Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

lap was a hand-timed 1:49.48. "We may in the 525 for the last maybe three laps, be able to go faster still." two laps. Then the tire chunked, so we can't use that," Corser said. "That's the Seco nd -fastest, at a n unofficial best tire we've had so far, but it's still 1:49.90, was Hale'sPro motor Ducati teammate Troy Corser, the 1994 AMA : { n o t goi ng to d o the ra ce dista nce Supe rb ike C ha m p io n a nd th e 1995 . "", between stops. Like I said, we've got the World Superbike Ch am pion ship run- . .~' ip, we've got the tire, but we've got to ner-up . _ it to last now." 1.-Michelin's main man at the test Was "I d id 15 laps o n one tire and the'.. . fastest lap was a 49.6. The slowest lap"at .' n Herise, the technician who runs the end of it was a 52. I d id somewhere: .eir very successful World Superbike Kirk McCarthy After wrapping up the Australian Superbike Championship on a Winfield Honda in only his fourth full season of road racing, the diminutive 27-ye~r-old Australian came to Daytona with a lot on his mind. He was switching from the RC45 to the new Suzuki GSXR750T, he was going from Dunlop to Michelin tires, and he was doing it on a track that intimidates first-timers. He'd been able to do some sorting out of the bike and tires during a shakedown test the previous week at Homestead, just south of Miami. but this Florida track is a different beast entirely. After two _ days of testing he'd done a best lap of 1:52.60. "It was wild yesterday. I was starting to enjoy it toward the end yesterday. Early on it was a bit of a . struggle. The hardest part is the speed and just trying to get the confidence and being in the right spot on the banking, trying to miss where the bumps are . Once you figure out - well, I don't have the banking quite right yet - but once you figure out where you've got to be, I think it's just trying to figure out where you can get that little extra bit of time. "At Homestead I was riding around a lot, but I didn't feel that comfortable on the machine. Then coming here, I had the confidence in my bike, I hadn't ridden on the Michelins before. I was learning three things at once. I ended the day all right, It's a bit different riding position, it's a bit shorter in the wheelbase. The actual physical size, since it's an in-line four, is a bit wider across the tank than the Honda. It feels to me that the distance from the seat to the handlebars is a bit longer on this than it was on the Honda. Otherwise it feels really smooth, the engine's smooth and the gearbox works really good. I didn't know how it was going to be when I first got on it. I was surprised at how smooth it was, because the Honda, when I first rode that, was really smooth and really responsive to the throttle, even when you shut it down, with the fuel injection. This thing is fairly similar. I think they've got some electronic control s on the carburetor and it works really well. "The bike's a little bit unstable at the moment. We're still playing around with the suspension. (It's) sort of hard to hold the thing on the slopes going around sometimes. We ran the same tires, the same compound tires and construction yesterday, for most of the day just to learn the setup better. I couldn't get much feel back throu gh the bike to start with. It feels so slow, and you think you should be going heaps quicker through some of those turns. And you' re just trying to wind it on on the way out and the next' minute you' re out of the seat. On the first day I was riding around with it vertical, I wasn't even getting my knee on the ground there for a whil e. "Just after the World Superbikes at Phillip Island, we started talking with the Suzu ki guy s. Then wh en everyone sort of figured out what they were going to be ridin g, TEAMMIRAGE Dale Quarterley For the fourth year in a row, the tall, bespectacled, redheaded New Englander was the top privateer in the country. Not only was his fifth place in the cham pionshi p the best for a privateer, it was a better showing than -any of the Ducati or Kawasaki factory riders. But it wasn't wifhout a stru ggle. Quarterley took delivery of his Ducati 916 on the day that practice began for the Daytona 200 and he struggled all week to get it right. Head ing south in December was a hedge again st th at happen in g again. His progress wa s stym ied so mewhat by a pair of brutal crashes, one in the chicane and one on the west banking. His best time w as a 1:54.82. "When I came here last year, we had just taken . delivery of it on Wednesday and we were jus t so out of control. Just nothing mad e sense when [ was riding. I could hardl y ride it. What we' re trying to do is sort our way through that. We actually got throu gh most of it today, even though the lap times don't show it. I still have a headache from yesterday. " It broke a set of cases and oiled the tire down and just (caused ) a major highside . I made the left (in the chicane) but I was flying, trying to put in a good lap - I'd just done a 54 something and was just trying to make it go a 53 - when I whipped it righ t. In between the two it jus t locked up and you can see the black mark, betw een the left and the right. It starts there and the thing just went totally sideways and I d idn 't have time to bail off. The thing just high-sided me and I did the 100-mph two-step and just went from that to just full smash on the side of my head. Just tore the whole side off the helmet. "Tod ay I've got a hea dache, so I'm not really out there hammering. I'm trying to sort thro ugh the banking problems and gettin g it out of the infield and getting it out of the chicane . We're much quicker than we were when we started today off. When I started today, there's no way I could possibly think about riding it one-handed on the banking. Now [ can do it somewhat with no problem. "So I've got most of the problems sorted out now. What [ just need to do is get it to go quicker lap times . The fastest I went last year was either a high th ree or a low four and that was killing myself to d o it. I basically ran the race in the 55s, 56s. I do n't think I ever went under a 55. Within like three laps this morning I was already going 55.0s. And I could do them with ou t trying. Without really pushing the in field I could go 55.2, .4, .6, ,8, lap after lap . If yo u were thinking of winning the 200, you need to be able to do a 51.0 to a 51.5, 51.8 all day long, and the n whatever pit stops. If you want to be a top-10 guy, you need to go somewhere un der like a 52.5 all day. So I'm thinking, for thi s time of year I need to be able to make it go 52.0s." there were a few positions vacant, so it was a good opportunity for me. I had some offers back home. I had another offer to ride a Kawasaki in the All-Japan Championship, but I wanted to go and do the World Championship." John Reynolds An Englishman on a British-based team, Reynolds joins the all-new Suzuki World Superbike team after finishing the World Superbike Championship in 10th place in 1995 aboard the Reve Kawasaki. Reynolds had raced at Daytona back in 1992, but except for teaching him which way the turns went, that trip didn't provide him with a lot of useful knowledge for this year's assault on the Daytona 200. For 1996 he'd be going from the Kawasaki to the Suzuki, and from Dunlop to Michelin. In testing, his best was a 1:52.21, but he felt there was more in it. And he got the worse of an encounter with Promotor's Mike Hale in tum one, running into Hale's seat and falling on the exit. "Myself and Mike Hale got tangled up with each other. I think he was on a flyer and I wasn't. He came around the outside of me in tum one. 1 left room on the inside and he went out too wide. I heard the Ducati behind me and lifted up slightly. He must've been a bit wide. "Up until then it was excellent. We had just about sorted it out. I was going quicker than the first da y here. We'll take it back and sort out the problems. Now we can stand back and sort out the problems. I know I can go faster , but there's no sense going faster until it's sorted out. "It's stilI very hard to get dialed in. It's so fast. It's hard to get your head into it. I like it here. It's quite exciting to ride quite a bit faster. The difference from 1992 to now is that I'm going faster pretty much everywhere. Basically, we're tying to get the bike set up. Going through the setup and suspension, it seems very strong straight out of the cra te. It's encouraging for Suzuki. ."The Suzuki feels a lot smaller than the Kawasaki, It feels more like a GP bike. It feels good enough to go racing with right now. I knew it was going to be a good bike because Suzuki was working long and hard on it. Yes, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it goes. "It's been a good two weeks with the bike and team. It's an awesome package. I'm looking forw ard to going testing next month. "A month and a half ago a guy who worked for Reve Racing, my best mat e, Ben Atkins, said basically that Kawasaki could n' t give the commitment it would take to " in the World Championship. He spoke with Suzuki. Basically, I told him I'd love the job, and I'm ove r the moon with it." 7

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