Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

· iN R IE Doug Polen TE V W . h rOUghou t hi s career Doug Polen ha s set very high standard s for hims elf, and in 1994 he didn't come close to meeting those. For the past three years, Polen's name could be prefaced with th e title "cham pion." In 1991 and 1992 he rod e a Fast by Ferracci Du cati to the Superbike World Championship, and in 1993 he ' returned to the U.S. to give Ducati its first AMA Superbike title. Honda Racing Corporation took notice and sign ed C . the veteran Texan to r - - - - - - -their in a ugu r a l Superbike World _ Championship. team for 1994, a long with Kiwi Aaron Slight. But 1994 w as a d isapp ointment for e ve ryo ne . Pol en admitted a t the first race of the seaso n that the new RC45 was sho rt on d eve lop ment ti me, saying that it wo u ld take abo ut five races b e fore it co u ld b e expec te d to b e in wi nn ing form. That w iII a lways b e a deba table ques tion as ' t o w hy th ey re lease d th e RC4 5 w he n they d id , Po le n said a t the tim e . The n Slig h t wen t ou t an d ca rded a pa ir of d eceptiv e second -p lace fini sh es in the firs t two races at Don ingt on Park. Ten race s later it would rem ain hi s single best day . Pol en ' s b est day cam e fo ur races later in th e Au strian ra ce a t Z eltw e g . H e sco re d a p a i r of hard fo ugh t th ir d s after qua lify ing third , w it hin h alf a seco nd of Du ca ti' s Ca rl Foga rty . H e fi n ish ed the seaso n in fourth pl ace, one beh ind his teammate Slight. Ther e was, how ever, one very bri gh t spo t. Tho ug h the bike was never able to win an World Supe rbike race, Polen and Slight team ed up to wi n the prestigiou s Su zuka 8-Ho ur race - th e single most important race of the year to the Japanese ma n u fac tu re rs . That it wa s th eir only win of the season was more than a littl e su rp rising given the cons iderable clout that Honda brough t to the su perbike g ri d. More th an a ny thi ng, 1994 wo uld bea learning yea r for Polen and what h e learn ed thi s yea r is al ready bei ng a pp lie d to th e 1995 effo rt. Th e most dramatic cha nges have been th e restructuri ng of his team an d the swi tch from Dunl op to Mic he lin tires, so meth in g th at could never have been predic ted after wha t he said before the first race. "They (H RC) really insis ted, ' please, p lea se, plea se th ink abo u t ridin g with Michelins.' I jus t said that I have no interest in it. I have a good relationsh ip with Dunlop, I 'work directly with the chief · tire designe rs at Dunl op . It's a better situation than anybody will ever have, even Honda, with Michelin," he said . In 1995, he'll ge t a chance to find out if that's rea lly the case. We caugh t up wi th Polen on the pit wall at Dayt on a, one of the few tracks that he's ye t to conque r. (He 's finis hed secon d tw ice, aboa rd a Suzuki in 1988 and aboard a Ducati in 1992.) ·HRC is se rio us abo u t winn in g Dayton a a n d Polen h ad go ne th ere to test Michelin tires for the first tim e and to find ou t how th e improvem ents to the RC45 would help his chances in March. We talked during a break while hi s team was fitting updated sus pension components from the RC45 of Shinya Takeishi, Once the work w as d on e, th e talking was over. Polen strapped on his helmet and went ou t and, in very sho rt order, clocked his best times of the weekend. What do you expect the difference to be between last year and thi s year in Worl d Superb ike racing? There's a lot m o re enth usiasm b y every bo dy goi ng in to this yea r. Wh en I'd say right now if we ran the best en gine, as far as power, th at we have and the best cha ssis that we have right now , I' d say we'd be at lea st a second faster than what we went. Which would put us at like 5O-dead 's (1:50 lap times). The last four lap s of the race (last year ) I ran 51-flat. 51.1, 51-flat, 51-flat, 51.1. But that was on a real soft rear tire . That's after you 've gone 50-som e-odd laps and yo u' re pretty much d ialed in . You 're s lip-slid ing a rou nd the race track and yo u' re really tryin g to di al in all that. All o f a sud de n yo u 've go t a L - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - L - - - - .... . . Searchin'} that's when it counts. Not after. After you can say, "yeah, we could have done this or we cou ld have done that." So there's an exchange of information, but it's jus t a limited amount of time to do it in at a race track and they have enough to think about d oing th eir o wn thing. There's no rea son they sho ul d have to turn around and help my guys out as · well. They sho uld alrea dy know how to do all the thin gs that they' re doing - it' s just th e proper p ersonn el doing the . proper jobs . How do you feel about the tire cha nge· going from Dunlop to Michelin? I th ink it'll be good . I think it'll b e re al g oo d. There's jus t n o d oubt th at whe n we co me to run th e s prin t race s a n d th e s p r in t tracks - n ot Daytona - that it 'll b e good . The du r a b ilit y see ms to be th er e. We saw th at ag a ins t o u r co m petition this year . We jus t wa tc he d them do lap after lap 'after lap witho ut doin g much sliding arou n d. An d we cou ld, for th e mos t part, do the same laps, bu t it is a hell of a lot more work, and it w as easier to · have so mething happe n. It was easier to h ave a mo ment, to w he re it cos ts you just a small amo u n t of tim e. And they weren ' t h avin g th ose moments. They were just knocki ng them off. No w that I've not iced tha t, I come down here (to Daytona ) and I jus t sit the re and run lap . a fter lap after lap, ju st runn in g th em right off. The othe r day I was running wit hin a tenth - I ra n 10 lap s wi thi n a tenth. You were always so strongly associated with Dunlop. You insisted last year on using Dunlops. That's why they went wit h it. So, that was one of the things... I basicall y felt kind of bad abo ut that. I di dn' t feel that Dunlop really - considering what they got, which was ab le to run on a works H ond a World C ha m pions h ip tea m, so me th in g th ey 'd nev e r h ad ever, in Honda' s hi story or Dunlop' s h istory . You wo uld think that they wo uld be just flat ou t - that it was the ult imate d eal for them. But, it wasn ' t quite tha t way. It was unfortunate. I was pretty let d own at the end of the yea r. I really was. I told them I can ' t recommend any thing, and I' m no t goi ng to make a recommen dation because when I did last time... we ll, it was basically ou t of my contro l at that time. The d ecision 's a lrea dy m ad e. I do n' t have the sayso as to what Du nlop does as a company. So it's out of m y hands. Bu t I pretty mu ch ha d a little bit of fait h in some of the guys th a t wer e there doing stu ff. And wh en I really put my foot down to the guys at Dunlop , I got so me reac tion. But it wasn' t eno ugh to rectify a lot of th e s it ua tions th at need ed to be d on e. So, as it turns out, we en de d up h av in g a ve ry difficult year wit h the tires. . Do you think Aaron (Slight) struggled more than you? . It' s h ard to say. I wou ld n ' t say h e struggled more than I did. I thi nk we both struggled a lot the same. It' s just that their bike's setu p was working be tter for h im with the sa me tires. So he · struggled , but he was strugg lin g a t a redetnptlon 26 w e ca m e to Dayton a last yea r and things .all of a sudde n we ren ' t quit e what all of the people were so en thusiastic about, it wasn't really showing up . I was not really surp rised, but I thin k most everybody . else in the team and the Ho nda peo ple wer e quite surp rise d . At the level that the y thou ght w ould have bee n reason ably close, we weren't really even in the ballpark . So at that point in time, things were really good, thou gh, because (HRC chief) Mr. (Yoichi) Oguma was here at Dayton a for the wh ole week. So tha t was really beneficia l for him to see firstha nd th at th ings just aren't what they were laid out to be. So when he went back, a lot of th ings sta rted h ap pen in g reall y quick. So it did help the situati on tha t he was here. But we realized real quick, in the first race, that things we re going to be a little more difficult tha n we thou ght they were going to be. Was it simply a matter of power, or lack thereof, with the new RC45? No , it was a co mbina tion of every thin g. Ch assis, pow er. Even if we had po we r we cou ld n' t have put it dow n. Just a lot of things in combination . The bike jus t need ed good testing at a high level. Tha t' s one of the thin gs th a t' s always d ifficu lt. You do all your testing in Japan, yo u d o it on Japanese tra cks with Japan ese rid er s, no t n ecessarily that they aren' t fair rid er s.jt's just no t the same. So when you come an d yo u go to d ifferent race tracks like Dayto na and ove rseas in Europe, all of a sudden th ings a re d iffe ren t. Th ey ' re not th e sa me. "Oh, oh, oh . Confusion, confusio n." In Ja pa n it' s okay, bu t he re it' s not. It was very beneficiaI for us to run this whole year, maybe swallow a little . bit of prid e and go through the year and look a t it now as being a ye ar to say, ' hey, we 've got this dea l so rted out, we've go t to do as mu ch testing as we ca n a nd still try to be co mpetitive at races if we can: And then, go int o '95 w it h mu ch more o f a th reat tha n w e started with '94: If you'd have come back at the end of the season, say. to Daytona, how much quicker would you have been? heap of gri p in the rea r. Man, it's easy to go fast. Are you satisfied with your season? It could have been a lot better, a lot bet ter . A lot of things went in to the reaso ns wh y it wasn't a good season for me. An d there's a lot of things you jus t can't talk abo u t - things that come into play. It's just so me things that I've go tten m o re o r le s s sor te d o u t v-A n d it would probab ly take the off-season to get all of th at so r te d ou t to where it wou ldn ' t be a problem when it comes to '95. Team stru cture type things? Yes, yo u m igh t n o tice tha t I ha ve completely different mechanics tha n I had th is year (1994). That'll definite ly im prove my situation as far as havin g a motorcycle th a t' s b as ica ll y set u p . I don' t ha ve to sit there and try to set the who le thing up myself. You seemed to be the man to beat b ecau se y ou won the prior champion ships. . It was a su rp rise to a lot of pe ople. Definitely, at times it was frustrating for myself just because I was trying to rectify a s itu ation tha t' s di fficult to rect ify just beca u se th e re' s a lot involved in chan ging tha t ki nd of thin g. Becau se I kn ew th at wou ld defini te ly help my results. But the p robl em is, we alwa ys e n ded up, s o meh ow or another, not landing on the righ t d eal at race tracks whe re we ha d n't been before. If we'd tested at the race track then I was fast. But th at ' s because we' d always gon e throu gh all of wha t doesn' t work and th is and th at. And we did n't h ave to wor ry abou t all that. But when we got to a race track w he re we di dn't test they said, "we' ll do this and we' ll try th is," a nd these guys are d oin g so me th ing completely d iffer en t. My guys are doin g so meth ing di ffer ent to tha t again. And we're jus t going, "okay." Wh en w e'd . test somewhere, I'd be on the pace. Did yo u have a free exchange of information between your guys and Aaro n Sli ght's gu ys? Yeah , there was a free excha nge . But when yo u're at a race track in a race situation, everyone's go t to, like, d o their ow n th in g w ith the ir ow n gu ys . And

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