Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Aaron Slight $ By Henny Ray Abrams hen all of the preseason testing was done, after he'd logged innumerable laps on four continents, Aaron Slight felt pretty good. The 33-year-old New Zealander's times had improved at a number of tracks, and refinements to the Castrol Honda RC45 had made it a better overall motorcycle. In his sixth year on the Honda team, the rider with the consistently eclectic hairdos felt that this season he had as good a chance as ever to W ,.; i 40 win the title which has so narrowly eluded him far too often. Then came the first race, and reality hit hard. At the first leg of the opening round in Kyalami, Sou th Africa; the Ducatis of Carl Fogarty and Troy Corser made a mockery of the class, finishing one-two in the first race, with Slight displacing Corser for second in race two. At the next round in Phillip Island, Australia, it got worse. Homeboy Corser did the double, Fogarty was the only rider who could put up a semblance of resistance, and the rest of the field was at least 15 seconds behind in both legs. For Slight, who's been battling the dominant V-twins all his superbike career, it was too much. ''I'm fed up with making the Ducati riders look good," Slight said after his second drubbing in a row, fourths in both races at Phillip Island just behind teammate Colin Edwards II. Slight spent six laps trying to hang on to Corser in the first race. After losing the front going over the brow of Lukey Heights; he thought better of it and backed off. "I don't disrni~s that Ducati has good riders, but their World Superbike achievements have all come on Ducatis, so there's a gray area there. I'd . just like to see everyone equal, and at the moment we are not. If the argument is that Troy and Carl are better riders than me, Colin and (Noriyuki) Haga, then so be it, but they are not one second a lap better than all three of us. I reckon Ducati must be a bit embarrassed about this. At the end of the day, it's the cc issue that matters, and right now the difference is the equivalent of racing a (Honda) CBR600 in a superbike race and expecting to beat all of the 750s. The gap is too great, and we need some action from the FIM and the championship promoters. That first race in Phillip Island had a great dice for third place; superbike used to be about battles like that, but for the lead. If you need proof of the Ducati advantage, look at (Pier-Francesco) Chili: five wins last year on a Ducati; where's he finishing now he's on a four-cylinder?" It will get worse before it gets better. Yamaha's Noriyuki Haga won both races at Donington Park last year, but that was on Dunlops, and he'll likely not be the hero on Michelins when they arrive' for the next World Superbike round this year. Corser could win both races. The next race at Albacete shoiild also favor the. Italian V-twins. Even for Ducati fans, that sort of dominance isn't good for the show, as the television coverage at Phillip Island showed. The battle for third at Phillip Island was compelling - four riders fighting over the final podium spot with less than a second covering all four at the line - and that's what the cameras focused on. The organizers of the World Superbike series have taken note. The weekend after Philli p Island, they were meant to meet with the FIM at the Japanese Grand Prix in Motegi to discuss changes. The downtrodden teams are skeptical. Unless there's a straight-. displacement formula, equal for all bikes, with a weight break for twins and three-cylinders, it will be viewed as nothing but window dressing. Compounding the problem is that this year the Ducatis are not only fast but also reliable. The beefed-up race department has been working nonstop to keep fresh Ducati engines supplied to all of their teams. The rumor floating around the World Superbike pits is that they're racing the 1998 machinery and that the 1999 bikes they've tested are about a second per lap faster. Wha t Slight has said is tha t the Ducatis roll through the corners a lot better than they have in the past. Fogarty has said that the Hondas are getting in his way in the corners. He also said that if Castrol Honda wants to win the title, it should rehire John Kocinski, the rider who gave Honda its only superbike title in 1997. Slight rode alongside Kocinski in 1997, one of several teammates he's had during his tenure at Castrol Honda. Kocinski proved the bike was good enough to win, but Slight was third. It was the same position he took when he raced on th~ Muzzy Kawasaki team in 1993, the year Scott Russell won his one and only World Superbike title. Since 1993, the only World Superbike rider more consistent than Slight is Carl Fogarty, the Briton who's won three titles. Slight's come close, finishing second in 1996 and again last year, a season where he carded five race wins, the most of his career. He's been third three other times. And he's won the prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours three times. None of which matters to him as

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