DIRT TRACK
''ThIs looks cool," said Honda race team manager
Gary Mathers after spying the drawing of our
VTR1000DR. " It doesn 't need tha t much fuel capacity,
but the idea is oka y. We've never even looked at that
motor In t hose (rac in g) t erms yet. All the new Y-twln
motors have th e basic capability , but one t hing that
we learned with th e RS750 is that y ou had t o run the
thing wi d!! open all the time to be good, and these
mot ors can't be run like that ri ght now. It all depends
on who gets hold of a mot or and develops it. Th is Ytw in des ig n it self will requi re a li ttl e different ch assi s
set up. I wis h that we could get a pro ject li ke this
go ing , bec ause we in the race depa rtment reall y like
dirt track. Officially, we've heard noth in g (about
Hond a getting back int o dirt trac k), but who knows?"
ri d ers Brett Landes, Will Da v is and
Kevin Athe rton test a practically stock
Honda VTR1000 at the Sacramento Mile
last September. Although the eval uat ion
of th e sligh tly reworked s tock fra me
was not all tha t favo rable, all three riders offered very positive comme nts on
the m ot or' s performance an d fut u re
po tentia l.
Tha t news was good, bu t not enough .
for us. See, w e a t Cycle News feel that
Project 2000 could offer d irt track racing
a trem end ous opportunity for revitaJiza-
Illustrations by John Keogh
t ma y be hard to believe, but the
AMA 's p ro posal to m ov e G rand
Nationa l d irt track ra cing into the
21st century by cha ng ing the equ ipment formu la to inco rporate production- based engi nes is already one yea r
do wn the road.
A lt hough m a n y of th e top teams
have not yet star ted to develop moto rcycles t ha t will meet the criteria of the
AMA' s "Project 2000" plan, some wo rk
has begun, with the first shot being fired
w hen Jim La nd e s' Tea m Un do h a d
" I'm bu ilding two bikes - a Harl ey-Dav idson and
a Suzuki TL 1000 - no matt er what they decide to
do with them," says Gary Sto lzenberg, the
owner of F&S Harl ey- Davidson, which currently
fields motorcycles fo r Grand National veteran
Steve Morehead. "Right now, my Suzuki is lust
the engine in the frame , and that's as far as I've
gone with It. If these things get hooked up on a
mile, they have t he pote nt ial to do 170 mph, so
we 've got to detune th em, make something with
8 wide powerband that can hook up and won't
be 8 light switch. It mi gh t not work, but we won't
know until we try It."
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