Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127824
EUROFILE BYALAN CATHCART VZM400F to race in World Championship The all-new Yamaha YZM400F fourstroke motocrosser - revealed for the first time in Cycle News two weeks ago (Issue #2, January 15, 1997) - will not only see competition in the United States during the 1997 racing season, but on the World Championship stage as well. The YZM400F will be unveiled to the public in France sometime in february as a prelude to competing in the entirely Europe-based 1997 World 500cc Motocross Championship. A works two-man team will be run by Yamaha Europe from a base in Belgium, with Italian Andrea Bartolini and Sweden's Peter Johansson making up the two riders for the European count~r part to Yamaha USA's Doug Henry, who will compete in the AMA 250cc National MX Series and selected Supercrosses on the lightweight four-stroke motocrosser. . Shameless plug dept Another world title chase the V-three Benelli - and Laverda Jota - will be eligible for is the newly announced Sound of Thunder World Series, due to be launched on the Daytona banking on March 4, with the first round of an eight-race series with subsequent races held at European circuits. This new championship succeeds the well-established BEARS World Series. But unlike the BEARS class, which catered exclusively to bikes built outside Japan (BEARS is British, European and American/ Australasian RacerS), the new Sound of Thunder will run to broadly the same rules but will be open to Japanese bikes too. "Now that the Japanese manufacturers have discovered twin-cylinder, fourstroke sportbikes, it's pointless to exclude them from this type of racing anymore," said World Series organizer Graham Boothby. "On the contrary, bikes like the Honda VTRI000, Suzuki TL1000, Yamaha TRX850 and the many Japanese-engined Supermonos are all completely in keeping with the spirit of the class, and need to be catered for. The Sound of Thunder gives importers and teams a valid international category to race the new Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha twins in, which won't be competitive in their present form in World Superbike racing, bu t can provide the basis for a real four-stroke Thunderbike. The new Triumph T595 Daytona, which has too big of an engine to be eligible for the Superb ike class, will also be a con- Vertemati rolls its own ยท 100 ercent 4 The Yamaha won't be the only radical new four-stroke appearing in the 500cc World Motocross series in 1997. Alongside. the all-new Japanese bike, as well as the latest version of the Husaberg and Husqvarna four-valver which have each won the world title once in the past three Mike Young's 1995 Vertemati, the bike he rode In the 500cc GPs. years, will be another machine aimed at combiniIig light weight with four-stroke ridabillty - ijle new Vertemati 500 from Italy. The two Vertemati brothers were formerly the Husaberg importers for Italy, in addition to also running the World 500cc Motocross Championship campaign for the. tiny Swedish company when they came very close to winning the 1994 title on a bike they essentially built and developed themselves using a heavily modified Husaberg engine. A large part of the credit for Joel Smets' 1995 world title belonged to the two brothers - but by then a dispute between them and Husaberg had resulted in a split, with the creation of the Vertemati marque initially using modified Husaberg bikes. But since then, the two brothers have been working at developing their own 100 percent self-built motorcycle, which will be ridden in the 1997 Grands Prix by American Trampas Parker. The new bike uses their own all-new 500cc four-valve liquid-cooled engine with gear (not chain) drive to the single overhead camshaft and either a two- (yes!) or three-speed gearbox, depending on the track. The bike will be extremely light, say sources clos~ to the team, combining the best of twoand four-stroke technology - one reason the brothers have opted not to max out engine capacity to the four-stroke tirnit. . The Verte'mati chassis package will playa part in this, too: For example, the swingarm is milled from a solid piece of Ergal aircraft alloy, to create the twowheeled equivalent of a Bimota road bike. And, just like the Bimota, we can look for a customer version of the bike in time for the 1998 MX season. But don't ask about the price. Bimota gears up_ _ Ah, Bimota. The Italian specialist manufacturer is gearing up for the start of production of the 500cc Vdue fuel-injected twostroke sportbike, with production set to begin in late April when engine builders Franco Morini (in Bologna), the company Bimota has subcontracted to manufacture the Blmota chief engineer Plerkllgl ~rconl (left) end one of the twin-crank 19- prototype Vdue engines, which Is being checked out by degree V-twin mech8n1c StlIfeno Perlottl. motor, have finished tooling up for series production. In preparation for this, Bimota has completed a short-term factory expansion program, increasing floor space by 20 percent with the acquisition of the industrial unit across the street from its Rimini base, a unit that will house its machine shop, R&D department and race team. This has allowed for a complete reorganization of the existing two-story factory, with the upper floor. now given over entirely to manufacture all the way up to rolling-chassis state, before the bikes are moved downstairs for bodywork fitment and final assembly. Each completed bike is now dyno tested on a newly installed rolling road before being crated for delivery - previously, it was left to individual importers to do this, but now all bikes leaving the parent factory will be certified as having passed a rigorous checklist, as well as fulfilling minimum performance criteria. This is especially important now that Bimota is manufacturing bikes fitted with its own engines, says technical boss PierIuigi Marconi. The work force has increased 10 percent to reflect the expansion, with the 1996 production of 1550 bikes set to rise to 1700 in 1997, before jumping to 2000 units in '98 - once the Vdue is in full production, when it will be joined by a very different kind of fuel-injected V-twin, the four-stroke SB8 powered by the Suzuki TL1000 Vtwin motor. The prototype street Vdue has now covered more than 18,000 miles on the road, Marconi says. But before customer production begins in the spring; Bimota will be building a small batch of 10 pre-production bikes in January, bikes that will be sent to various countries for intensive testing in a variety of conditions - German autobahns, Tokyo traffic, Australian heat and British damp. Bimota aims to iron out any snags in the avant-garde two-stroke via this on-theroad test program, as well as develop a variety of EPROM chips for the TOD fuelinjection software, to suit local conditions in each country. However, each customer will be able to keep in touch with the factory by downloading his bike's data onto the Bimota central computer via the Internet, and receiving updates on specifications and R&D by the same means. Now that its final specification has been determined, it's interesting to compare the 90-degree V-twin Bimota with Honda's single-crank NSR500V 100-degree Vtwin GP racer (and possible street bike?), which has engine dimensions of 68 x 68.5mm and peaks at 10,250 rpm in race form, at which poirit 135 bhp is on tap at the gearbox. The Italian road bike measures a much shorter stroke, 72 x 61.5mm, delivers 110 bhp at the rear wheel in fully silenced street form (with air cleaner) at 9000 rpm, and revs safely to 10,000 rpm. ot so different - though the Italian bike with full street equipment scales in at 319 pounds dry, against the customer NSR500V racer's 240 pounds. Engine weight is .very similar, though - 70.4 pounds for the five-speed Bimota engine without starter motor, vs. 83.6 pounds for the alIoy-erankcase customer version of the six-speed Honda engine. GP-Ievel specifications - and performance, too, all for $20,275. They may want to consider buying another factory. tender, and 'of course Sound of Thunder will still provide a battleground for the Britten, VR Harley, Moto Guzzi, BMW and two-valve Ducati-powered bikes that have been the mainstream of the BEARS class to date." Sound of Thunder rules are similar to the old BEARS regulations, but with the inclusion of Japanese bikes. This means. tha t the class is open to four-strokes only, with a maximum of three cylinders (or twin-rotor rotaries), with the exception of multi-cylinder bikes fitted with four-valve desmo engines (so no Ducati superbikes). Apart from a ban on turbo-charging or super-charging, multi-cylinder engines, anything else goes, making the class a fertile ground for radical experimentation, Britten-style - but now with the added bonus of stacking up the best four-strokes from around the world with the latest twincylinder sportbikes from Japan. If you'd like to take part in the Sound of Thunder World Series, you need to register your interest with Boothby via his British fax number at 44-1926-842733. The first European round will be held in Assen, Holland, on June 1.