Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

get more familiar with the bike and do this and change this and just see what it does - just to get a better idea of what's going on with it, more than anything. We lowered the track record by a second, -nothing other than that. We changed the steering head a little bit. The bike stayed lighter in the corner. The weather didn't work with us on the second day; it sort of rained us out on the second day. We've got a test every two weeks before Daytona. We've been trying to get the Showa stuff dialed in here. At Daytona we only had the front fork, not the rear shock. At Savannah, for one day, we had the same . setup. Here we've finally got Showa at both ends. Tha I' s where we're a t right now, trying to get this dialed in and figure out what we need for this spot and that. Try some different links, just running through the normal test stuff." Russell has always been a dedicated test rider and he appeared to be riding as hard as anyone at the track, even if the times did.n't reflect it. His best was a 1:28. , about 1.6 seconds off Anthony Gobert's best. "I'm trying to push it today to see what the bike's going to do," Russell said. "Yesterday, I just kind of rode around. Today, I said I'm going to push this thing and see what it's going to do. I pushed it a little bit and some problems started to rise, and we're working on that now. I think the Showa stuff, for me, it seems a little less on the harsh side. The Ohlins stuff, they just sent their stuff in a box to these guys and they put it on and went racing. Now it's good to have. the guys who should know what they're working on. This is their stuff; they're on our team now. I think it's a positive thing. We've got some of the best stuff in the world and to have these guys working on it is good." Russell said that becau e Savannah is so flat, it wasn't a true test of the VR. That would corne here at Laguna. "The power is so linear, I'm just not sure when to pull the trigger in the corner, because the twin is a lot more tractable than the four. I haven't set the world on fire. You know it needs a little more horsepower - that wouldn't hurt." Harley-Davidson's Pascal Picotte didn't feel there was much benefit from the Savannah test, and his time at Laguna was spent struggling, he said. "At Savannah, the suspension' wasn't dialed in at all, the fuel injection wasn't right. It was good for them (Russell's crew), but not me. Here, it's about the same. Now the fuel injection is much better. The suspension is getting there, but iI's still a bit off. The valving's different and it's got less travel than the rest of the manufacturers', so we have to adapt our geometry to their shock. It's a learning process." Picotte had run a 1:28.7 on a qualifying tire at the AMA National last year, and his best, until the final minutes of the test, was a 1:29.1. Then he clicked off a 1:28.6, on a race tire - under both his qualifying mark and Russell's best. Picotte felt the test schedule was ambitious, but that the team had to get the work done between tests to make sure there was something new to try. "We need to work on horsepower. That thing is just so slow. I was up there looking at the radar limes. Ben (Bostrom) and Anthony (Gobert) were 140 mph consistently (on the Vance & Hines Ducatis). My fastest was a 134, Scott (Russell) was 132. And I was 33, 33, 32. I think Eric (Bostrom, of American Honda) was 142. So we're at least 8 mph slower from there (turn 11 to the end of the guard rail on the pit straight, a distance of less than a quarter of a mile), so that doesn't make your job easy. I know they're working on horsepower, but it's not a big thing. One or two there. We need like 20. I'm serious. It's going to be tough. There's a lot of things on that bike - it's a good bike, but you need to change so many things. Actually, the engine needs to be redesigned, the chassis needs to be redesigned. I mean, it was tough for Steve (Scheibe). That's his first baby. Compared to all those manufacturers, they've been building bikes forever. So you can't go out there and build one bike and be perfect. There's no way you can do that. He thinks he is, but he's not. I know he's learned a lot of things and I think they should put enough money somew,here, somehow and build something else to be ready in two years." Picotte understood that building a new bike would involve homologating the machine, a process which would demand the construction of 50 street-legal motorcycles, something Harley had to do to make the VR racelegal when it first appeared in 1993. At the time, there was some controversy as to whether the bikes actually existed. It was an issue that was also raised at one point when Fast By Ferracci began campaigning their big-engine 916 Ducatis. American Honda's Miguel DuHamel spectated at Laguna Seca while recovering from the bone-graft surgery he had three weeks earlier. Even though he crashed at Loudon in July, DuHamel said he waited until December to have the surgery to see if the bone would heal naturally. "Even if we would have done it right off the bat, we wouldn't have been able to race the rest of that season," DuHamel said, "and tllere was a chance that it was going to heal by itself. So instead of having another operation - a major operation, a bone graft - I figured, Let's just see if it heals by itself. And it was healing, but it was taking quite a bit of time. There's been no infection. Nothing's wrong with it. We just let it h al by itself. Now we just decided to help it along for March, so we had (he bone graft done." DuHamel said he'd be on crutches for another two weeks while the leg muscle recovers. "The doctor told me how the leg muscle's the most in1 portant thing rightllow, because the bone now is on its way. He said, 'Now you can't walk because your leg's so weak.''' As for when he'd ride again, DuHamel said, "There's a good chance I won't ride again before Daytona. I'm going to start training really hard. I'd been doing upper body and bicycling. Now I can get back to bicycling. After this operation was another trauma, so I have to go through physiotherapy. I got my range of motion back real quick. Everything's good now, so I'm going to hit the gym. At least now I've got the confidence that I'm not hurting the leg now." American Honda's race manager, Gary Mathers," said he was concerned about DuHamel's extended convalescence. "I'm really worried about it. I'm not sure we all know what's going on there. He says he's going to be ready for Daytona. It's been a long time for that injury. It's easy to speculate why it's taking so long. We have Eric (Bostrom), we've got Nicky (Hayden, of Erion'Racing), if we don't have Miguel. We'll keep going with Nicky if we can slide him in without any grief." Mathers said the plan was for Nicky Hayden to ride three to five superbike races on the Honda RC45, though he wouldn't ride at Daytona. His debut will be decided by his father, Earl Hayden. "Whenever his dad says he's ready," Mathers said. Since Hayden will compete in the 600cc Supersport and Formula Xtreme classes for Erion Racing, adding superbike duties would mean three races in a weekend, and the schedule will have to be coordinated with Kevin Erion. Unlike previous years, when macllinery had to be found for the third rider, American Honda will have three RC45 superbikes this year. Hayden will also get the chance to test the bike before racing, a program that worked well with Eric Bostrom last year. American Honda crew chief Merlyn Plumlee said every meplber of the technical team except one would be making their annual trip to Japan in early February to build the 1999 Honda RC45s. "Since our season starts earlier than World Superbike, ours are the first to go together," Plumlee said. 'We always find some problems, pieces that don't go together. We want to fix them on the spot. We just stay until they're done (about two weeks), then we come home. This year we're actually going to build three. We have some commitments for icky (Hayden)." Plumlee said they arrive to a collection of parts that they assemble. The engines have already been run, Plumlee said, and the weather prohibits them from testing. As for any improvements to the '99 model, Plumlee said "they're so tight-lipped about that. When we get there, it'll be the first time we know." For Chaparral Suzuki's Damon Buckmaster, the Laguna Seca test was yet another chance to learn one of the race tracks he'll be facing during his debut season in the United States. The Australian tested the Fast By Fermcd Ducati at Daytona at the end of the 1996 season and has tested the Chaparral Suzuki at Willow Springs. But this was his first trip to Laguna, where he tested both the nearly stock GSX-R6OO and the slightly more modified GSX-R750 Supersport bikes. Buckmaster had contracted food poisoning in Los Angeles on Tuesday, and spent most of Wednesday, the first day of the test, recovering and turning in very few laps. By Thursday he felt fine and was on the track most of the day. "1 got on the 600 today for the first time," he said. "Everything's going pretty well, 19

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