Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

(Far left) Stev.e Rapp crashed twice at the test - once on his 600 and once on his superbike. (Left) Kurtis Roberts went quick on the Erion Formula Xtreme Honda CBR9oo. Here he puts the team's CBR600 through its paces. with that cushy stock seat. We have to find what pegs to put on it - where the bars go. It's a pretty good baseline. I'm looking forward to the' race here." Oliver said he wanted to get back to the winning ways he was accustomed to when he won 20 consecutive 250cc GP races in 1996 and '97. "We've got a long way to go still. I'd probably say we were basically at ground zero at Daytona, and we were really pleased that we were fairly competitive. Here we seem to be even more competitive, which I think is partly to do with the nature of the track, which rewards handling first, light weight, braking - but also the fact that we've made some progress since Daytona. But as far as the percentage of where we're at, we're probably at 40 percent of what we can do. It's doing a little of everyt.hing better. At Daytona, I think the things we~e completely stock.' Here I think we've been able to do a little jetting to at least get them to run right on race gas and things'like that. They don't tell me everything that's going on. I say, 'This is the kind of seat I want, this is this, this is that: They're running good here." Though they hope to race the R-7 for most of the season, Oliver sti.u. tested the 1998 YZF750 Superbike at Laguna Seca. "We actually went really well this afternoon on the Superbike, too," Oliver said. "We just popped out and just went right down to 28s (a few seconds off the track record). We've actually been doing some work on the superbike, too, in case we need it. And it gives me superbike seat time to ride, even if the R-7 is going to be what I'm going to race here at Laguna. We've got way more work to do on the 600, so the focus is on that right now. It's like I get out on the superbike whenever the 600's down for more than half an hour; we'll fire off on that, because we're working on some segmen ts of that program tha t we need to improve. It's just like, they point me at one bike, I go ride it." 22 In his first time on a race bike since his horrific crash at Daytona in December, VaJ)ce & Hines Ducati's Ben Bostrom set th second-fastest time, despite considerable pain and limited use of his left hand. On the' second day of the test, Bostrom ran a string of times in the 1:27 range before the pain forced him to stop. "The bike's good," Bostrom said. "I was in so much pain, I quit after that. I started late and quit early. I didn't push at all today. I was out there running around and saw a '27.9 and said, 'That's amazing: Then I saw a 27.7 and thought; 'That's amazing, because I wasn't pushing hard the next lap: The bike's so good. I couldn't be aggressive. on the brakes- because the thumb holds on to the bar. I did four laps and I was in a bunch of pain. It was pretty miserable. I wanted to push hard, but I didn't want to crash. I've just got to ride around like I can't crash:' Though he'd been out trail-riding with his brothers, father, and Scott Summers, the multi- time GNCC and Hare Scrambles Champion, this was the first time that he'd been on a road racer since Daytona. Showing off a heavily scarred left hand, Bostrom said he lost the tendon in his left thumb, though he's been making progress in his range of motion. "After a couple of laps, I can't pull in the clutch and my elbows are pretty weak from where they got ground down a bit. It just makes it harder to brake. I can't throw the bike around good. After a couple of laps, I can't even ride it - just cruise around. I've got a mon th and a half to Daytona, so I'm pretty excited. The bike's good, the team's good. The thing's capable of going fast:' The injury has also hampered Bostrom's training regimen. He said he'd recently been to the gym twice, but can't do a push-up.. "I have one messed-up knee that hurts on this track because I'm pushing on it too hard. I can do a lot of exercise, just trying to get my muscles and join ts . working. Just from rag-dolling, I hurt a lot of the joints. And I've been trying to build the strength in them and exercise my thumb a lot. Before, I couldn't touch any of my fingers; now I can actually touch all my fingers and I can actually touch down the pinkie. I'm just trying to touch my calluses now. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there." Bostrom said that he enjoyed the trail ride, but "I was spaghetti afterwards. My thumb was in a lot of pain:' Teamline 750cc Supersport Champion Richard Alexander Jr. put the number-one Suzuki GSX-R750 through its paces while continuing to adjust to his new environment. The transplanted New Yorker, who's living with Yoshimura Suzuki's Jason Pridmore in Ventura, California, this season, moves. from the Barnett Tool & Engineering team to the new Chaparral Suzuki squad, and his first impressions are favorable. "It's awesome," Alexander said. "Kel Carruthers (the crew chief and team manager) is really good. The crew that we're hiring, and we've still got another guy to go, is going to be very sharp. The bikes are very new. The motors are basically untouched, so I still get to look forward to getting some good stuff under my feet. The suspension is new for Kel - he's never worked on bikes that are basically street. bikes. It's new to him and new for me because I've never worked with people. TIus is a whole new thing and if's awesome. Once everything'S all finalized, it's going to be sharp. We had a specific problem with the chassis that we spent the whole day tryi~g .to get fixed, and we didn't. We got Damon (Buckmaster) to go out on the bike and run it and he said, 'Yeah, there's a problem: I'm a little frustrated with myself for not being able to get it identified, but it's a learning curve. That's what's good about Damon. He's got a lot of time under his belt and he jumped on it and said, '1 think it's this' and 1 think pretty much that's what it is. At least now we can go to Phoenix hoping tha t we got that fixed. I jumped on his bike and went two seconds faster. I was struggling, doing 35s alI day just trying to sort that bike out. It didn't work. 1 jumped on his and dropped two seconds. Everything is there - all the means for a great team are there and it's going to ]:)e there. I'm sure Dave Damron, seeing what he's done with the motocross and seeing how he is at Ius business, he isn't going to have anything but something good. It's my first year on something where now 1 have people to talk to. I'm coming off an injury, too. I had shoulder surgery - left shoulder - two months ago. They had to decompress it. I J:lad bone in there and a lot of my nerves were being pinched, so basically it was causing a lot of numbness in my hand and arm last year, and I just kept it quiet from people. At the end of the year, I got it fixed. This was a test. I've got some more problems that I'm going to Dr, Ting's and get'addressed. It'll all turn around and we'll be ready for Phoenix. We've got two more weeks and we'll have better bikes under us." After impressing in every ou ting on the Honda RC45, Eric Bostrom was off the pace in Ius second ride as a full-time team member. The younger Bostrom, who hadn't raced a superbike here before, had a best lap of 1:2,9.5, well off the lead pace. "YOlj. always want to do your best and try to do your best," he said. "And then you get something like this and it's the strangest thing, because you think you're doing everything right, you're riding pretty hard, and yet there's this huge deficit you've got to make up. It's there, you know. We all know it's there, and I know I can do it. It's one of those 'setbacks and it makes your mind think, 'What'am I doing wrong?' We're chasing a bit of s,uspension, and I think in the end it kind of comes bac,!< to me. I wasn't doing my job. The 600's getting better. We're struggling a bit. We had some suspension problems and we still have a few, but I think we're going to go pretty good. In the end, we didn't go very fast on the thing because we went the wrong way on one end, but we went really the right way with the other - so we know the right way to go. When we come. back (for the April race), we're going to have a good setup for that. The superbike, it's got me bi ting my nails right now. By riding tense, I was creating problems with tlle bike. It's just one of those things. I was having tr~uble getting my mind up to speed for some reason.!1 Yoshimura Suzuki's Steve Rapp was back in the saddle after a crash at the December Daytona tire test sidelined him. "I went 'to the hospital and got an X-ray and notlung was broken," Rapp said. "But they said it was a pulled ligament in my left ankle and bruised ribs.nothing broken, but it hurt. I started ruruung last week. I'm in good shape. I couldn't run, but I did other stuff. I could swim and I could lift weights, so it wasn't like [ wasn't doing anytIling," Rapp was among the busiest riders on the first day of the fest, circulating nearly constantly on the GSX-R750 Superbike, though he did crash the GSX-R600 in turn three on his tlurd lap. Rapp did 41 laps, switched tires, then did about a dozen more. "It wasn't handling good, and we kept trying little stuff and it kept getting better and better," Rapp said of the bike that he'd only ridden twice before. "I'm surprised how much it changes for every track. We went to Willow and it was good. Then we went to Daytona and it wasn't good, and we messed with a lot of stuff. Right before I~ crashed, it started getting, good. Then we came here and it was not so good then. We're working our way back. Now it feels good again." Rapp said the problem was in turning. "It's weird, because everyone says they turn so good. Mine wasn't. There's nothing wrong with it; it's just the setup's not right. tlunk they set it up for Mladin from last year to start with, then r got to ride it and it doesn't feel good, so we end up cllanging it. Now it feels good." His test ended early on Thursday afternoon when he again crashed in turn three, this time heavily damaging all the bodywork and th'e gas tank on his superbike, though he was mostly uninjured. Rapp's Yoshimura Suzuki teammate Jason Pridmore was also making his return to riding at Laguna Seca, the first time he'd ridden since breaking Ius left wrist while racing the Vance & Hines Ducati at the 1998 season-ending race' Las Vegas. '1 broke it in like six or seven places, all in the joint, which was what really sucked," 'Pridmore said. "Riding for the first time today, it just wasn't great. It wasn't bad, either. I could rideuntil I got on the superbike; then I realized it was going to be a·little tougher. But I've got a month and a half still before Daytona, so it should be fine for that, no problem. It just gets sore, actually, under acceleration. 'You've got to kind of hold on a little bif more on the superbike. I thought it was going to hurt me a lot more under braking, but it doesn't. It hurts more under acceleration, which kind of surprised me. I'm squeezing the tank and everything trying to just keep my weight forward. It's going to take time - that's all. I'm just here to ride the bikes and get a feel for what I've got here as far as the team and everybody else. I'm not here to set the world on fire:' Pridmore said he'd been strength-training for the past two weeks. "But when you do something like what I did in the joint itself, it's almost compounded 10 times compared to like if you would just break your arm. When you smash it up as much as I did, you're kind of screwed a little. Apparently what happen is, when a joint heals, it overheals and it restricts movement and that's what I have to deal with~ right now:' The only time Pridmore had ridden the superbike before was a one-_ day test at Laguna Seca last year. "I'll know more tomorrow. I only did three laps on the superbike. I did a handful of laps on the 600. We'll get closer:' CIt

• Cover