.RACER TEST
By Alan Cathcart
Photos by Kel Edge
Ou wouldn't want to
have been a script editor for the 1996 World
Superbike season shoot.
Hardly anything went according to the final draft of the
pundits' preseason predictions, even less so after the
first round at Misano.
John Kocinski was sup- .i
posed to kick ass and :}
cruise to the champi- .)
onship; but he didn't;
Kawasaki was on a roll ··i
after Anthony Gobert ...~
won a moral victory at :,{
round one on a brand- . .
new bike, but they went
backward after that.
Yamaha had the mean'.'.."" '.~"'.'.
est machine in the superbike paddock, a high-strung hyperbike with a
bad attitude, but the team engineers
transformed it into a paragon of ridability.
Suzuki's new 750 was supposed to
rewrite the rule book for superbike
design; it dominated in supersport,
struggled at World Superbike level. And
reigning World Champion Carl Fogarty
was supposed to have lost his ability to
win races after quitting Ducati for
Honda,·a twin for a V-four, but he
hadn't.
About the only thing in the World
Superbike shooting script that "1'ent
according to plan was Honda's relentless progress in closing the gap on its
#
<'
16
Ducati rivals, all
..
its efforts in search of regaining the World Superbike title that was
once its ·own.
Honda's NSR500 V-four two-strokes,
sponsored by Spanish oil company Repsol, continue to dominate 500cc GP racing in a way that, while admirable, is
frankly unspectacular to the TV audiences which now underwrite motorcycle sport at the highest level. Honda's
four-stroke V-four RC45s, backed by
Repsol's British rivals Castrol, were a
key elemen~ in turning World Superbike
into the greatest spectacle on two
wheels today, with a constantly chang-
ing cast of
characters that thrilled
matinee audiences around the world
with their ·on-screen struggles for
supremacy - twice each race day, all the
while slashing lap times to equal and
sometimes even better 500cc GP lap
records' on·a variety of circuits.
Yet, in spite of a steep performance
hike obtained over the winter, Honda
was still.faced with playing catch-up to
the Italian V-twins when the '96 season
kicked off - even after recruiting
(Top) Different beasts: Carl
Fogarty's RC45 (number one, of
course) has af! ultra-extreme.setup
compared to Aaron Slight's.
(Above) Intensive work on the
chassis has brought the RC45 up
to par with the Ducatls, but only If
you get the settings right - and It
ain't easy.
.
