Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round 1: Daytona 200 By Arai howling wind and tra ck conditions that didn't ap pear well-sui ted to quick laps surely meant that Scott Russell's lap record from a season ago at Daytona International Speedway was safe. Yeah, an d th e Titanic w as unsinkable, th e Hindenberg was a compet ent flyin g apparatus and nobody w ould pla y more consecu tive games than Lou Gehrig. Well, it can n ow be argued that Troy Corser is an iceberg, an electrical spark and Cal Ripken Jr. all wrapped up in one. The Australian and his Promotor Ducati went out on a windy Thursday aftern oon and, much like a kite, made the wind his ally, clockin g a on e-minute, 49.387-second lap (117.162 mph) to knock nearly a half second off Russell's record from 1995 and to set himself up as the favorite to win the Daytona 200 by Arai. Not to mention earning a Rolex Dayton a chronograph in the process. "We've been wo rking, ge ttin g the bik e setu p," Corser sai d . "At the start .of the week we wer e basically chasin g our tail s around and around and a ro u n d and not find in g an y reason for the bike be ing so u nst abl e on th e banking. We ha d a lot of wobbling, and at the same tim e that chews up the tires because it's going sideways ins tea d o f st r ai ght . Th is m orn in g we found the p ro b le m w ith th e bi k e a n d we changed it; th e b ike is fairly s tea dy on th e bankin g, now here near where it was the past couple of da ys. I'm pret ty sure we found the problem and it's just made me more com for table; I'm no t out there with my knuckles tu rning white tryin g to han g on to it. I can sit there and ride the bike like I want to, an d th at made the d ifferen ce." • Corser did the fast time late in th e session, usin g Mich elin qualifying tires: "W e p u t the tire in and it was a fairly sof t qu a lifyi n g ti me," Cor s er ex p lai ned. "W it h a tire li ke that, you really only give it one lap becau se the bank ing attacks it rea lly b adly. I h ad one la p and unfortunately I still go t a slowe r lapped rider in the bac k chicane. I think I cou ld've gone quicker - a 48 - but he slow ed m e up through the chican e. The rest of the lap, I wouldn't say it wa s perfect, but I was fairl y hap py with the w'l y it went. The bike's working good. The tire standa rd h as come up from last year . I think for the race I've sorta picked out a race tire that I feel fairly comfortable with." The man wh o would sit next to Corser on the grid was his new teammate Mike Hal e. The Texan, like the rest of the front row wi th the exception of Corser, wasn't overly impressed with how things turned out. His number-one bike suffered motor problems earl y in the session, forcing Hale to use his backup bike. Although he still managed a 1:50.824, this wa s a man who had run lap times in the 49s during the wint er Michelin test. He knew he cou ld go better, and expe cted as much. . "This qualifying session d idn't go as go od as it cou ld ha ve," Hal e said. "We were able to come out second and I'm happy with that. I reall y wanted to win pole, just like Troy (Corser). We both knew that coming in - that we would both be battling for that. I'm a little bit displeased with the time I ended up with, after the testing and how I had gone in December when w e were here. I think tomorrow we'll be abl e to improve on it and get m y bikes working a little better." Scott Russell's shot at becoming the first four-time winner of the Daytona 200 By Arai wasn't necessaril y da shed by the speed of the Promotor Ducatis in qualifying, but the Georgi an wasn't pleased with how qualifying had pla yed out. He made his ire very public in the po st-qualifying pre ss con ference, taking the time to speak ou t on the big V-twins and the rules that he feels gives them an advantage. "Tha t's as fast as that Suzuki is going to go at Daytona - this trip," Russell said . "I've been workin g all week to ge t the bike to go for the 200, not for qua lifying. I thought I h ad a realistic sho t of getting pole, bu t after wat chin g the first sess ion I knew I wasn't going out there to get pole. I w as there to ride around, and that's basically what I did. Pole position is just that. It's a watch; it's no more mo ney he re. It's just like, A 'Okay, I' ve done it: It ju st wasn't going to happen for me. The track just isn 't what it w as when we were here in December. Everybody is struggling, except for the Du cati boys. They seem to have 20'more horsepower than anybody out there . My opinion is that it has ruined the class . "They just did it - they put the power to the ground. And they did it here in December. The p ow er on that thing goes from probably 2000 (rpm) to 14,000. The four cylind ers are working in a much sma ller range. Those bikes are nice - the y shou ld be running in the Grand Prix class. Laugh, but the y're going as fast as a 500 at Phillip Island - one of the fastest race tracks we go to . I don't want to go on , but I could. It's making heroes out of th ese guys and they're... w ell, th ey're good riders. You'll see - Carl Fogarty probably won't win a race this year, and that's the way it's gonna go. If John Kocin ski an d Carl Fogarty go head-tohead, I can tell you who is going to win. It's jus t going to show everybod y wha t the real deal is, and we all kn ow what it is. But nobody wants to say anythin g about it:' Russ ell was much happier after Friday's pratice session that saw most every bo dy runnin g what would be their ra ce setups. Russell did lap times wh ich were consistently the fastest, and he was back to his confident self come Sunday. The man who filled ou t the front row was Muzzy Kawasaki' s Anthony Gobert, the Aus tralian forming an Am erican sandwich with fellow Au ssie Corser on the othe r en d of the line. Gobert clocked a 1:51.560, despite chunking quite a few Dunlop qualifying tires along the way. "It didn't go very we ll, really," Gobert said. "We could n' t find a tire that would do a couple of lap s for us, so that really held u s back. I'm a . bit disappoi nted, but I'm happy in one way to be on the front row and have that locked in. But I'm disappointed because I felt like I could have gone a lot faster . I wou ld have liked to have been on pole position. When I ran with Troy during the week, I knew that it wa s go ing to be tou gh because the Du cati seemed to be getting off the comers a lot better than we cou ld. I knew I was going to ha ve to rid e pretty hard so I was riding as aggressively as I could, hut the tires w ere jus t shredd ing. We had the softest tires ava ilable . We'd tried the harder ones earlier, but I coul dn't seem to go as fast on 'em . We used the softer ones, bu t jus t as soon as I started to get to speed, they wouldn't last a lap . I feel confident for the race so tha t's wh at I look to now . I'm really determined; I jus t want it so bad. We di d nearly race distance on a set of tires the other day and they hung in there pretty goo d . I think we'll be okay." The second row of the grid was led by the Yoshim ur a Suzu ki of Pascal Picott e, the French Canadian improving his time on Friday to move up to what w as actually the third-fastest tim e of the week - a 1:50.620, a full second off what he'd done on Thursd ay (when the front row was locked in pla ce). On Thursday, Picotte had com plained of a bad frontend pu sh which resulted in a loss of midcorner speed, an d also of excessive whee lspi n at the rear. Come Friday that appeared to h ave been at least partially fixed. • "It was a lot bett er today," Picotte said on Friday afternoon. "I'm sure I could do a 50 flat. We went back to the other offset . We'v e tried two differe nt sho cks, on e offset and different settings on the fork. It' s really improved rear traction. The front is a little iffy, but it's not that bad. On the second lap, I can do a 50 flat:' " Also mo vin g forward on Friday was Colin Edwards II, riding his factor y World Superbike Yamaha to a 1:50.752, nearly a secon d quicker than what he'd posted on Thursday. His time would have been good en ough for the front row, had Thursday's qualifying not locked in the front row. Edwards' improvement came from a new engine, specifically one that "ha uls ass now :' . "Yesterd ay the bike was kinda castrated, today we found some ball s," Edw ards said on Friday. The seventh spo t on the grid was held in impressive fashi on by rookie Aaron Yates on the Yoshimura Suzuki. The Georgian clocked a 1:51.035 on Frid ay to mov e to the second row, between Edwards and defending AMA Superbike National Champion Miguel DuHamel. . "I 'm thrilled with it," Yates said. "Seven th overall - I'm pretty impressed with m yself. Everyone in front ofme is a World Superbike guy. The bike right now is the way it' s going to ha ve to be. My main problem is that it spins, hooks and shakes pretty violently exiting up to the banking. I'm happy. I went good today with race tires:' Smokin' Joe's Dul-Iamel started the week with '96-spec parts on his Honda RC45, but by Friday the team had reverted to what had worked in 1995. DuHamel, consequently, improv ed from what was a high 1:52 on Thursd ay to a low 1:51.220 on Friday. . Row three would cons ist of Mu zzy Kawasaki's Mike Smith, Fast By Ferracci roo kie Larry Pegram, and the Vance & H ines Yamahas of Jami e James and Tom Kipp . Au stralian Mat Mladin, a Daytona rookie, led row four on hi s Yos hi m u ra Su zuki, ah ead o f another Australian, Kir k McCarthy on the World Superbike Suzuki, su perbike rookie Shawn Higbee on the second Fast By Ferracci Du cati, and Muzzy Kawasaki's Dou g Chandle r, the Californian struggling to get to pace on the 1996 Kawasaki after actually turning better laps on the '95 mod el.

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