Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Suzu ki's Fred Merkel at the line wou ld net him fourth place. He nearly wo n the 600cc Supersport race at Sea rs, only to get ou tfoxed by Smokin' Joe's Hond a's Mi gu el DuHam el on what wou ld tum ou t to be the fina l lap of the red-flagged race. H e en ded the season in the same position in which he ended the championship, sixth place, this time at Firebird Ra cewa y o utside of Phoenix. In th e 600cc Supe rsport Ch ampionship he was sixt h, despite never having m u ch faith in the front end of the Kawasaki ZX-6. "The first time I saw th at bike there w as so me th ing wrong w ith th e forks. We tried a cou p le of thi ngs in Lag u na during testing. and since that test ing we n eve r rea lly fixe d th at thing," Picotte says. At Laguna Seca h e told the team he could do 1:33 flat with the setu p, but the pole position would be in the 32s and he couldn' t go an y faster. " If I try to do 32 I' m going to crash," Pi cotte to ld the tea m. "I d id 32.9 an d I crash ed . I kn ew where the limi t was. If yo u don' t have a good feeling in the front end, it's tough mentally." By th e t im e th e final race rolled around, Picotte's future was determ in ed. The night be fore the Fireb ird Racew ay National he'd signed with Suzuki for 1996. His teammate was to be Fred Merkel, until Merkel was seriously injured at Firebird ·a nd was forced to retire. Even so, Merkel finished the season in fourth place on a machine that few thought capable of keeping pace with the more modem machinery when the year started. With the promise of a new m a ch in e, Pico t te was ready fo r th e move, th ou gh Suzuki wasn't his only option. "I was close to signing with Eraldo (Ferracci)," he says . "I had a really good experience wit h Eraldo. It was like a little family. He was like a dad to me. The problem with Eraldo wasn' t him, it was Italy. They rea lly didn' t beli eve in me because I h ad suc h bad lu ck. I b ro ke three engi nes tha t year. So, tha t's why I switched to Kawasaki. I asked for just that mu ch money (from Ducati for 1995) and they said just, 'No, f-- you: They're not at any race track. They just receive all the results on paper so they don' t know exactly what happened. So when I went to Muzzy last year, it was like night and day. It wasn't family at all. It was really business. And it was almost like I felt like I had to do m y own team inside the team . I had my own team with m y mechanics. Do the best you can . The re was nobody beh ind me. So I was looking at Harley and they see med mor e like Eraldo was. I had a couple of tal ks w ith Steve Scheibe and he was a rea lly nice guy, and all the mechan ics, also. But I don't th in k the equipment w as rea dy to win." Not so with Suzuki. From the minut e . it hit the track, the new Suzuki showed th at a ll th e h ype was n ' t mi s g ui d e d . Picotte's tim es on the barely modified Supersport bike h ad everyone double chec king their sto pwatches, and it was ' clea rly the fastest of all the bikes on top speed. When he went head to head with Du Hamel during the December tire tests it was clear that the new Suzuki was faster than the '95 Honda RC45, though the Honda had an edge in midrange. Picotte also found he could get his from side to side better than most and found his n ew m ach in e "much faster than Gobert's" ' 96 -s p e c Kawasaki ZX-7R . " Po w e rw ise we've got really, really good top end. We might need a little bit more midrange for the short tracks. But for the next Davtona in March, I think we're going to have a reall y, really good bike. So far I'm really happy. I th ink we've got a 'really, really good package. Still, we need a little mo re testing to try something different, " Picotte says, adding that testing was one of the rea sons he made the switch to Suzuki. With Ferracci the re wasn't much need to test, an d the Muzzy team only did tire test ing. "I th in k w hat's going to make a m ajor difference on m y side is that we' re going to do a lo t of testing. I've never really do ne any testing, except tire testing . You just feel more comfortable on the bike, with the team. I'm making the bike the way 1 like it. . "Everything 1 say, th ey take a litt le note and they go ba ck to Japan and go back to California. They try to fix that thing right away. They don't wait like a vear." - It's that attitude tha t drew Picotte to the Suzuki team. He' d been looking at them when it came time to think about '96, though he says he co uld probably have stayed with Muzzy and also had the chance to goto the Smokin' Joe' s Honda team. Going to Honda, he felt, wo u ld h a v e m e ant pl a yin g seco n d banana to AMA Su perbi ke an d 600cc Superbike Cha mpion Migu el Du Ha mel, and he'd had his fill of that. • "I didn' t really try hard wit h Hon da beca use Miguel was th ere an d I d id n't want to be in the sha dow again like I was with Polen. With Suz uk i I felt like I was go ing to be more, not the numberone rider, mo re respect th an if I was go ing to Honda." And it wasn't so m uch the new bike that drew Picotte to Suzuki, it was the environment. "Even if you've got th e worst piece of shit in the world, and everybody wants to w in, they 're all going to work hard night and day and they're going to make it right. Even if you ' ve got the best bike and nobody wants to work, I don't think you're going to win. And you need a bunch of people to win. You need like four , five, six guys behind you, compared to Rob, where we had onl y two mechanics . That's it. They were even the truck driver. They did everything themselves. Rob just took a production bike and . built his own superbike and he so ld mine for 25 gra nd at the end of the year. I don't think Suz uki will sell the ir bike for 25 grand at the end of they year. They don't really care about spending money on things." Tes ting, if done properly, can consume a great deal of a team ' s budget and Picotte found th at th e Yosh imura , Suz uki team has no reservations abo ut testing. The team had 'tested at Dayton a jus t after the last AMA race at Fireb ird and again for a day at Homestead afte r the Du nlop tire tests. There was ano the r test at Sears Poin t in Decem be r and Picotte thought there wou ld be another in Jan uary. Tho ugh the new Suzuki was impressive, there is still wo rk to be done, Picotte feels. "I'm trying to get the bi ke to hold the line better midcomer. You've got to really square off the corner. At Dayton a I think it's good because with the race tire, as far as co mpound, it's really rigid, really hard compound, SO you've got to sq uare it off more. If yo u wan t to m ake a rea lly good lap time w ith a qu al if y in g ti re you've got to make that thing hold the line really tight on the inside line like Miguel," he says. The fix is some where in the suspension an d th e suspension is taking some tim e to so rt ou t. The team test ed both Sho wa and Ohli ns units at Daytona and each had its strengths. "We need to cut both bikes in ha lf and put it toge ther, " Picotte joked. Pic otte no w fe el s th a t h e h as th e mach in ery and the team. What, then, will kee p him from winning the title in a year that promises to be ultracompetitive? . "I need a lot of luck," Picotte says. "I haven't had much luck at all. I started last year pretty strong a n d healt hy, ready mentally. And a stupid little thing happened and I crashed and broke my collarbone (at Daytona). And I wen t back, got surgery - 14 days later at Pomona I pu t that superbike on th e pole." After reinjuring the shoulder at Hockenheim, Picotte decided to let the bone h eal properly. "Right af ter tha t, Scott went away. I wasn't really there physically, 'an d after that I wasn't the re mentally also," Picotte admits. "Nobody was really behind me. "I need to be consistent, win some races, and have a little bit of luck on my side. I h a ve so me good me ch a n ics . I don't h a ve to be worried abou t anyth in g. Nothi ng is go ing to fall off," he says, th e p rob lems of last season still fresh in his mind . Di

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