Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

-';ONGIIA TUI.A TIONS E/IION /lACING AND MOTO I.IDEIITY Congratulations Erion Racing and Moto Uberty on your series championships and excellent performance durinq the 1994 road racing season. Thank you for demonstrating the performance and endurance of Barnett Clutches on the ultimate proving ground, the race track! P.O . Oox 2826, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 (3 10) 94 1-128 4 Thanks for a _Llppe-r-t 19941 Great h_rr1Irr1I~r-h~_c:I Freel Andrews J.D . Collins Jay Hauser -. Robbie Horton Brian Manley Derek Natvlg Josh scott Billy SIlvaroie Kevin Walker Adam Bechdel Doug Dehaan Danny Haynes Mike Jones Stephen Martin Jim Neese Brock 5eIlards Bobby Stovall Kevin Windham MOTO SPORTS AlK • DUGAn • HUSQVARNA 32 Des Moines, IA (515) 285-8014 r-ic:l~r-s; Kreg Bigelow James Eickel Axel Holvoet VInce Kamow BrIan McKinney Nathan Ramsey SCottie Shipley Joshua Summey Caven Woodruff M ike Brown Corter Gurnee Richie Horton Chad Lough Hank Moree Shown SChullz Chuck Shirley Shane Templeton Davey Yezek ~ Parts & 'MOili) Specialized service Ed Labelle Cyt:le IEngloeering Lucas'l Arnal l Exhaust Sy stems Vintage Restoration Specialist Phlllldelphla, PA (215) 472-4582 FA X (215) 476-2 167 . . ·IN R IE Chris Carr TE V W· w hat Harley was paying me to do anyhow . I've always been one to give my sponsors their money's worth. Not onl y HarleyDavidson, but the other people th a t helped me. Had I no t stayed focused on what I was doing I wouldn't have given them their money's worth. Wa s there a reason that you haven 't gone road racing before now? The biggest reason is not having someth ing to fall back on . I have to consider my car eer and my fut ure. I may go out and be a flop the n e x t year on the pavement, bu t I have so me thi ng to fall b ack o n w it h H arl ey an d di rt tr a ck . An d they've expressed that that's fine with them. If it doesn 't wo rk ou t, and they d ecide not to reh ire. me for '96 to road ra ce, th ey 'll rehire me for dirt tra ck. Th a t's b een e xpre s sed to m e alrea dy. Th at wa s one of my conce rns goi n g in. That' s not som ething th ey ca me to me with, th at' s some thi n g I w ent to th em with. I' ve go t to look down the road and be able to pay my bills as well . How closely do you follow road racing? . Mostly in Cycle News and I try to catch as many of the races as I can on TV. It' s hard to figure out when they're on. I think the last race I've seen on TV was a replay of the 600 Supersport race from here on TNN about a month ago . I look mostly fo r lines and th e variance on them. Obviously, you look at the guys who are up front and when the y' re on TV they 're going to try and focus on the front pack . So I try to see lines and , .not so much braki ng poi nts, bu t the part of the track that you need to be on. Try to s tead ily p ick u p .the p ace and stay on that particular spo t. Is this something you've done when you realized you'd be going road racing or is it something you've always don e? It ' s so me th ing I' ve always d on e. I'm sure, come out to a place like this, where nobody' s b een around this track for quite a while; I'll go out tomorrow and I'll see where the line is because the se guys have been laying black marks all week. I'll also have next week to ride for the next coup le of da ys. As far as find ing the line is concerned, that should n' t be a problem because it'll be defin ed for me. what were yo u looking for when you were watchi ng the morni ng p ractice here from inside tum one? We ll , Co li n Edwa rds told m e to go d o wn into turn one a nd wa tch th ose gu ys going through one - they're getting pretty sideways out there. And I went to a few othe r spots on the track to get an idea where the tum-in points were and where they're apexing the comers. Do you expect to be able to use those spots on the Harley or do you think they' re specific to a particular bike or rider? I com pared goi ng into th e Ho rseshoe. (Scott) Russell see me d to be ab le to en ter th e corner lo w er and ex it somewha t lower and maintain so mewha t the sa me apex speed : Jamie Jam es and so meone .else that was ou t ther e at the same time w ere runn in g a littl e wid er at th e entran ce p oint. Ru s sell seemed to be able to come in and diamond it a littl e better than them. I think a lot of that is h is sty le. He wa s doing that by himself; he wasn 't racing any bod y and he wa s able to do that and still go fast. just try ing to see what the different guys do . I th ink Scott p rob abl y pushes th e front end more than the other guys. I know from talking with Miguel that he d oesn't lik e the front end to push at all so he tends to take a littl e wider line coming in. Did you push the front end at all when you were riding? I don' t think that I wa s going quite fast enough to do tha t. I think on the Suzuki I di d a littl e bit more because it was a heavi er bike and it had a worn-ou t front street tire on it, so I tend to p ush tha t thing a little bit. And I sla pped the fairing a couple of times from leaning ove r a little bit because those things ha ppen to be pretty wi de. I h aven 't go tte n to that point yet. That will come with time. Did Miguel give you any specific instructions before you went out? He d idn't give me any specific instructions. He p ret ty mu ch gave me so me ad vice on h ow to work up to speed . Don't worry abou t how far you go deep into the comer, concentrate on getting you r speed up go ing ou t. I was brakin g really early going in and concentrating on carrying speed through the comer and accelerating as soo n as possible and I think that helped quite a bit. Not wor rying about going in deep, braking hard, then overshooting the comer and you' re s tuck. You have no ac celera tio n . So I co ncen tra ted more on th e ex its of the comers. What did you expect when you got on the bike? I gu ess m y e xpecta ti ons were ra th er low. For yourself or the bike? For myself, not the mo torcycle. Because, again, I h ave no way of com paring it. The last one I was a 15-year-old motorcycle and I rod e it si x years ago. So I don' t have a n y ba si s of co m pari son othe r than my dirt trackers. As far as ex pecta tion s fo r m yself, I pe rson all y thou ght that if I go t to wi thin anywhere from five to seven percent of Migu el' s time, th at wo ul d b e good . And I fa r ex ceeded th at. I d idn ' t know th at would be cap able of that so soon. So I guess I w ent a little bit bette r than I thought I did . Was it taxing physically? I think the most I rode at an yone time wa s maybe nine lap s. You're using different muscles. My sitt ing posi tion on the motorcycle is a lot different. I need to increase my flexibility. The pegs are,a lot closer to my ass than the y are on a dirt tracker where you' ve got a lot of leg room on it. With the footpeg positions bein g high er and, obvious ly, worrying about going through left -handers and putting yo u r foot down. You 've got to remember t o do t ha t k ind of s tu ff . Ano the r thing th at w as d ifferent was that I went from a bike that shifts on the righ t that we nt one-up and thr ee-d own, to shifting on the left go ing one-up and fou r-down and shifting an aw ful lot. All my bikes th at I ride that ar e left-hand shi ft are one-down and fou r-up. So that was d ifferen t. But yo u ge t used to tha t fast. I'm p roud to say tha t I didn't miss a shift all week in testing. And you had no problems at all with the bike? . I mean we had a couple of things like a rad iator ca p came loose an d stuff like tha t. And we did sa w so me thing up, but it wa s minor . That go l fixed and I was ab le to ge t ba ck on th e track an hour later. I go t abou t 30 good laps on the VR a n d I'm h opin g to ge t abou t 100 between now and the en d of the week . We re you ab le to te st a ny d ifferen tcomp ou n d tires? I went out initially on soft com pounds and they were bit too soft. I started to peel them up pretty bad. I could feel it on the right side. That was a right-hand dominant track and coming out of what they call the Carousel there the th ing was starting to step out too much, so we a

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