Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

IN THE PADDOCK BY MICHAEL SCOTT oW you interpret the domination of the Hondas in the 500cc class depends mainly upon how it affects you. To those lucky enough to ride the wondrous NSR V-fours, it's a function of their own magnificent skill. That's normal racer thinking, and a forgivable conceit - without which the whole monstrous ego trip wouldn't be possible. To those struggling in vain to catch up, it's because of some myslerious (and probably rather unfair) technical leap forward. This is doubtless because of HRC's supposedly bottomless pockets, if not actu~y a pact with the devil. To those who watch, it matters neither way. The Honda riders are making a fair fist of racing it out among themselves in entertaining fashion, while the increasingly desperate excuses and gyrations of the remainder are amusing as well. It was Kenny Roberts who publicly propounded the Giant Leap theory. His little Modenas triple is, like the Aprilia and Honda V-twins, based around the notion that a lighter bike with more closely matched tire sizes front and rear can go faster midcorner than a V-four with its necessarily massive rear foot- H 30 YEARS AGO... JUNE 1, 1967 he AMA sent CN a story about the responsibilities of being a qua Ii ty flagman at races. The final rule states: Remember that if you leave your post or permit your atten tion to wander, racers may be crippled or killed because of it...Husky's J.N. 'Roberts won the Bartsow MC Hare Scrambles in California. Jack Morgan won the Trailbike class on a Hodaka ... BSA's Don Haaby won the Ascot 15-lap Flat Track in California over BSA-mounted Sammy Tanner and Harley's Mel Lacher. Jimmy Odom won the 10-lap Amateur final...Greevesmounted Bob Belt won the 250cc Expert class at the Simi Valley MC California State Championship European Hare Scrambles. Triumph-mounted Jack Byers won the Open and 500cc Expert class, Howard Beach won the Open and SOOcc Amateur class and AI Baker won the Open and 500cc Novice class...Ron Grant took his BSA to the win in the 500cc class and followed it up with wins in the 250 and 350cc .classes at an ACA T print. At Jerez, his telemetry told him that Jean-Michel Bayle was adding some 6 mph.to some corners compared to his Yamaha last year. But the Hondas, he said, were going around the corners faster still. "Clearly, Honda has made a leap over the winter," he said. The stopwatches did not necessarily reflect this. Pole time this year was only slightly faster than last; Kevin Schwantz's lap record - set in 1994 on a Suzuki - was not broken: Roberts, a man driven by vaulting ambition and a great off-the-cuff selfcontradictor, would probably take a more balanced view if he were on the outside looking in. The Modenas is only three races old, dammit, and already spasmodically threatening. Give it a bit of time. Like maybe a year. Over at Yamaha, at least the part of it occupied by team owner Wayne Rainey, the view was slightly different. Rainey blames the quality of riders, something which, as one of the best ever, he is rather prone to do anyway. His own top man Norick Abe is a bit erratic at the best of times; while his rookie Sete Gibernau is actually doing rather well. And Luca Cadalora, heading the other team? Wayne's never had much time for him anyway. Suzuki's doldrums are self-induced. But it's simply not credible that their engineering has regressed so much as to put Daryl Beattie's best race lap more than 2.5-seconds off Schwantz's record. Especially given the steady improvement since then in tires. It's not bikes that win races anyway. It's bikes-and-riders, in a genuinely symbiotic man/machine relationship. (or "interface," if you must, - though the seating position· rather suggests "interbottom.") Whatever might be right (or at least not that wrong) about the Suzuki is not obvious to its riders Beattie and Peter Goddard. Again, an outsider's view is required. Goddard last rode a full GP season in 1992, while Beattie is coming back after effectively a full year out of the fray. Again, give it sqme time be{ore pronouncing the end of play. . So what is it about the Honda that gives it such a good interbottom? Simple. It's because the bike's good in the sense that it is clearly easy to ride close to its considerable limits. That's the great leap, and it hasn't suddenly National Road Race at Riverside International Raceway in California. ing toward his sixth 500cc World MX Championship, won the season opener in Austria. Suzuki teammate GerrH Wolsink finished second and Graham Noyce took his Maico to third overall...The Roger DeCoster story by 20 YEARS AGO... John Huetter continued in CN with Part MAY 25, 19n III: The problems of motocross politics, utting in a no money, and a flaming bid for his lemper...Kenny Roberts played the capthird con- 1J:1:"~r",.~t;a:in'spart as the American secutive AMA team of Steve Baker, 250c National Pat Hennen, Dave Motocross title, Aldana, Skip AskSuzuki's Tony land and Ron Pierce DiStefano took toppled Great Britain the overall win at the in the seventh annual Lake Sugar Tree National in Trans Atlantic Trophy Virginia, moving him into a series in England. tie with Team Honda's Marty Smith for the points lead. Kawasaki's Jimmy 10 YEARS AGO... Weinert finished second MAY 27, 1987 and Smith got third. Arlo Englund won the 125cc am Honda;s Support class ...HarleyRick Johnson Davidson-mounted Gary won the AMA 250cc National Scott won the San Jose Mile in California, with a last-lap pass on Steve Motocross in Southwick, Massachusetts, with a 2-2 score over Suzuki's Bob HanEklund. Corky Keener finished third. nah (4-1) and Johnny O'Mara (3-4). Scott Drake won the Trophy race...Suzuki's Roger DeCoster, workHonda's Micky Dymond won the 125cc P l1 happened this year either. It's been coming steadily throughou t the' NSR's long 14-year life, and it reflects well not only on the ability of HRC's engineers to learn (eventually), but also on the development skills of Michael Doohan and his crew, who have brought the bike to its present condition. There's something else as well, clearly revealed only this year with Doohan's switch back to the old-style 180-degree Screamer engine. In the first three rounds, it showed no great advantage or otherwise compared with the Big Bang. Doohan did win the first two convincingly, but then he often used to do the same thing when he was using the same engine as his rivals. And though. mechanical trouble got in the way the third time ou t, practice had been very evenly matched between him and his Big-Bang Honda colleagues, and it was actually Carlos "Chubby" Checa who set the best lap of the weekend, well inside the record, but invalid because it was in "untimed" morning practice. Doohan's crew chief Jeremy Burgess is in no doubt that the arrival of the Big Bang in 1992 somewhat masked the real reason for the current Honda's superiority. "It wasn't just the crank timing that Honda changed with that engine..!' Burgess said. "It was the whole thing the cylinders, the porting, the electronics. What we're using now has the same firing interval as the old '91 engine, but that's the only real similarity." Aha. So the user-friendliness carne from something more than just Big Banging it. And the result is a machine that takes V-four rookies Nobuatsu Aoki 'and Tadayuki Okada to front-row starts (three poles in three races for the latter) and strong finishes. So can Honda be beaten? Of course it can. But before that happens, the rivals are going to have to mesh with their own bikes in the same confidenceinducing way. They're going to have to believe they can do it. Sometimes that's the hardest part of racing. (''N . class, followed 'by Eric Kehoe and Rick Ryan ...Team Honda's Wayne Rainey won round two of the AMA Superbike Series and round three of the Camel Pro Series at Road Atlanta in Georgia after a bitter battle with Team Yoshimura Suzuki's Kevin Schwantz. Team Honda's Bubba Schobert finished third:..CN took the first detailed look at Honda's radical NR750 which featured a liquid-cooled, DOHC, 32-valve, 749.8cc motor with oval pistons ~rni1'::'1i"!~,.. __ and a claimed horsepower rating of 150 horsepower ... KTM's Kevin Hines won the Burr Oak AMA National Enduro in Roselawn, Indiana, over Husqvarna's Dave Bertram and Kawasaki's Jeff Fredette in third ...Mike Harth and Peter Carroll took their Team Suzuki Endurance GSXRll00 the win at round four of the WERA/EBC National Endurance Series. ~

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