Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

end, or it's the Suzuki at Mid-Ohio or the Yamaha at Laguna. And you're right that nobody has been as consistently close, but (the RC45) came to us as a pretty good package from HRC and from there it was just a matter of juggling things around and getting the bike comfortable for Miguel, just a matter of fine tuning it. What are the final laps like for you before the checkered flag? You just cross your fingers and say, "do it, man." I don't know how anybody else is, but I am constantly talking him through the last few lap, "come on come on, don't put a foot wrong now," and pointing to my head as he comes by to remind him to think, which is more for my use than for him. Miguel watches his pit board pretty well, but he likes to see his lap times in tenths of a second which is kind of unusual. The Superbike Championship is definitely in the cards now, but it didn't look that way earlier in the season. Did you ever write it off? At the beginning of the season, the point was to do as well as you can. After Pomona (where Miguel fell and finished poorly) ... the championship was always in our minds, from the word "go" the plan was to win both championships. And after Pomona, we said to do it we're going to have to win all the rest of the races, period. I think after Miguel rode the bike in the rain at Laguna, he gained a lot of confidence in the bike and the package. Things happen a lot sooner in the rain than they do in the dry. Say the front will tuck at 150 in the dry, in the rain it'll do it at 120. You can get to the point where the bike will do the same things only at a lower speed. After Laguna he was very confident and said, "Okay, the bike is real close. A few more changes and it will be ready to go." Each race his confidence and the bike progressed a little bit and it has been just an unbelievable run of wins. I've never seen anything like it. Did you think midrun that three was the most you could do or... I thought the biggest problem might be the races after June. We had great motivation in June, winning all three races in successive weeks and the motivation was not difficult to keep fresh. But after the break, once he'd been off the bike for some time, I thought perhaps that might be a problem. I felt once we got the momentum we could keep it, the trick would be going off the road, going home for a month and coming back and beating these guys again. I thought if we could do that we'd be in good shape. And, that's what happened. He didn't beat everybody at Brainerd - he smoked them. He was the fastest guy in every session save one, all the way through. Once he did that I knew we had the top dog here and I thought we could make it happen. Are you thinking about the Superbike Championship on a daily basis now or are you trying to put it out of your mind? Twenty-four hours a day. And the thing that has gotten us here is the team. Yeah, the bikes are good and the riders are the best, but it's the team that has gotten us here. And it is a team effort, too. I've worked on teams that were a team in name only and the only thing the personnel had in common was that we wore the same uniforms. No information was shared between the two crews and it was very mentally hard to work in that environment. Now, Merlyn Plumlee will share his knowledge with myself and I do the same with him. We test things when the time gets short: You try this shock, I'll try that tire, and we'll exchange notes later. Bob Hale, Mike's Dad, if he is caught up on Mike's bike will come over spring in the front and a lot more oil in the front. Mike has some lessons to learn about saving the tires. At Brainerd, Miguel and (Mike) Smith were pretty clear at one point late in the race running one-two. He came by and I gave him the L5 board (five laps remaining) and he gave me the thumbs up. Next time he came by he was in the lead with a three-tenths pad over Smith. He told me later that he said to himself when he saw L5, "Tires, I have been very good to you. Now you are going to be good to me." How much maintenance does a Honda superbike receive between say, Saturday-morning practice and the race on Sunday afternoon? OU and filter every evening,ofcourse.Typ~ and run tires for us or whatever needs doing from an engine swap to running for a filter. That's a team. It's that camaraderie that has gotten us where we are - one-two in the Superbike Championship. But DuHamel and Hale ride with drastically different styles, so setup information must be useless to the other rider. Hale rides and sets the bike up for maximum corner speed which is good but the tires will not last. Like at Sears - he was out front in the race, sliding that tlling sideways and running it through the comer on a real hard pace. A lot of lean angle and a lot of corner speed. On the third lap I was thinking, slow that thing down, boy, you have 20 laps left. Miguel is a little more experienced than Mike and he is very good at saving the tires. Miguel runs in hard on the brakes, turns hard while he is on the brake and then carries a little less corner speed and sets himself up for the drive out of the corner. That's reflected in their setup - Miguel uses a lot more cally, it goes like this: You put a fresh engine in and go to the race. Usually on Friday night we do a gearbox - we collect the information from the teleme'try systern and the information from Miguel as to what ratios we're going to need for each particular corner - that's a typical Friday night. The engine comes out, we split the cases, do the gearbox. Of course Ray (Plumb) looks a t the bearings while we're in there and it goes back together. Saturday we hope we made the gearbox guesses right or else the box comes back out on Saturday night. If we hit it right it's just oil and filter the bike for the remainder of the weekend. The bike is constantly checked over for loose nuts and bolts and things like that. We check the val ve clearances on the back cylinder because that cover comes off pretty easy. It's pretty accessible. If it looks like something is up, we'll go in and do the front ones too. Typically everything works fine and looks fine - it's a real, real reliable motor. Sunday before the race we usually put a clutch in it, and that's about the size of it. Have you ever had the opportunity to ride the superbike? The RC45 I have not ridden. The RC30 and the OW01 Yamaha I rode, and I imagine the day will come when I can sneak the superbike out for a ride. It's a wild ride, any superbike. It's just so hyper. Those things are so totally bad you can't even comprehend it. You roll it on at a 100 mph in third gear, which is about 6000 rpm, and by the time it's getting to nine or nine-five it's ripping your head off and you are thinking seriously about what you're doing. And you haven't even gotten into the power yet. At about 11 grand you say, "That's about enough. I'm going to die if I don't let off." You grab a couple fingers of front brake and the thing just about throws you over the bubble. You stop the bike and think, "How do these guys ride these things?" It really gives you an in-your-face idea of just how talented and special these athletes are that ride superbikes. The results from the World Superbike round at Laguna Seca must have been quite satisfying for you and Miguel. To be thumping world-class riders and teams is a magnificent accomplishment. We kind of went in the underdogs. We had a home-territory advantage, but I don't think anybody really expected much as the World Superbike guys are a tough crowd. Going in we talked about it a little bit and I would have been real happy with a sixth-place finish, so needless to say I was ecstatic with a third and a fourth. We had done some testing there throughout the season and we didn't have to waste a day getting a baseline going. But one thing that Miguel said that made me feel good is that when we went to the World Superbike race we had a race bike. When we were there in May and before that testing, that thing (RC45) was a milk truck. So we obviously made some gains in that amount of time. Sometimes it is hard to gauge your progress, but when you can go to a race track a couple of months after you'd originally went there and the bike is drastically improved two seconds faster - you feel good about that. You have worked in an environment where there were plenty of hands with around four or five people working hands-on on the motorcycle. Now it's just you and Joey (Lombardo) for both the 600 and the superbike. Which do you prefer? First of all, I have implicit trust and faith in Joe Lombardo. He has done a fantastic job this year on the superbike and on the supersport bike. To answer your question, I think somewhere in the middle would probably be the best. Somebody has the responsibility of over-seeing the bikes, but there are times when we get short on time and you really have to trust the people you work with. Check, check and double check is the molto, but some guys are very peculiar about who they will let touch the bike. But with Joey and Ray (Plumb) on our team I will step back and say, okay, you check it over. Sometimes things are a little rushed, especially when we are hunting for a setup and then we could use a third guy just to run tires to Dunlop. Sometimes there will be a guy spectating who asks all the right questions and seems knowledgeable and smart enough to do only wha t he is told to do, or touch, and we'll draft him in. "Put a shirt on buddy, you're the new tire boy:' You and Miguel work out together in the American Honda gym. Can you kick his butt on any of the equipment? We work out whenever we get the chance, we run together and lift some weights. He does a lot of bicycling which I don't do much of and sometimes we get out and ride dirt bikes and stuff. Running, Miguel doesn't have the gearing. He can't keep up. He's too short. Plus, I have been running a long time. Weights, he's real tenacious and just won't give up. As far as the amount of weight he can push, we're pretty comparable and he's a lot smaller guy. Anything that involves climbing on a motorcycle, forget it. He dusts me. But anything that doesn't involve riding a motorcycle, I'll give him a run. Even bowling; huh, Miguel? Miguel treated you, Joey and Ray Plumb to a vacation in Laughlin, Nevada, after your string of three in a row in June. What'll he do if you win the championship? I don't know. I've heard Hawaii, but not from Miguel. I'm not worried about it. He takes care of us pretty well. CN 15

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