u sing the same Mich elins as Rain ey did last year, was also 15 seconds faster. " It's not just tir es. It 's also chassis and suspension," says the new twotime cham p ion. And his team has tu na ble) map. T hus the dampin g can be stiffened up towards th e end of its stroke, to sim ulate a rising-ra te linkage (which CES does with out) . It can also be stiffened during acceleration to resist sq uat; or programmed for different rates over high-frequency or low- frequency ripples. The possibilities defy the imaginatio n - a nd it can all be adjusted by a man at a keyboard, ra ther th an by stripping th e entire damper unit. They tried it at the start of the season, let it lie awh ile, th en Rainey reverted to th e electronics in France, for the 10th out of 15 scheduled races. " It is the future," he said then; "and it's tim e we started working on it." It went well , and looking back he says now: " It was a big gamble , bu t it was two- or three- tenths faster at Ricard. " He also described the sensation as though the bi ke was " from outer space." Now he grins at his hyperbole. "It does feel differe nt , main ly because it doesn 't have a rising rate linkage, so it needs a who le bunch stiffer sp ring. with Doohan, before tak ing a slender lead , with Schwantz always a lurking threat. That kept him on hi s toes all year long. "The difference between this year and last is that I've never had a real big lead. Last year I thought I'd pushed myself hard, but I discovered that I hadn' t." In a way , it has made winning easier. " In 1990, it seemed that almost th e whole year if I fell down it would let the others into th e hunt. It went on that way until I had a two -race lead with three races left. Even then, I didn't want to fall down a nd risk everyth ing. "The consequences of crashing were always on my mind. This year , it was just the consequences of not winning the race. Mick and Kevin have been right there every weekend, and I had to go and race them every lap of every race. That's easier. " He beat them by having the cornbi nation. And he' ll be back next year, with the same combination fine-tuned bike for tha t last ha lf-second in the lap time." "The Dunlops' more user-friendly early-warnin g system, I suggested, was on e reason for th ere being less crashes this year (Tea m Lucky Strik e Suzuki and several lesser Yam aha riders had al so swi tche d to Dunlop). Wa yne smiled di plomatically, an d nodded. "It . may be tha t last year's lighter bikes were m ore prone to ·sp itt in g yo u through the bubble. But last year's Michelins were very u nforgiving, an d unpredic tab le on certai n tracks and surfaces. La st year, I broke th e screen four times. T his year, not on ce." The improvem en t i n tires has refined hi s ridin g sty le, so tha t it looks a little less dramatic than th e wild tail out slides he practiced in 1989 (and Schwantz still does now). pursued an indefatigable development program on the Yamah a, with and without help fro m the factory. Rainey describ es the goa l at which the com p uters a nd brainpower have been aiming. "We've been wor king all year on mid-corne r and acceleration grip. One real step was in the engine's torque band. It's not right yet, but we know . where and why. The electronics help. We've been working on imp rovin g torq ue to ma ke the bike more rideable , so that it carburates better now down low . "The other th ing has been suspension - especially Ohlin's CES." This is no t exactly active suspensio n, but a variation on th e theme, whereby damping rates are computer controlled to a predeterm in ed (and That means it doesn 't move so easily over tile little bumps, and the rid e's rougher. It feels like supercross - but it seems to work the tire good, an d you can feel the traction real well. It also seems to com e back and sett le down quicker after you 've nearly high-sided still further. Schwantz will be there too, with a newl y computerized and slicker team ; Doo han with another year of looming strength in his pocket, and now Joh n Kocinski, who found his 500 feet in the closing races, and had to back off at Le Mans . to let teammate Rainey finish third. Don 't miss it. And be sure that Rainey will be as ready as anyone can be. CN it. " Very much the sta rt of fly-by-wire . suspension cont ro l, and Rainey confirmed that the next stage will be to hook in the front suspension as well. " One thing that concern ed me was what happens if the wi re breaks. We calcu lated you'd lose 70 percent of your damping." Rainey had all the background.and th e backing to win in 1991. He also had the right kind of competition. For the first part of the season, he was disputing the points lead constantly Unfortun ately, Wayn e Rainey brok e his leg w hi le testing prior to the fin al Grand Prix of th e season in Malaysia. He was flown to Californ ia w here his leg was ope rated on, and he is now rehabilitati ng at his home in Norwa lk , California. He is expected to begin testing th e 1992 Yamaha YZR500 in Jan uary . . . Editor. 17