Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

"We lea rn ed a lo t, and having th e engineer at thi s tr ack helped," Ferracci said. The Cagiva factory had dispatched Ivo Bertoni, an en gineer in th e World Superbike p ro gram , to h elp Ferra cci learn the 916 and , especia lly, th e new data acquis ition system . "Every thi ng o n the su sp en sion is so hi gh on this tra ck. It's go t to be real nice on the top of the sus pensio n, but on the ba nk th ey go t to be reall y h ard. It ' s so me t h ing that, believe it or not , actually, once yo u tune for Da yt ona you can run at any track . Still, the first qu arter of the suspe ns ion, when it's go od her e it's goo d any place else. We learned a lot of stuff. Th is bike is more aerod yn ami c th an th e o ther bike. I know it' s got m ore than the other bike on top spe ed . And also th e test th at we did last yea r, the same test, w ith th e ra cing tire, we went fas ter thi s yea r. And last year Troy Corser di d 1:53 flat w ith th e racin g ti re and no w w e did 52.10 with the ra cing tire ." A fter wi n ning two World Su perbike Championships an d two A MA Su perbike Championships over th e past four yea rs u s in g D u n lop tires, Fer racc i sw itched to the Fre nch brand th is year, mainly, he said, because he wa nts to be the only factory backed team on Miche(Right) Mike Smith also had his first ride on the Ducati 916. The Georg ian will join Spencer and most likel y Takahiro Sohwa on th e three-ri der team. ~ f I f f ( ~ ( N ....---..el_~ or the second year in a row Eraldo Ferracci is defend ing an AMA Superbike Cham pionship with a different rider. After winning it in 1993 with Doug Polen, Ferracci signed up Aus tral ian Troy Corser and the. pair went on to retain the title. The task for 1995 falls to the trio of Mike Smith, Freddie Spencer and, in all likelihoo d, Takahiro "Tiger" Sohwa . A contract has been sent to the Japanese ride r and he is expec ted to return it the first week of January. Once the decision was m ade for Co rser to go World Superbike racing, and Pascal Picotte decided to switch to the Muzzy Kawasaki team, Ferracci started looking for new riders. He came up with a diverse trio, but had solid reasons for choosing each one. "Mike (Smith), alrea dy I see him go fast in the race," Ferracd said. "Alwa ys he's really trying, he just goes two laps and then he stops becau se I think the equipment (Ho nda's RC45) d id not allow him to stay up in fron t because the bike is new, not because the bike did n't have eno ugh power. I think it was new, and it takes it longer to get together the bike. I think for sure he's got potential. Fred die Spen cer, eve n if he d oes 90% of wha t he wants to do he 's good enou gh . And he also, I think his personality is pr etty good . A lot of interes t from (the media) world wid e and yesterday he went pretty good. I sent somebody looking aro und, he was really good. Of course, I like to have the best d river in the wo rld . We have the bikes, 1 don 't say the best, bu t very good, and we need a good d river. I thi nk good expertise wo rks bet ter than guts. Freddie, two years ago, we had a little three-week discussion. and then we pull out. Then. in Laguna Seca, at the Grand Prix (in September), we talked in the pits and he said he'd like a chance to test our bike. 'If I do good, then we do something. If I don't do good then we don't do it. 1 don't want an ything that I d on't earn : So I said, 'you know what, I'm going to give you a chance : And because 1 think the chance, 1 not give to him only, he give it to me, too. I believe the team , all of a sudden I'm going to have all these good guys riding for me : ' "Last winter 1 kind of wanted to do the same thing," Spen cer said. "But I still had a coupl e of operations on my finger (a broken finger on his right hand, the result of a crash in the 1993 Japanese GP). I got it (the operation), like abou t February, but that was really too late for this year so I just did the (television) announcing. And then we talked at Laguna. Coming back to race here, really the only team 1 wanted to race for w as Ferracci. We first talked about this before the '92 season . We talked abo ut it and it finallv came together . I felt the bike, from watching it and I rode'an 888 test at a Cycle World test in February, 1felt the bike really fit me. The first lap ou t 1 real-ized that that was correct. 1 felt I ~ ( ~ _, ~ that if the bike was competitive and I had the opportunity to be on this bike, I could d o well ." "Doug Po len 'was good, Troy Corser was good, eve rybody," Ferracci said. "Sohwa came to me and I righ t away went in my mind that, strategically it was good. Because he rod e some time for a factory Kawasaki, and I want to get two opinions from somebody else. Schwa, he already was a factory rider for seven years. If he rides a Du cati, it mean s this bike is good." One of the factors guiding his decision was that he had to pay the rider sa laries himself, a change from previous years when the factory paid . Because of that , each of the riders may have their own personal sponsor, who could advertise on their leathers - but hte bodywork will probably be identical, though Sohwa may have some Japanese spo nsorshi p. Regardless of how the 9165appear cosmetically, all the riders will be on identical equipment. What Ferracci was looking at in Dayto na, besides the riders, was the new 916. He'd gotten the pair of bikes 10 days before the test and had little time to prepare them. One was a developmen t mule from the factory and both had 600 to 700 miles on thei r engines. Because the AMA Superbike weight is considerably hig her than World Superbike, Ferracci needed to find out wha t adding 35 pounds to the machine would do to it. "You got to understand, the situation we have in Ameri ca is pretty complica ted, because, every time a team comes from Europe they got to change the whole setu p," Ferracci said . "Nobody wants to pu t on 35 pounds on the bike. When you sec wh at we've got to do with our bike... We've got to make a solid elect rical starter that weighs like nine po unds. And yesterday we had a little o il leak beca use where it's hanging on the case, the weight, it broke the case wh ere we hang the weight. It cracked the case, out comes oil, because the electrical start, we bolt righ t in. Last year's bike it was on the top, the weight. We want to try that way, bu t this track, a lot of rpm , a lot of g-fo rce, it rip ped the thing out: ' "1 think that it (the Ducati 916) ha s a lot of potential," Mike Smith sa id. "It's better than me, righ t now. I'm riding it like a Honda. I guess I rode it like Mike Smith rides which means 1 push it pretty hard sometimes, and you have to back off and try to flow with it. The Honda wo rked pretty good. I could spin the tires a lot of the time . But this bike here, it has some juice. This bike here I've not really gotten to St.'C the subtleties of it yet. What 1 like about it is tha t it feels light. When yo u flick it left to right it flicks good. The brakes, I was worried abo ut the steel brakes, these work very good. It stops good, it turns good. It's turning ·better. We're just developing. Ferracci's never run down here with this weight. Last year they d id n't have the we ight lim it. Daytona's alwa ys stiffer than everyplace else. We're learning little by little. There' s a lot to learn this week. So I'm not at th e subtleties yet. I fit on it real good. I thought I was going to be rea l cram ped . The power 's different because you don't have to rev it as much. I've been revving it like the Honda. You don't rev it like that. It makes power and you don 't rev it to m ake it make power. You short-shift it up top . And this thing here stretches its legs and it gets off the comers. I think the V-four is a good construction, I just think Ducati 's been working on it and they' ve got a good combination." Since he was away from the races, Spencer studied the television broadcasts fro m overseas to see how the 916 worked. "I wa tched a couple of the World Superbikes to get an idea what the bike was like, because to me it looks like a race bike that they can make into a street bike," Spencer said . "When I was rid ing it and tucked in, it's small, and it's very low, \'ery narrow. "These things will overrev, but it's really not necessary. It has a lot oftorque, Kind of what's deceiv ing abou t that is years ago the bikes were real peaky and so you didn't have much torque and the overrev was the torque. Whereas now, these things hav e so much torque and midrange that you don't really need it. To me, the way tha t I ride, the fact that it has a lot of torque and the front end sticks to where it kind of pivots the thing... Like here, out of turn one, you get it turned and then getti ng up onto the banking. Toward the end I could get the thing in. turn it in, and then drift a little out to get it cornered . 1 control it with the throttle. For me tha t goes a long w ay. It's a real benefit." Tha t he was able to go as fast as he did, and that he wasn' t on the edge, was encouraging . , "And the thing is, tha t's really a complimen t to the bike," Spen cer says . "Like in turn one, I like to get the thing in and actually off throttl e, the rear end starts breaking loose a little bit, then I can kind of catch up with it with the throttle in one contin uous motion to where you get it in and it actually comes in even mor e wh en I get it to break aw ay a little bit. And when it's starting to break awa y start applying power so the thin g is kind of a smooth transition. It's a bike that will compliment me because I've always been able to get the thing in and get it to where it breaks loose, even before you give it throttle. If you can get a bike to do tha t, then you start app lying power, and the thing's one continuous motion it doesn't even look like yo u' re breaking away at all because you 're already set at tha t angle: ' 11

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