Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

American Express BYKENNY ROBERTS JR. alencia, Phillip Islan d , and Welkom proved to be the thr ee races where tires were the most crucial, and for comp letely differ ent reasons . . In Valen cia, the weathe r was unsettled . It had rained in the morning and the way the skies looked we thou gh t it m ig ht rain again, or it migh t n ot , so choosin g th e right tire for the circu mstances was essential. It was more of a champions hip race beca use we had to do what Alex (Criville) did, and he went w it h in ter medi a tes, so we wen t with inte rmedia tes.' T here wasn't a lot of discussion about that. I honestly didn' t th in k it wa s even in termed iat e wea ther, because it looked like it w as go ing to ra in again . I think that w e mad e th e right cho ice at the tim e, as far as what the skies were doin g. It' s one of those things wher e so me rid er s, the ones who went with slicks - inclu d ing Red Bull guys (Regis ) Laconi and (Ga rry) McCoy - I d on ' t kn ow if th ey were taking so mu ch of a gam ble as far as having mor e fait h in th eir choice. It p aid off when they finishe d first and third, but it easily could have gone the othe r way. Normall y I'm not happy with second place, but that's the best we could hope for on that day, and I ou t in to th e cham pion sh ip lead . Valencia was a race wh ere we knew wh at the other gu ys were usin g because you could see it on the grid . Sometimes before a race yo u hear what other people are using, but it doesn't mean a lot. The bikes ar e so different. If you take the same bike and put a different suspension setting on it, the tires could end u p running at 10 degrees differen t fro m each other . There are so man y va riables in the who le situation, it's im possible to tell. Even if vou took the same bik e and put tw o different riders on it, the tem perature of the .tire wo uld be to tally differe nt. Phillip Island was totally d iffe re n t. They'd resurfaced it over the winter, but we' d alr ead y run tw o IRTA tests, and we never had any tire troubles then. In qualifying, we hit a se tup combination th a t wo rked so ea rly th a t we V we re able to test tires. It's not norm al for us to hit a combination so early. Warren (Willi ng) a nd Bob (Toomey) an d . th e g uys jus t go t th e Su zuki se tup how I n eed ed it, a nd we jus t ki nd of started testin g tires. Our lap times were quick so ea rly, that we had a gap on the field and we w er e ab le test stuff until they caught up. Satu rday mo rning wechose the race ti re. I was comforta ble, we just kept thro wing it in, just kept putting laps on it, and we were on the provisiona l pole by a comfortable margin. In prac tice and qualifying, we usuall y don't put more than 10 consecutive laps on anyone tire. So normally we go in to the ra ce with less than 10 laps on a race tire. Michelin had said that basica lly you d on 't know what the tire's going to do in a race situation there. Phillip Island is one of thos e places that has a lot of lon g corne rs. Whether I was half-a-second-alap quicker or sometimes a second-a -lap quicker tha n th e others, th at was m y pa ce, pushing it 100 percen t. It' s not like I ha d a ra ce plan to go out and pull away. It was just that I was going to rid e my bike to 100 per cent. If that pulled me away fr om ev erybod y , it pulled m e away , but if it d idn't, I'd race from the front and do that. I didn't put any extra effort into pulling away. I just rod e the bike 100 percen t. I rod e flat out right up until the tire went bad , when w e had abou t a s ixsecond lead w ith less than five laps to go . We've see n M ick (Do o h a n) win races by 10 seco nds all th e time. The tire s are fully capable of winning rac es by double d igit s. Now, if we picked the w rong tir e, we picked th e wrong tire. But we had n o ind icatio n tha t we were pic kin g the w rong tire. It's no t like we were sit ting around goi ng, "Well, th is tir e ' s goi ng to b low up o r it has a cha nce of bl o win g up ." It w a s li ke , " We ll, th is t ir e co u ld go o ff or i t cou ld n' t go off," but that's no t uncomm o n . We'd put 20 la ps o n it, so it seemed pretty safe. We ' ve also u sed tha t tir e a t ot he r races. It w as just th e type of situ a tion that we were in . We didn' t th ink th at we a ctually had a problem, because we had harder ti res th at we cou ld u s e w it h ju s t as good lap times. But we didn't th ink the re wa s a tire dram a until th e tire brok e, an d the n it was like , d amn. We co uld 've run a hard er one and it woul d have bee n fine. We just chose that one because it was the most consis ten t of all of them . . We put 20 la ps on one in practice. It looked fine. We have fou r or five fronts and rears to choose from . I wasn't the on ly one who had problems. So me of t h e Ho n da g uys ha d problem s too , bu t their tires didn' t do what mine did. Mine los t a big chunk their s so rt of blistered . Afterward we heard that some of the Ho nda tires were run nin g wa y too hot. I d on 't really kno w wh y, but the tires seemed to run coo le r on the Yarnahas, a bit hotter on our bike, and the hottest on the Hondas , But, like I sa id earlier, any suspension ad jus tmen t even by a coupl e of millimeters thi s wa y and that can make a tire run hott er. Th e Honda gu ys that didn't u se it, they have to be maybe m ore critical of what tires they pick. Our bike seems to be a little bit easier on tires, ma ybe it's just because of the horsepower differ ence. When the tire blew in the race, I'd never had one like that before and I'd never experienced an ything like that. It w a s totall y new for m e . We w eren 't w orried a b ou t ha ving a prob lem . If . somebody would have said, "This tire is not going to last the race, typically, is not going to last th e race," we could have run something else and had just as big a lead. It was no t like we were making or breaking ou r race w ith a tire. We could have picked a harder one, we just didn't kn ow . In Sou th Af rica I u se d a 16.5 rear tire in the morning - it w as my quickest tire in qualifying - and it see me d fine . The n came the race, and it sta rted tea ring from the left s ide right fr om th e start. I have no idea why. I ran off the t rac k on the fou rth lap , a n d foun d . myself back among the privat eers and V-twins d own th e back of th e poi nts. . And I was hold ing them up - th ey were in v o lv e d in their -own b att le , a n d I d idn' t want to get in their w ay. I w as rea ll y s tr ugg li ng and goi ng s lower every la p, so I pu lled in to the pits and changed th e tire, so we cou ld a t lea st ge t a han dl e on what was happening. So this is the mistake I ma de that led to m y 22nd -place finis h , When a ti re combina tio n does n ' t wo rk, like the situation in Sou th Africa , it is very d ifficult to load the suspension of the m otorcycl e going in to co rners , w hich me ans th e' a tt it u de of the bike b e com e s n on r e s p o n s ive . Th is is extremely difficult when you're on a one-lin e, slippery racetrack, making a lot of mistakes, so on ce I pitted and put on the J7-inch rea r tire, the bike immedia tely responded better , and the suspension loads cam e back to normal, and I went one to two seconds quicker at the end .of the race than any time before on the 16.5. I chose the 16.5 rather than th e 17 because there was no ques tion of tire chunking, bu t, in all hon est y, 1 probably overcompensated from th e Phillip Island r ac e . The h arder tire th at I could' ve used at Phillip Island was the tir e that fini sh ed first, second and third a t South Africa, and we used that tire in qu alifying . And , it w orked w ell for us , but that's where the overcompensation came in . The 16.5-inch wheel has a lon ger sidewall and smaller rim, even though the diamet er of th e tire is the sam e . If you've go t mo re s idewall, you' ve got more tire contact patch to heat up, so you don't he at up so much of the tire in one area - and there's less cha nce o f fail u re . Eve n tho ugh it doesn 't necessarily make sense, in one importa n t as pect the 17 is a sma ller tire . . Someone asked me abou t tire ma n- . age me nt. I d on't worry abou t tire manag emen t. The tir es are mad e to last 45 minutes. I've heard some rid ers say they planned to make a n attack in the latter part of the race, once the tires we nt off. Nowadays, if yo u r bike' s se t up rig h t, yo u ca rry yo u r la p times through th e whole race. . CN Looking Bac k 30 Y AR E SAGO... OCTOBER 28,1969 20 Y AR E SAGO ... OCTOBE R24,1 999 1 E SAGO... 0Y AR OCTOBE R18,1989 ver 10,500 fans inv aded . the motocross circuit in Pepperell , Ma s s a chu sett s to ca tch th e fir st ro u nd of the Inter-Am Mot ocross Ser ie s, which brought Europe's best motocrosser s to Amer ica n turf. Arne Kring (H u s ) w on th e fi rs t hea t race and t hen w e nt on to win the ove ra ll. Barry Higgins (C Z ) wa s th e fir st Am erican finisher, placin g fif th o verall.. . Te d Pen to n penned a feature story entitled Im pressions of the Six Da ys, which was basically a vivid ly descriptive letter of the trials and tribulations en countered at the (SOT in Ga rmisch, Germany... Scottish speedway ace Bert Harkins paid a visit to the Orange County Fairgrou n ds in Costa Mesa, Californ ia . America n s De Wayne Keeter and St eve Bast both had match races with H ar kins, and bo th won on their home turf, but Harkins earne d the en thusiastic approval of ihe California crowd nonetheless. ik e Be ll (Yam) ou tra n Su zuki rid ers Da rre ll Sh ultz and Ke nt Howerton to wi n the fourth round o f th e Tran s- USA Se r ies at Road Atla n ta in Braselto n, Georgia . Bell wo n via 1-2 sco res ... Jim Ahrens u s ed a 1450 cc h o rs ep ower, Kr e idl er e ngi ne to " po we r" hi s w a y to five class speed records at theSl st Annual Bonneville Speed Week on th e fa bled salt flats in Utah . Ahrens ' fa ste st speed was 101.277, whi ch came in the APS-AG-50 class. The old record was 98.000 mph. On the ot her end of the spectrum, Tom Elrdo used a twice-motor ed Kawasaki to joi n the "200 MPH Club" with a pass of 200 .022 mph... Mike Han non (Kaw) used a factory-b a cked KDX400 to win the Cal Sta te 100 d esert race in Lucerne Valley ... "New generation bike racer" Terry Vance was interviewed. e a m It aly w as on ce again victorious at the ISDE. This time it was a t th e 64 th runnin g o f th e event in Waldurn, We st Ger ma ny. Team USA fi nished six th in th e W o rld Tr oph y chase and sev enth in the Junior World co m pe t it io n . Fo rm e r W orld 250 cc MX Champion and 500cc N ational MX Ch am]Jthi onhDalnlnhY Llaport.e :a f hn~ed hToP50AOmen'can hJonl or s, WI IS t -p ace InIS In t e cc c ass... e f f Ward (Kaw) aced both 500cc motos at rou nd five of the AMA Na tio na l Championship 50 0cc MX Series in Budds Creek, Mary land. Mike Kiedrow sk i went 1-1 in the 125cc class during the concurrent round 12 of the AMA National Ch ampionship 125cc MX Series ... Scott Par ker (H-D) iced the cake of a near -perfect season by winning th e Sac ramento Mile. Jay Sp ringsteen was second, and Rodney Farris (H-D) wa s third. CN O M T ~ :iii b. ; IIiii III :i ~ ~ Q en en en 87

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