Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Riding in the Aprilia Cup Challenge By Paul Carruthers Photos by Henny Ray Abrams and Brian NeI80n g ~ .., 36 hat's 85 seconds? Hardly anything, unless you're talking about the final 8.5 seconds of an NCAA basketball game. Think about what you can do in 85 seconds. Ride a bull? Finish a quarter-mile on a prostock drag bike? All I had to do was make up 8.5 seconds a lap over 2.52 miles and [ would be in business. Get on the brakes a little later, get on the gas a little earlier. Piece of cake. Brake, gas, bralce, gas. Got it. Naturally, [ was dreaming. There was no way in hell I could go 8.5 seconds a lap quicker than what I was currently doing - well, unless I followed the advice of former AMA Grand National Champion Gary Nixon, one of the craziest motorcycle racers in the history of the sport. Nixon, rather matter-of-factly, told me in simple terms how to go quicker around Road Atlanta after what was my first and only qualifying session ever on a road race bike during the recent Aprilia Cup Challenge Series race. Nixon asked me how things were going. I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I wasn't setting the world on fire. Hey, Nixon, I'm barely getting my spark plugs hot. "You scaring yourself when you go into comers?" Nixon quizzed. "No,n I responded. . "Scare yourself,n he said. Alrighty then - some solid advice from a former champion. Boy; this should be easy. I won't hold any of this against Nixon. I figure he just didn't realize how easily I scare. I also figured there was a lot of scaring to be done in order to find 8.5 seconds - a whole lotta scarin'. But I'm getting ahead of myself. You see, this fear thing didn't just hit me when I first zipped up my leathers that first day at Road Atlanta. No, I'd been scared for weeks. In fact, I'd been scared since the day I reluctantly said yes to the offer from Zero Gravity's head cheese Glenn Cook and public-relations guru Brad Dixon to compete in the firs~~ver Aprilia Cup Challenge race held on these shores. I must admit, his initial offer was a little bit misleading. I went from signing up for what 1 thought would be a friendly little race against my journalistic peers to competing against some really fast racers - some of whom were 15 years old. I remember what life was like at 1-5. Needless to say, I didn't want any part of a 15-year-{)ld on a race track. As it turns out, I wasn't fooling many people with my outward macho act of trying to make them believe that I was actually looking forward to the ra.ce. On the exterior, I was a confident old r"cer read}' to do battle. On the inside, I was looking for a way out - an impossible task, because I had to be at Road Atlanta anyway in order to cover the AMA Superbike National. Therein lay some of my fears. I would not only be competing in a road race for the first time (nol many believe this, given my background, but it's true. I cross my heart and .hope to... Okay, scout's honor. I've raced motocross and dirt track, but never a road race) but I would be doing so in front of Doug Chandler, Mat MIadin~ Ben Bostrom, Miguel DuHamel, Anthony Gobert, Tom IGpp... well, you get the picture. I watch and report on the activities of these guys on a weekly basis. I know them well enough to know that they wouldn't be above making fun of me if I screwed up. After all, we make fun of them when they do. With no way out, I opted in. The next thing I know, I'm throwing my leg over the coolest little road racer on the planet and my heart is pounding so hard I was afraid the zipper would bust open on my leathers. Then I started riding. All at once, I had to learn the circuit and figure out the motorcycle (a twostroke) - all with some style in case someone I knew was watching. Tough stuff, this road racing. What I lacked in style, I definitely made up for in slowness. I knew I was going slow when I could not only recognize some faces of those standing along the pit wall, I could read their lips... "Boy, Carruthers is slow." And just in case I wasn't having a hard enough time getting up to speed, my little ApriIia wasn't cooperating. As any realtor WiI.J tell you, the three most important aspects of real estate are location, location, location. As any selfrespecting two-stroke tuner will tell you, the three most important aspects of two-stroke tuning are jetting, jetting, jetting_ And f. had a jetting problem.' In fact, the jetting on the little ApriIia RS250 was richer than Terry Vance. It was fine until it got hot; then it would barely run down Road Atlanta's long back straight. The fact that it didn't seem to do it on the front straight didn't help me much in the excuse department, and the Zero> Gravity crew sort of gave me that uh"> huh-yeah-sure-we-understand-that- , yours-is-the-only-bike-under-the awn:ing-that-doesn't-run-right look. By Friday afternoon's qualifying,. however, the bike was tuned to perfection. My trusty crew (hey, ]I; was a factory rider - well, except forthe part of having to schlep my own wheels down to Dunlop for my one free set of tires) had rejetted the bike, and it was lean and mean, crisp and responsive, reaching its top speed of 117 mph without hesitation - despite mypoor drives out of the all-important tum) seven that leads onto Road Atlanta's ultralong back straight. The bike even had numbers on it for qualifying - the number 72, chosen by yours truly for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I was later told by Larry Pegram that I was an embarrassment to his number. He was shut up pretty quickly when his coach (and mine), Kevin Schwantz, reminded him that his efforts thus far weren't much better than mine. So with the bike running to perfection, I went out for my 15-minute qualifying session and came back in with the 28th-fastest qualifying time, potting me on the inside of row seven - 8.5 seconds behind the fastest qualifier, Mike HimmeIsbach. Hey, at least there were two rows of slower guys behind me. I was a bit disappointed, having missed my goal of a 1:44 lap time by a whopping 2.5 seconds. Going faster was suddenly becoming harder than I thought. My learning curve was begin-. ning to taper off, ~d I could no longer> rip off laps two or three seconds faster than in previous sessions. I definitely needed to heed Nixon's advice - at least just a little bit. I still hadn't scared myself, and it was getting to the point where I'd have to. Obtaining my goal qf a 1:44 would' have put me on row six and a lot closer to the middle of the pack. But I took solace in the fact that had I gone just a blink of an eye quicker, I would have been ahead of the three guys who were quicker than me on row seven. You've got to look for motivation from somewhere, right? I knew that I was going faster each and every time around the track, and my lap times prov~ it. I just needed more track time. A month or two would suffice. Instead, I would have to gain my needed speed at dinner, in bed and at breakfast. All I had was a 7:30 a..m. prac-.; tice scheduled for Saturday, followed by an agOnizing 6 ",-hour wait until my , race. To pass the time, I did a lot of tallcing and a lot of listening. One of the things that surprised me most about the experience - and it really shouldn't have - was just how help people were. I had sit-down sessions

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