Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Ducati's reigning World Champion Carl Fogarty to ride alongside Honda's Mr. Consi tency, Ki':'Vi Aaron Slight, on the Castrol team. Eight times a second-place finisher in the RC45's debut season in '94, Slight rewarded HRC's sterling efforts to bridge the gap with the desmo V-twins, through successive evolutions of its fuel-injected superbike, by taking the bike's first pole at Monza in '95, then giving it a debut race win in the next round at Albacete, then another victory at Sentul. Third in the final points table in each of those first two seasons, Slight was set to tllallenge for the title in '96, and that's the way it turned out. So while new teammate Fogarty struggled at first to adapt the Honda to his riding style (before figuring out it had to be the other way around), Slight scored points steadily all season long, leading the championship table for much of the year in spite of painful crash injuries sustained in trying to repeat his '95 victory in the Suzuka 8Hour. Double-up race wins for Slight and Fogarty at Hockenheim showed the Honda had power enough to win, a fact confirmed by Fogarty's follow-u p victory at Monza and his Assen double. In between, Honda's local works riders Yuuichi Takeda and Takurna Aoki clinched another pair of race win on home ground at Sugo, showing the RC45 was now arguably the best allaround package in the superbike paddock, and right in contention for title honors, with seven race wins to its credit this year. In spite of a terrible weekend in the final European round in Spain, when a combination of flu and tire troubles handed the points lead to Ducati-riding rival Troy Corser, Slight still went into the final round in Au tralia with a good shot at the title. Only, he had to win both races to do it. And in going for it against Gobert on a bumpy Phillip Island circuit not best suited to the RC45, he broke his 100-percent pointsscoring record by stepping off in the first race there, handing the title to Corser and Ducati. Slight's seventh second place of the season in the final race wasn't any consolation, while teammate Fogarty already signed up to move back to Ducati after a frustrating year aboard the Honda - wound up fourth in the title cha e. It was a disappointing end to a season which, at the midway point, had promised so much. Maybe they should have rewritten the script. The day after the curtain came down on the '96 World Superbike season at Phillip Island, I joined a bunch of other critics from around the world to sample life on the other side of the footlights aboard the very different pair of Castrol Honda RC45s Slight and Fogarty graced the superbike stage with last season. Already anticipating a step up in performance from even the '95 Slight bike I rode at a damp Donington a year ago and a quantum leap from Slight's flawed first-year RC45 I scooted round Suzuka on at the end of '94 - I was unprepared for how big an improvement there is wrapped up in this year's bike, with the ultimate F-spec evolution motor which debuted at Sentul. Neither was I prepared for the mega difference in setup between the two riders' contrasting mounts. Yet, having ridden Corser's and Kocinski's Ducatis back-to-back just six weeks previously, I ought to have been more ready for the contrast: The two Castrol Hondas were just as radically Though the RC45 was never porky, Honda has concentrated on lightening the bike - It now teeters on the brink of being underweight. The exhuast Is now steel instead of titanium and "Yes, "II take the on-board TV camera please..." from~:~:~~~~~~[~~~~~ different each other ;~ the pair of Dukes. It says #1 on the bike, 0 Fogarty's is first. The immediate thing you notice as soon as you swing a leg over his bike is how high and far forward you're perched aboard it. Colin Edwards II would have felt at home here last season, before he altered his riding tance so drastically for '%. The double-thickness seat pad and thick rubber squab on the back of the seat combine to deliver a typical GP riding position very similar to Kocinski's Ducati. John won't have to change much to feel comfortable on Carl's old bike next seasoh! The reason for this quite extreme stance is a simple one: Fogarty's riding style is all about maintaining corner speed and that means he has to loati up the front wheel weightwise to make it grip better, as well as to make the bike turn more sharply in the way that his nimbler, narrower Ducati used to do. On the other hand, that also means he needs to feel above all else what the front tire's doing. And that was one of the problems he had to come to terms with in getting the Honda dialed in, says his race engineer Nick Goodison. "Carl needs front-tire feedback more than mqst superbike riders," he says, "and getting the RC45 to deliver that while still riding bumps reasonably well is obviously mainly a factor of suspension setup, but also tire choice, too. Michelin originally developed their superbike tires around the Ducati, but we need a ofter sidewall with more give in the tire to allow us to run stiffer springs without chattering the front end. This year,.they built tires tha t were better suited to the Honda, but it's still very sensitive to changes, and probably the hardest bike to set up I've ever worked on." Out on the track, two things become obvious very quickly: One, the radical chassis etup takes a lot of getting .used to, and two, the F-spec RC45 has the most responsive throttle action of any four-stroke I've ever ridden. It's not just a function of the extra precision you get from electronically metered fuel delivery, and the crisp response the PGM Fl system delivers, but above all the effortless way the engine spins up so quickly when you twist your wrist. Crack it wide open at 8,500 rpm exiting Honda Corner heading out toward Siberia at Phillip Island, and the engine accelerates so fast, you'd almost think you were riding a two-stroke. Foggy's bike has a smoother throttle response than Slight's bike, which is snatchier and more brusque in its pickup - more like a pair of flat-slide carbs. Apparently, Carl uses different injectors than Aaron, aimed at providing a smoother throttle opening. Although Honda's intensive work on reducing internal friction and inertia has delivered an easy-revving powerhouse of a motor - still with the trademark silky feel of a works four-stroke Honda the lazy, distinctive double-Ducati drone from the twin carbon-fiber silencers does a grea t job of disguising it. Flick a glance at the tach, and get ready for a shock: Suddenly, you're hei!ding for the 14,750 rpm rev-limiter, and it's time to change up - even though from engine feel you would swear you were two grand or more lower down the rev scale. Tap the speed shifter for a higher gear, and the drone alters a couple of octaves before it's suddenly time for a repeat performance. Foggy uses a quite different set of gear ratios than Slight, who spaces Ulem out more to keep the engine accelerating in every gear, reaping the full advantage of the engine's appetite for revs. Carl prefers to keep the engine spinning up high all the time, hitting the rev-limiter in every gear and never letting revs drop below 11,500 rpm, thanks to a very close-ratio bottom four gears, then a bigger gap to the top two. The Honda power shifter is fantastic, smooth on the transmission when you shift wide open, but with just enough feel you don't change up sooner than you want to - much better than the KLS speed shifter fitted to Carl's title-winning Ducati I rode last year, which was way too sensitive. Partly that could have been due to a poor setting, but mainly I suspect it was due to the fact the Hon~a system works not off the ignition like all tlle rest, but as part of the EFI management system, by cutting the flow of fuel to the injectors. It's the best superbike shifter in the business - but then all the controls on the RC45 are equally precise and refined, typical of a works Honda, which sets the standard that others must aim at. Only after I'd returned to base did I discover another key improvement the F-series motor offers. For the first time on any of the works RC45s I've ridden, from the '93 prototype onward, there isn't a dip in the power d elivery around 12,200-12,700 rpm, a crucial flat spot in the torque curve that the variable-length velocitystack system was designed to overcome. I'd assumed this was still fitted, like last time I rode the bike, judging by the way the Honda built revs so smoothly yet speedily, without a glitch. But though Honda used it on the interim 8series motor the team started out the season with, the arrival of the F-series at Sentul meant it could be jettisoned. Hard work by HRC engineers had removed the flat spot and provided faster, cleaner engine acceleration, with added midrange as well as top-end power. Okay, more power - but maybe more problem putting it tq the ground? Well, yes - sometimes. Foggy's close-coupled riding position keeps you from moving around a lot on the bike, and with such an extreme forward weight bias and steep effective head angle - thanks to the jacked-up rear ride height - the Fogarty RC45 feels pretty nervous and skittery. But that's because Carl does it all on the front tire, leading to a bike that shakes its head and waggles the bars in your hands as you ride the bumps through the curves up out of Siberia, heading for Lukey Heights. It also shook its head a lot coming out of the last turn onto the main straight, where a combination of a soft rear suspension setting and a·wide-open throttle compressed the rear shock, unloading the'front so that when you hit the dip exiting the last turn, the Honda started a shake that continued until the finish line. I'm heavier than CarI, so that could have been a factor, but I didn't get the same reaction from the Slight bike, either there or exiting the fourth-gear tum one. There and again at Lukey Heights, the Fogarty Honda also understeered quite badly when I got hard on the gas, the soft rear end upsetting the balance. This was especially so if I had to back off the throttle slightly to let it ride a bump, when the bike would start to pitch to and fro along the wheelbase. Yet the front suspension seemed pretty stiff and not too compliant, giving the impression the bike was skipping over bumps instead of riding up and down over them, though paradoxically I could get quite a bit of feedback 17

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