Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

said. "His bike was really fast, and I don't know how they can make the Yamaha that fast after so many years. It's slow everywhere else, bu t 1'm not going to go there more than tha t. I thought maybe I'd just mess with his mind and try to break from him a bit and push it real hard. I was really good going through the chicane the whole week, really braking deep. Same thing for my 600, maybe a little bit deeper. And that time I weat.in there aad for some reason I just got in there a little too hot. The tires were a little worn and stuff like that. Basically, the biggest problem of my crash there is tha t I made a mistake." SPEED What Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin thinks you need most to win Daytona is "a fast motorcycle. 1£ you've got one, then it makes everything else a lot easier. You don't have to worry about going stupid in the infield, because you're going to make up for it around here. Aad to do 200 miles, if you've got power on everyone down the straights, then it's going to make it a hell of a lot easier come the end of the race. The tires are going to be better, everything's going to be better." MIadin finished fourth last year, even though he was fast through the infield. During the Dunlop tire tests in August of 1998, Mladin's team was doing split times for him and Ben Bostrom, then on the American Honda RC45. "On that banking over there (the West Banking), from the time we hit the top of the banking to the time we got on the brakes for the chicane, he had four-tenths of a second on me," MIadin explained. "And from the time we hit the top of the banking up there (exiting the chicane) to the start-finish line, he had six-tenths of second, so there's one second on the banking. There's nothing I can do about that. All I can do is tuck in. On the infield we had two-tenths on him, and then through the chicane we had three-tenths on him, so he ended up half a second quicker than us. The bike seems pretty fast this weekend (during the December, 1998 tire test), which is strange because nothing's different in the engine at all compared to what we had at the race. Why it's like that, I couldn't tell you. 1 think come March, if we can get the (fuel) injection working and stuff, we're just going to have a bit more acceleration; it should be able to pull us up there a bit more and get the momentum gOing." TIRES "Last year at the start of the race, we kind of had a funny rear tire; then the Deytona Short Track Pick 'em I t would appear that two schools of thought have emerged in. the past few years. regarding t~e Daytona Short Track, WIth both SIdes offenng compelllOg arguments to justify their philosophy as the right one. Take the race itself. There are those, like Will Davis, who hold the event sacred. Upon winning the 1996 edition of the event, the overjoyed North Carolinian proclaimed his feelings about the event. "Daytona is all I've ever wanted to win..." Davis said after winning the event. "Growin' up in my house, Daytona is all I ever heard about from my dad." Of course, the other camp, including nine-time AMA Grand National Series Champion and - yes - 1998 Daytona Short Track winner Scott Parker, don't think quite as much of the quartermile at Larry Kelly Field. "Daytona doesn't mean that much to the championship," Parker has been heard to say. "Sure, it would be great to win it, but if Daytona was that important, then the guy who won Daytona would be the guy who won the championship." Need another example? Let's jump from the significance of the race to the significance of the racer. "People say that this place is a crap shoot," said 1997 winner Terry Poovey while standing atop a Grand National victory podium for the first time in 10 years. "I don't believe that. next two were pr~tty good," recalls last year's runner-up, Muzzy Kawasaki's Doug Chandler. "What we gave him (Russell) at the start was too much to make up. I closed up a bit, but it was kind of bad luck as far as not having three good ones. I had to accept it. We beat everyone VIle really needed to beat and got out of there with acceptable points." Mladin says that tire management isn't "a problem anymore; unless you just totally, absolutely fry the tire, it's really not a problem. I'm not too bad on tires like I was a cou pIe of years ago. I rarely spin the rear tire now. I try very hard not to spin. As soon as I feel it coming out a little bit, I try to compensa te for it. 1don't just let it hang and just burn it anymore, like a lot of people do. I try not to do that - you're just not going forward, you're going sideways." Vance & Hines Ducati's Anthony Gobert, who ran into overheating problems on his way to eighth last year, disagrees. "Yeah, you have to manage them quite a bit," the Australian said. "They only last like two laps with grip and then after that it's just sideways everywhere. So you've got to be careful not to give it too much throttle. You've just got to keep it at a constant spin and not really burn it." There's guys who go fast here, and there's guys who don't" Contrast those sentiments with those of two-time winner Chris Carr. "I thinlc; if there's any place on the circuit that you're going to find a first-time winner, then it's going to be at Daytona," Carr said. "You look at guys like Terry Poovey and Will Davis; they're two of the best short trackers ever, and they've only got one win each there. Rich King is a really good short tracker, and he's ;never won there." The truth is that they are all correct. The Daytona Short Track is the most important 25 meaningless laps in dirt track racing. It is the only dirt track event on the circuit that pits the cream of the crop of short trackers against young hopefuls, shouldabeens and never-weres and gives all of them a truly equal chance of winning. Top riders such as Corbin Racing's Rich King go against young. hotshots such as Coziahr Harley-David'son's Johnny Murphree. Former winners such as Carr, Poovey, Davis and Parker battle tooth and nail with longshots such as John Nickens III, Paul Iwanaga or Dan Butler. You will find capable riders such as Mike Hacker and Kenny Coolbeth, who haven't won anything, mixing it up with Jay Springsteen, who hasn't won anything in a while. . What it all comes down to is that the Daytona Short Track is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, surrounded by a riddle, and the only way to be sure of who will win in 1999 is wait until the checkered flag falls. Your guess is as good as ours. . Scott Rousseau Aaron Yates, who rode the Yoshimura Suzuki last year, will be on a Muzzy Kawasaki this time around. "The Suzuki - we always suffered a bit with traction, and you know how Daytona is, and it just makes it that much worse," Yates said. "I'm really happy where I'm at now. It (the ZX-7) has been there. Just riding it, I can see why." . .. SETUP According to Chandler, you need to "have a bike set up where you can keep your lap times relatively the same from your out lap to your last one. A lot of guys, when the tires are good, they can go okay for five or six laps, but once the tires drop off it's hard to do the lap times. What I try to work on is consistent lap times. In 1997 I wasn't comfortable running Russell's pace." Ben BOstrom, who rode the American Honda RC45 last year but moves to the Vance & Hines Ducati for 1999, says that he likes "to get through the chicane pretty quick, and I like it to steer. At Daytona, it's really easy to crash on the front end. As long as my bike steers, it suspends in the clucane - that's all you can do. And it can't wobble on the banking." The first time out on the Ducati during the winter tire tests, Bostrom remembers that he "couldn't even go half-throttle around the banking or down the straightaway, the thing would wobble so bad. It was crazy." Working with Ohlin's Jon Cornwell, Bostrom beat the problem. MIadin said that he was having trou- ' ble getting out of the chicane and onto the East Banking and "with initial grip in the slower corners. So coming out of the horseshoes, especially, we're struggling with - as soon as you touch the throttle, it's not a confident feeling there; it's a bit wavy. You're sort of compensating for it, so I'm squaring all the corners off, just trying to get in and turn it and get out. That's not a good way to be going, especially in a long race like this. You just try to keep as much flow as possible here." Gobert says he tries to set his Ducati up for the climbs onto the banking. "On the Kawasaki, it used to be really bad," Gobert said. "You could never get on the banking. Especially as soon as the tire wore down, it would just spin. The Duci'Jti does it a bit - not as bad, luckily. But that's the main thing: just trying to make the thing keep going forward instead of washing off speed when it's sort of wallowing." DuHamel agrees with the others. "I would think the most important place would be getting on the' banking, 17

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