Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

fairly smooth. Due to the lack of time, we haven't been able to build any 600 engines - we're still on the standard one. Obviously, we're down on speed a bit. And we did a fairly respectable time for what we've got and the chassis is working good for the horsepower we've got. The 600 is good and the 750 is working very well- no problems at all." As for the II-turn track, Buckrriaster said: "I like it. That's one of the things yesterday - even though I was really a'bit sick, I wanted to try to get some laps in and get a map of the place in my head, sleep on it a night, then come in and get dialed straight into the place. I was pretty good. I was pretty' pleased with that, which is probably a good sign for the year to come. I've got a lot of circuits to learn." Buckmaster felt thaf Laguna Seca was an easy track to learn. Erion Racing's Nicky Hayden got his first taste of a big bike when he rode the Honda CBR900 RR at Laguna Seca, and he was impressed. "It's pretty cool as far as handling and stuH," he said. "It was really good. It's got a lot of power. I actually was surprised it was a little easier to turn and I thought it would feel a lot heavier, so I really liked it. But once you got going and when you really got to find time, it's hard to go fast on them. It's pretty impressive. It just shows you how good (Doug) Chandler and (Mat) Mladin and (Anthony) Gobert, who ride them week in and week out - it makes you respect those guys more. Ws not nearly as forgiving. You can't stab the throttle like you do on the 600. It's real easy to catch you out." Hay.den said the team made minor improvements to the Honda CBR600 that he'd tested at Daytona. Hayden will race the 600cc Supersport and Formula Xtreme classes alongside Kurtis Roberts on the Erion team this year. At the end of the test, Hayden fell in with a group of riders who were just behind the top two Yamahas in the 600cc class, Rich Oliver and his brother Tommy Hayden. Nicky's time was a 1:31.5, with Muzzy Kawasaki's Aaron Yates just a tick behind, followed by Yoshimura Suzuki's Steve Rapp at 1:31.54. • 8! 20 Kurtis Roberts, Hayden's Erion Racing teammate, also got on the Formula Xtreme Honda CBR900RR for .the first time at Laguna and was also impressed. "It's got a lot of horsepower," Roberts said. '1t seems to turn in good right now and it handles good, but we're not getting the thing to work for me yet. It's kind of unridable exiting the corners right now. We're not too far off. We did a 30.5 this morning without running too many laps, so I think we can get in the 29s and maybe 28s today. I was really at home with it right out of the pits. It realIy feels good to me straight away. As soon as we can get the thing to work a little bit better, I think we'll be good. The 600, since this is a real race track, we're kind of struggling because it's so new. We didn't get too many laps in yesterday. And I had a lot of other problems with shields yesterday because it was so cold. Today I did low 32s, real low - almost 31s. We're having some front-end problems right now. The thing's lighter, so it helps. The thing's fast, so I think once we get the cha tter and the thing to work better, we'll be fine." Roberts's best time on the 900 was a 1:29.8, just ahead of Hayden's best of 1:30.6. Roberts turned the time on the engine that he used for the entire Daytona test as well as here. "The motor's gone," he said. "Once a lap, it'd find neutral." Muzzy Kawasaki's Doug Chandler said there were anum ber of issues which needed to be resolved before he commi'tted to fulfilling the final year of his two-year contract with Kawasaki. One was that he didn't want to race the 600cc Supersport class, and they agreed that he wouldn't have to. "We had differences and it didn't seem like anything was going to happen," Chandler said. "I still enjoy racing, but that's what's keeping me there. As long as I still get out there and have fun, 1 want to do it because it's enjoyable. I feel the minute I lose that, well, that's when it's time to pack it in. It's just ha ving trouble getting what you want. It was one of those deals where, 'Shoot, I don't really need to do this. If I can't get what I want and enjoy and feel like we have a good chance, then why bother?' That's kind of how it all came about. It was silly to have to take it that far (missing the Daytona test), but in the end everything turned out fine. We got what we wanted and now it's time to see if we can go out and win another championship." Chandler said the problems began surfacing midyear in 1998. Though he wouldn't elaborate, he was known to have been incensed 'when his right handlebar broke off entering the Corkscrew during the Laguna Seca World Superbike race. Because he had no brakes, Chandler rammed fellow Kawasaki rider Akira Yanagawa from behind, sending him to the hospital. "Midyear, I could see a few things and it was like, 'Okay, we'll finish the year out, but then we got to have a sit-down and try to get some things changed for the coming year: And nothing seemed to really come of that. I thought, 'We've got to do something or this ain't going to work: and that's how everything got started." Chandler said that when·his longtime crew chief Gary Medley left the Muzzy team, it "was a tough deal because, to me, he was the whole backbone of this team. It's a bad deal to lose him, but, in a way, you've got to try to make it look positive. I'm thinking we've got an old guy back (Rick Johnson) who's very compet~nt as far as an engine builder, and a couple of new guys who seem very willing to listen and learn. I think it might give us a shot in the arm, a bit more en thusiasm instead of the same old guy, same old routine. Hopefully, we'll have a bit of a spark out there and try to go good." When it appeared that Chandler might not be.back with the Muzzy team, he had his manager, Gary Howard, contact other teams to judge interest. The most serious among them was Eraldo Ferracci of the Fast By Ferracci team. "There was talk, but, I don't know, I guess if everything else fell through, that was a pretty good possibility," Chandler said. "At the time, when we 'had trouble here, I just kind of said, 'I'm just going to quit, then.' Then you start thinking about it and it's like, 'Well, I'm not really ready to do that yet. It's still fun, I want to do it. I still feel I've got a couple of good years.' So Gary kind of checked around and the Ferracci deal was a possibility 'for sure." Ducati's World Superbike team manager, Davide Tardozzi, repeatedly phoned Chandler to express his interest. One large stumbling block was money. Ferracci didn't have the resources to approach Chandler's curren t salary. The last time Chandler rode a race bike was at the season-ending event at Las Vegas, as he had skipped the December tire test at Daytona test to work out his contract problems. "1 thought I went pretty good," he said. ''I'm not silly off the pace, just kind of right in there with Mat (Mladin). That's a good place to be to get started again." Chandler's best was a 1:27.70, just a tick behind Yoshimura Suzuki's MatMladin's 1:27.69, though, since the times were all hand-clocked,-,the difference could be attributed to human error. ''We really hadn't anything come to try yet, so we were just trying to work with what we had to make it better. I think we made a little bit of progress. We had a few little things. We had a new shock; nothing substantial. Our race times were 27s. In April (at the AMA race), we were faster than we were in the World Superbike." Chandler said he didn't expect to get new ZX-7s for 1999. ''We'll just get parts and pieces. Hopefully by Willow (a test in early February) we'll have some new pieces. I don't think we'U have it by Phoenix (a two-day test, January 27-28). I mean, right now we're not too far off." Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin, whose 1:25.600 qualifying mark from the April running of the AMA Superbike National was never challenged, was working out the bugs on a machine only recently delivered. "We just had a brand-new motorbike, with all the fuel injection, a '99 chassis, and just everything was brand-spanking-new," he said. "Everything felt really bad. When we first started yesterday after lunch, we were on the carbureted bike, set up just like we raced it. I did a few laps and it felt really good. I got on the other bike, and it's a new bike and just getting everything bedded in. We had a coUple of niggling problems with the injection and stuff. We got them sorted out by lunch' time today. We tried some new forks, '99 stuff, and they were heaps better. I picked up time right away. Other than' that, not too much. The injection worked good. As far as horsepower figures, we haven't got any more than the carburetors, but the power delivery seems smoother and just a little more ridable. I think it's probably going to be easier to ride through a race, as it is now." Mladin put little time in on his GSX-R600. He did six or seven laps, was down to 1:31.7, and parked it. "That's all everyone else was doing:'he said. One factor that may have held' riders back was the condition of the track. "I don't know, I expected everyone to go faster than they were going," Mladin said. "I think I could've gone faster on the 600 if I wanted to play on it a little bit. The track must have been a bit slippery, I think. When we were here for the AMA test, we did a bunch of high sixes, sixseven. A lot of sixes, a lot of sevens. Now we were really a second off what we did then." An Indy Lites team tested at Laguna Seca on Tu~sday, the day before the motorcycle test, and a num-

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