Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

RQ&\D RACE General Guarantee T riump hTrans-Atlantic Challenge Always a contender, Scott zampach was captain l or the American team and led the way in ove rall po ints for t he team. 24 better than the stock 3-1-2 system, as well as so unding mu ch th ro a tier . A fou rstroke triple on a racing pipe has to be the best-sounding motorcycle engine of all - and delivers a little extra per formance. Not too much, though: Trium ph has a Dynojet dyno at every race to keep everyone honest and enforce the no-tuning regu lation. More than 100 horsepower and they'll strip the bike to find out how you cheated. On the other hand, there's plenty of sco pe to improve the bike fro m the 95 horsepower th at one u.s. team bike delivered, to the 99 at 9200 rpm that was also seen on the dyno over the weekend. I have to admit that out on the track, the Speed Triple surprised me. And after two seasons of racing the Saxon Triumph in the BEARS World Series, I already had a good idea of wh at is was like to ride a racin g triple, as com p a red to a rac eprepped roads ter. Provided you keep the revs up above the 3500 mark to avoid the flat spot that starts 500 revs lower at full throttle (not a problem on the Donin gton Natio n al circuit used fo r th e Match Races, whi ch omits the two slow hairpins of the GP extension), the torquey engine has a wide spread of power that makes it for giving to rid e at 95-percen t on the pace - and hard work at 99.9 percent! There's noticeably more pow er at the ver y top end, so it pays to aim for the 9500-rpm rev limite r a nd u se th e sixspeed gearbox to keep it there. Or so I eventually d iscovered, because to begin with I tried to gear the Triumph as a fivespeeder to take ad vantage of the meaty torque just like Dou g Polen used to do when he geared his Ducati Superbike to use just four gears at Donington. But do that wi th the Speed Triple, and though you save some gear-chan ging, you also lose out in two key ways: One, the bike doesn't accelerate as well because of the higher overall gea r ratio; and, two, you lose ou t on top speed because of the gap between fourth and fifth wh ich is significantl y grea ter than fifth to sixth. Because there is more power at m aximum revs , yo u h ave to gea r th e b ike' to ke ep it revving as high as possible as soon and as lon g as po ssible, a fact I eventually caught on to after I kept getting passed on the straight by other American team bikes. Well, better late than never... One reason I persevered with the fivespeed option as long as I did was to try to cut down on changing gears, easily the b ig gest si ng le h a ngu p in racing the Speed Triple. As I d iscovered th e hard way with the Saxon Triumph in BEARS ra cing at the Aus tr ian round last year, the Triumph gearbox is robust but heavy, with a slow gear-change action that really isn't su ited to race-track use because it doesn 't like bein g chan ged up wi thout the clu tch and refuses to be speed-shifted. It also needs many more miles of run nin in than an of the American team bikes got, with the result that I wasn't the only one to find himself missing shifts, getting the bike st uck in gear. Or eve n worse, sailing into turns in neutral trying frantically to get a gear - any gear. Eve n u sin g the clu tch for upshifts didn' t reso lve the problem, u nless you were very slow and careful about changing gears, thus losing precious time and drive as yo u d id so. As my mechanic knows from working on the Saxon Triumph, the gearbox is one area you need to spe nd a lot of time on when build ing a Triumph engine for the race track - even (or especially) a Speed Triple racer. It was evide nt that none of the British team bi kes had th e prob lem to the same degree. Handling was another matter. In fact, th at area was pretty goo d. The Pro flex package makes all the difference, transfo r mi ng a soft- nosed st reet b ike, o n which comfort and ride qu ality have to p lay a n eq u al part with s us pens io n r pon se, 'in to a competent track too l. Th e stiffer suspe ns ion gives exce lle n t feedback, as well as ma ximizing the grip fro m th e Brid gies and minim izing th e effects of wei ght transfer on the brakes and on the gas. At 407 pounds half-dry in racing trim (460 with full street equipme n t) thi s is not a light motorcycle eve n w ith out a fa iring, a nd it tak es a good hea ve to make it change directi on, even wi th the steering speeded up thanks to change in geome try. Goin g down Cra ner Cu rves hard on the gas need ed the most effort, muscling it from righ t to left at the bottom without backin g off, and the chicane prov ided a good workout for pecs an d bicep s, too. Get fit to ride th is bike for long races. I was su rprised how well the Spee d Triple stopped with the stoc k Nissen brakes - and pads, to o. Racing pads wou ld surely have las te d lon ger and given a litt le extra bite, but af~er being persuaded by Triumph staff to go out and try them first before buying a set of Ferodos, I had to admit they were right and the stock pads worked just fine : good enough to get the rear end light braking for Redgate and the chicane, and set up a little front-end instability, which the long 58.7-inch w hee lbase shrugged off. Three half-hour, untim ed practice sessions on Sunday, run in dry weather, gave lots of time for bike setup, and in retrospect it would have been smart to make the last of these timed-qualifying. Especially when the next morning (Monday was a holiday in Britain) it poured with rain, leaving the one and only timed session to be ru n on a we t track. Sorry, but as one who has cavorted dow n Craner on his backside in th e rain on more than one occasion, I'll admit to copp ing out. I had no desire to find out the hard way exactly how good the we t-weather grip of the new- to-me Brides tones was, quite apart from wanting to keep bike and body in one piece for the three races starting soon after. The result was a qualifying slot toward the back of the gri d - th ou gh I noticed I was in good company, ahea d of former 500cc GP rid er Peter Grav es, a reserve for th e Brit ish team, and right behind Dave Alda na, who I was interested to learn had exactly the same attitu de as me. "Qualifying in th e rai n su cks !" sai d Aldana. "All you find out is how easy it is to crash and wr eck the bike going for a time in the wet. It' s a questi on of su rvival, not speed. I just ri de ar ound at wh at seems like a comfortable race speed and hope it puts me high enough up the list to go for it if the race is dry ." That makes two of us - but Dave mu st have .liked it out there, after all: He kept going till, he, ahem, ran ou t of gas and had to push the bike the next tum to find something to lean it aga inst. Uphil l. No t surprisingly, the Brits loaded up the fro nt rows, w ith Zarnpa ch a n d Nobles best Yanks on row tw o, both of them co m me nda bly ahead of British Speed Triple Champion and British team ca p tai n Mark Phillip s, th an ks to th eir familiarity with the bike as Speed Triple regulars in th e States, and th e circu it. H owever, the reall y cred itable per for- m an ce fro m the Am eri can team was Da vid Sad owsk i' s, who not only had never even sa t on a Triumph before the start of practice, but had never even seen Donin gton before. Qualifyin g only a cou ple of places behind his mo re experienced compatriots, Ski worked hard at getting the bike set u p closer to his tastes, and also a t learning the tricks of wha t is one of the more demanding specialis t circuits in the world, requiring lots of finesse. It paid off with a superb race victory for the Americans in the third and final race, by the relatively wide ma rgin of 1,45 seconds from top British points scorer Pa ul Brown, wi n ner of the othe r tw o legs. Good going . Especially as Sadowski also set the fastest lap in each of the three races, lapping faster than the British stars on their home turf. Very impressive. Zampach came close to victory in race one, finishing a narrow second to Brown en route to ending the day as top America n points scorer, though the Bri ts packed the to p finish ing positions to score an emphatic 614-426 overa ll victory. Furthe r down the field, yours truly was having the time of his life in wheelto-wheel unfaired comba t with some buddies from across the wa ter. Each race it was the same guys: Aldana, my VeeTwo Australia teammate Les White who races the Aussie desmos in the U 'S; and Jimmy Hanrahan, currently second in the USA Triumph series but third last year in the Ll.S. Su p ermono cham pionship aboard the semi-works Bimota. Then there was M ike Fitzpa trick and Rick " Cap tain" Kirk, wh o ga ve me the s t ra nge se nsa tion of racin g ag ainst myself after I lent him my spare helmet for the weekend wh en his own got stolen during the flight over - especially as we both had the same color leathers. Weird : A yank wearing a Unio n Jack helmet the Daughters of the American Revolution will blacklist him. Kent Kunitsugu had qu alified ahead of me, and the honor of top scribe was on the line. But m y m ain objecti ve was ,to bea t Aldana, and Kent finished behind th e two of us ea ch time. If th er e was so me thi ng ironic abou t the two oldest guys in the race having a friendly gru dge match with each other, it certainly made for so me fu n ra cin g. Especia lly as we tried to teach th e yo u ng whippersnap pers around us their true place in racing life - behind us! Dave has been racing longer th an I have, but yo u' d never know: Those BMW Legends races must be quit e something if he can' t win them every time, becau se he' s still a hell of a Overall Points Great Britain # Rider 1 2 3 5 7 8 10 11 16 17 22 Capt. Mark Phillips Dave Heal Adam Lewis Mick Corrigan Alan Batson DavidWood Jason Emmett DavidJeffries Mark Ditchfield Ray Stringer Danny Imberg (Reserve) David Martin Francis Williamson (Reserve) Michael Rutter Matt llewellyn Paul Brown Alan Cathcart 29 31 34 40 68 99 Total Scores: Aggregate: USA Leg 1 Leg 2 Leg3 # Rider Leg 1 Leg2 Leg 3 22 24 18 17 0 25 0 o 12 13 25 5 2 9 DNS 21 19 3 8 4 13 20 11 7 21 7 14 17 16 Capt. Scott Zampach James Hanrahan Mike Fitzpat ick r Rick Kirk John Scheehser DavidMcGrath les Tri p Nob p Ben Welch William White Kent Kunitsugu Chuck Graves David Sadowski Shawn Conrad David Aldana 8 12 10 10 A B C D E F G H J K L M N P 23 24 22 0 18 0 23 DNF 20 4 11 5 15 14 0 6 DNS 19 4 8 5 15 26 9 6 Total Scores: Aggregate: 147 14 7 128 27 5 426 o 18 o 12 16 9 15 13 14 23 26 6 19 22 26 7 203 203 420 21 10 17 217 0 24 25 DNF 194 614 151

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