Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·RACER TEST" Raceco Moto Guzzi By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyolchl Nakamura bad it had to end that way but it was a great race while it lasted. Too bad for me, that is but not for diminutive Aussie Paul Lewis, who I spent 50 miles battling with in a torrential downpour at Thruxton last year in the third round of the 1995 BEARS World Series. That's before we collided in the final comer before the finish line while trying to outbrake each other for third place, and my Saxon Triumph bit the dirt. Instead, it was one more great result for" Loopy Louey" and his Turbo Tractor, the fastest V-twin Moto Guzzi ever built. Because that's what Amedeo Castellani's Raceco Guzzi Daytona surely is-the bike that keeps the spirit of Dr. John alive today by winning races and, in 1995, the British BoIT Championship. I have to own up to being a big fan of the bespectacled Lewis, known in some circles as the Angry Ant, ever since the first time I witnessed the dynamic riding style of one of the most spectacular products of the Australian rider factory in action at Sydney's Oran Park Raceway back in 1979. Back then, Louey was riding a 125cc Morbidelli, en route to the Aussie title, a bike more obviously suited to his pocket-sized stature than the RG500 Suzukis he later carne to Europe to race, or the twin-cylinder thunderbikes he's since carved a unique reputation for mastering. After his days as a works 500cc GP rider on the carbon-framed "cardboard box" Heron Suzuki ended, little Louey acquired an improbable status as the nearly man of top-level BoIT racing, the guy who did all the hard work developing bikes that others got the big results with. It was Lewis who started refining the Quante1-Cosworth into a Ducati-beater, coming within an ace of qefeating Marco Lucchinelli on the works desmo at Daytona in 1986, before Roger Marshall took it over from him and won the American classic two years later. That time, Louey seemed a shoo-in to win Daytona on the RS850 Commonwealth Honda V-twin, only to retire with a blown motor while leading the race and The men behind the machine: rlcler Paul Lewis (center) Is flanked by bike owner and builder Amedeo Castellani (left) and head mechanic Max Datta (right). handing victory to Marshall."Randy Renfrow went on to win the AMA BoIT title with the same bike. Fast forward to 1991, when Lewis finally gave John Britten's V-twin its long-awaited first international rostrum finish in half a decade of trying, by finishing runner-up to Doug Polen's works Ducati 888, again at Daytona. I never could work out why someone as weight-conscious as John Britten didn't employ Lewis to ride his new carbon-forked V-llOO when it came on stream a year later; after all, Louey's 120-pound frame gives you a pretty hefty weight bonus compared to a normal-sized jockey. Maybe he came from the wrong side of the Tasman Sea? But finally, in '95, Lewis achieved the Battletwin success that was his due, win- . ning the British BoIT title on the Raceco Guzzi. It was about time. Thirty-nine-year-old Amedeo Castellani is Britain's foremost Moto Guzzi tuning specialist, a man whose addiction to Guzzis dates back to the ownership of a 50cc Dingo runabout at the tender age of 13. A former professional photographer, he bought his first Guzzi V-twin back in 1981 to use as a studio prop for a photo shoot, then enjoyed riding the bike so much he gave up his job to start his own Guzzi tuning business. Raceco was founded 10 years ago, since which point Amedeo has carved out a solid worldwide reputation for his tuning expertise not only on Guzzis, but on other engines too. He ports cylinder heads for various racing cars, and even did the cylinder head work on the Chris Clarke Ducati 900SS that Ian Cobby won a pair of British BoTT titles on in 1993/94. But Guzzis have always been Amedeo's first love, and as a firm disciple of Dr. John Witmer, to whom he pays tribute for a decade of encourage. ment and advice "even on rider psychology," it was inevitable he'd start working on Guzzi BoTT racers. Afte.r tuning the prototype Magni-framed: eight-valve Daytona for Australian Guzzi importer Ted Stolarski, which Owen Coles raced successfully in 1990, Castellani decided to build his own eight-valve Guzzi racer - which first took to the track in 1992 with the backing of British importers Three Cross, and has been raced and progressively developed with their support ever since. After finishing second twice in the British BoIT Championship in 1993 and 1994 with other riders, Castellani had the bright idea of hiring Lewis to race the bike last season. Smart move: with seven victories out of eight 1995 BoTT series rounds contested, Louey secured a much-deserved first title for the Raceco Guzzi now Britain's uncontested top Twin. But, worthy as winning the British BoTT title was, and as respectable as Lewis' survival of our last-lap banging match at Thruxton to get on the BEARS World Series rostrum may have been, it was his performance in the next World BEARS round at the Brands Hatch World Superbike meeting that really impressed. Lewis fought a furious battle with Britten riders Andrew Stroud and Stephen Briggs' tricked-out Kiwi Vtwins on his shaft-driven monsterbike, grabbing the lead several times before the Guzzi's crank seized, forcing him into the pits and a standing ovation from the 50,000 sun-drenched fans. Memorable stuff. Having had a close-up look at the Raceco bike's performance at Thruxton as well as a rather, er, more distant one at Brands, I thought I was prepared for how impressive it would be to ride it myself when Amedeo offered me the chance at a Mallory Park practice day. Wrong! It's eve~ better than I expected. The best compliment I can pay Lewis Turbo Tractor, having ridden each of the series of Dr. John's Guzzis, including the eight-valver that Doug Brauneck won the AMA title on, is to say that the Raceco bike is even more' potent, decidedly easier to ride, has considerably quicker steering and doesn't even begin to compare in terms of the smoothness of the transmission. It's the first V-twin Guzzi I ever rode which shifts gears as well as any other "normal" bike. None of this is a reflection on John Wittner's tuning ability, only that Castellani has had the benefit of another half decade of development, much of it inspired by Dr. John himself. Beginning with an ex-demonstrator Daytona road bike acquired in 1992 with 8,000 miles on the clock and weighing 573 pounds, Castellani and his mechanic, Max Datta, have progressively lightened their racer' to the point that it now scales 385' pounds, but no fuel and that's light for a standard-framed Guzzi "otto valvole." "We took a lot of weight off between' the '93 and '94 seasons, before we really paid much attention to the motor:" Amedeo says. "We could get the bike down to 160 kg. (352 pounds), but it'd be very costly. Getting Louey to ride the bike evens things up." j As it is, the carbon-fiber Sprint bodywork saves nearly nine pounds and the Dunlop-shod Marvic magalloy wheels a . whopping 26.4 pounds, but to make. room for the chunky six-inch rear, it was necessary to offset the standard finaldrive box by 18mm. Raceco retained the stock Dr. John's parallelogram rear end, using a Koni shock, but cut 'n' shut the spine frame to> steepen the head angle from 26 to 24 degrees and fitted a pair of 40mm WP upside-down forks with special triple clamps giving 100mm of trail. But it was the motor that received the most attention before the start of the '95 season, with the biggest change an iricrease in capacity to 1162cc, compared to the 992cc guise in which Rik Lewendon took the Raceco Guzzi to second place in the '94 British BoIT series. From delivering 100 bhp at the back wheeJ in small-valve 992cc guise (with 33.5mm inlets and 29.5mm exhausts), the team had got an immediate ninebhp increase from the 90 x 78rnm engine just by fitting bigger 36mm inlet/31mm exhaust valves. The '95-spec bored-andstroked 95 x 82mm maxi-motor was the final ingredient - using C-kit Guzzi race carns, three-ring Omega pistons mounted on Carrillo rods and a special Raceoo) crank, the engine now delivers 125 bhp at the wheel at 8200 rpm. But the biggest gain was in torque, which is now a mag.,. sive 82 foot-pounds. Amedeo ported and flowed the

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