Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

RACER ·rEST· MuZ RennSkorpion RS3 The MuZ RennSkorpion RS3 - the world's best Supermono? Yes, when you look at Its 1996 record of five wins In eight rounds of the 1996 European Supermono Cup Series. By Alan Cathcart Photos by Guus van Goethem and Kel Edge ~ 0\ ...... «::t'-' ~ 'E Q) Q) u ~ I-l 8 owever many battles you may win, it's the war that ultimately counts. While the record books will ultimately show that works lady rider Elli Bindrum only finished third in the 1996 European Supermono Cup Series for the German MuZ factory, the point of the matter is that Elli's teammates Rigo Richter and Mike Edwards, sharing the second of the two works MuZ RennSkorpion RS3 racers, won five of the Euroseries' eight rounds and established the Yamaha XTZ660-powered MuZ as the top Supermono racer in the world today. The MuZ factory won more battles than anyone else, but thanks to their two lead riders' other commitments - Richter in the German 250cc GP series and Edwards the British 600cc Supersport title chase - they lost the war. After battling with Elli and her two teammates all season on my Ducati, the chance to ride both MuZs at Assen the day after Richter had won the Dutch round of the Euroseries (with Elli third) was an illuminating experience - but also a pretty depressing one. Because 30 laps in the hot seat of the green and white super-singles confirmed the performance gap that exists between the German bikes and the Ducatis. Okay, I beat them both to finish second in the championship, but although I came close at Brands Hatch and again at Albacete, I never succeeded in beating the lead MuZ in a race, and now I know why. The Yamaha-engined single now occupies the place once held by the Ducati two or three years ago - before the Italian factory stopped developing the desmoquattro and let Rotax assume single-cylinder supremacy as the best Supermono in the world. So now it's the MuZ RerinSkorpion RS3 which sets the class standard, in terms of a complete package of power matched by poise, ridability combined with response. It's Singly the Best. However, this didn't happen overnight, even though the works RennSkorpion run by the Tigcraft team dominated the 1994 British 50S series in the hands of Edwards, once the usual teething problems were overcome. The 1995 was a season MuZ will prefer to forget, having brought its race effort inhouse with a tuned-up version of their standard street Skorpion that simply wasn't fast enough. But for 1996 MuZ boss Petr-Karel Korous decided to focus the small but well-organized factory team led by team manager Christian Steiner, with race engineers Peter Liebing and Johannes Kehrer, on waving the MuZ flag to maximum effect in the European Supermono series with a new bike. Korous had a typ- ically astute plan: to try to win the title thanks to regular points-scoring finishes with his rennfraulein Miss Binder, and to win as many of the individual rounds as possible with his pair of hotshot riders. It nearly worked. For their attack on the Euroserie6, MuZ took over both the engine and chassis R&D themselves, but with Slipstream Tuning's Martin Sweet building the engines and Tigcraft's Dave Pearce constructing a pair of new chassis, all to the German factory's specification. Still based on the Skorpion road bike's twintube format, the new Supermono racer uses thinner 1.5mm-wall German-made 50mm steel tubing (not chrome-moly) for the twin-tube all-welded chassis, still with the oil tank for the dry-sump motor in the steering head but with the fabricated alloy swingarm pivoting in the frame like on the road bikes, rather than in separate alloy plates like on the Tigcraftdesigned RS2. With a 23-degree head angle on the 41mm WP upside down forks and modified Kawasaki ZXR750 link for the WP rear shock, the 1370mm-wheelbase bike has reduced frontal weight bias of 54/46 percent (56/44 percent before), partly achieved by having the rear subframe made in alloy tubing rather than Tigcraft's trademark carbon fiber structure. Clothed in distinctive white and green bodywork, which looks very aerodynam- ic even if it hasn't yet seen the inside of a wind tunnel, the new bike made its debut at the first round in Misano after being completed only six weeks earlier, where EIli's points-scoring finish in spite of suspension problems caused by lack of testing led Christian Steiner to promise Korous that the MuZ could win the next round at Donington in Edwards' hands and that's just what happened. But after giving the RS3 its debut win in Britain, Mike couldn't race in the next round at Hockenheim, where replacement Rigo Richter put the bike on pole, only to blow the clutch on the sighting lap, leaving him unable to start the race. But Elli stepped into the breach, only edged at the line for victory by fractions of a second by ex-500cc GP rider Micky Rudroff's BMR Suzuki, showing the MuZ was now fast as well as good-handling. Edwards returned for Monza and both riders played a part in the thrilling seven-bike battle for victory, until the camchain broke on Edwards' engine, and Elli crashed out with me when we were both taken out by another rider. That was the low point of MuZ's season: from then on they were never beaten, with Richt!"r winning at Brno, Edwards at Brands, then Richter again at Assen and once more in the final round at Albacete. Five victories in eight title rounds underlines MuZ's claim to have taken over Supermono supremacy from the previously all-conquering Uno-Rotax. The fact that all this coincided with a period of uncertainty ending with the Malaysian takeover of the MuZ company made it doubly praiseworthy - especially as new boss Ron Lim is reported to share Pea Korous' enthusiasm for road racing. As soon as you sling Q. leg over Rigo Richter's RennSkorpion, you understand how and why this happened. The bike feels taut and together, a true works racer that instantly feels well honed, well developed and well put together - a carefully refined package, rather than a collection of parts that just happened to find themselves all together in the same motorcycle. Everything's in its place, and all the minor details are taken care of - like the switch provided for the Scitsu tacho rather than having to fiddle with the cutout plug, or the perfectly adjusted speed-shifter that is even smoother and more effective than the one on the Ducati, or the rechargeable NiCad dry cell battery to power the stock Yamaha COl, or the smooth operation of all controls in a way that the Honda works GP team would be proud of, or - wep, you get the picture. MuZ's self-evident attention to detail in developing and prepar. ing the RS3 is a fine four-stroke continuation of their MZ ancesto"rs' glorious two-stroke GP heritage. The RS3 also feels exactly like a 250cc GP racer to sit on, meaning the riding position is quite closely coupled - too much for a rider taller than Richter or Edwards, so that I couldn't get properly tucked away down the Assen straights. But an extra inch and a half in the seat would have fixed tha t, and in every other way Rigo's bike was handling heaven. As a GP rider he likes more compliant suspension than I've found in the past when testing the bikes of Edwards, whose Supersport-sourced riding style makes him set everything up much stiffer. The Richter MuZ settings on the WP

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