Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·RACERTESl Colin Edwards II's Yamaha YZF750 almost successive lap~ in this very spot a week later in the second race underlined how responsive, yet how ridable the Yamaha now is. Last year's bike would have tried to spit you off when you gassed it up hard and you hit that 1l,200-rpm power threshold. Not this year. I wouldn't say it had become a lot more torquey, however, even though Fanali says that's what Colin kept asking for last season. You still have to work the gear lever and the sweet-action KLS speed shifter (much better set up here than on Corser's Ducati) quite hard, and the team concocts a different gearbox for each track out of the range of three different ratios for the bottom two gears and four for each of the top four. But it's a sign that the engine is more forgi ving that Colin had the bike set up to use only' the bottom five gears at Albacete, and at Donington he even tried only a fourspeed box - on a four! Just amazing. Yet if the situation demands, you can try riding the bike the old way, too, thanks to the superior grip and improved traction of the new range of 16.5-inch Dunlop rear tires (three different constructions for each of a huge range of compounds, so prerace testing is critical to optimum tire choi~e). I'd never tried one of these before, and after riding a well-worn one earlier in the day fitted to the Muzzy Kawasaki I was also testing in Spain, I wasn't sure I wanted to - it moved around really badly, and the grip had gone away. Past the sell-by date. But then Dunlop gave me a nearly new one for my first session on the Edwards Yamaha. Wow - magic! The improvement in side grip was really. noticeable. I found I could gas the bike pretty hard on the angle, and still get good traction leaned over coming out of turns, thanks to the extra 'contact patch due to the wider tread of the 195/55 tire. Apparently the grip goes away faster than on 17-inch rubber when the tire gets worn - hence the slip-sHdin' Kawasaki. But while it's there, it's better. Just make sure you choose a compound that lasts the race and don't tear it up. So, dive deep into the Albacete hairpin hard on the brakes, using the slipper clutch to max out engine braking and make sure you don't get the rear wheel jumping, even with the reduced inertia inside the works motor. The Yamaha brakes r.eally nicely, with those big 320mm Nissin discs and their six-pot calipers giving potent stopping power with a bike right on the 347.6-pound superbike weight limit, yet without feeling it'll tuck the front wheel when you trail brake deep into the' apex of a slow turn like this one. In spite of relatively conservative steering geometry (24-degree head angle, 98mm trail with the offsets I was using), the Yamaha turns sharply, yet is much more stable than last year's bike around faster turns' like the last corner before the pits in Spain, where it also rode the big bump in the middle pretty well hard on the gas. Well, once I'd stopped chickening out and learned to take it hard in third without backing off the throttle, that is. Yet come back to the hairpin again, brake hard and deep into the apex - it's reilly well'balanced under heavy braking,_ with good, controllable weight transfer that doesn't have the back waving around in the air easily - turn the bike and gas it up, and be prepared for the power to come in so smoothly, yet really fast. Feel the rear Dunlop bite hard, and fire' er up down the short straight to the next turn. Fun, fun, fun! Whereas a year ago it was fear, fear, fear. A key ingredient in these improved race track manners is of course the Yamaha's '96 chassis setup, courtesy of Fiorenzo Fanali's growing rapport with Edwards, and Anders Andersson's magic wand waved over the suspension. The beefy Deltabox alloy frame is essentially unchanged from '95, with only some changes to the wel,ded-on chassis bracing and swingarm reinforcement, new valving inside the 46mm OhUns upside-down forks and some new Ohlins links for the rear shock which deliver a range of altered ratios for the team to try at each circuit. But as Andersson confirms, some radical changes in ch.assis setup before the season started were a vi tal link in improving handling to make best use of the more ridable power delivery. "Last year's bike had too high a center of gravity and the swingarm angle was too steep," he says. "We got the weight further down to the ground and picked up traction, which was one of the main problems in '95. But Uke all the four-cylinder bikes, it takes a lot of work at each track to set the Yamaha up right - it's a thin line between right and wrong, especially compared to the Ducati I worked on last year, where you just go to a circuit, fill it up with gas and make a few small suspension changes. This is a more demanding motorcycle, . where just a few millimeters of adjustment can be the difference between being on the pace and out of contention:" I had a firsthand illustration of this during my weekend as a guest tester. But first, sitting on the bike you immediately notice that Edwards has changed his riding position. Instead of sitting wedged far forward by a thick rubber pad on the back·of the seat, with his distinctive wide-elbowed stance aimed at loading up the front wheel with his body weigh't, Colin this season adopted a much more rational, close-coupled posture. He's jettisoned the pad, moved the seat and footpegs further back, dropped the clip-on handlebars more steeply as well as sloping them back a bit to allow him to grip the side of the fuel tank better with his arms. The clip-ons are 25mm longer than previously, to restore lost leverage, but the result now is that you feel part of the bike, not perched on top of it in what was frankly a rather ungainly position. The fact that the whole bike is definitely lower also becomes apparent as soon as you move off. It just feels much more compact and - well, more like a racer. But a key factor in Colin's improved performance this year has also been his growing understanding with team chief Fiorenzo Fanali, the ultra-experienced Italian race engineer who helped guide Eddie Lawson to so many 500cc GP victories and world titles. "Colin really changed his rilling style this year," admits Fiorenzo, "not just the bike setup, but the way he rides is more

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