Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

S~andin2 s~i a rley- Davidson stood pat, or st oo d s till, depend ing on your point of view . Scott Russ ell is back to fulfill the second yea r o f his tw o-year contract a nd Pascal Pico tte starts the firs t of his four-year deal. The VR1000 continues to soldier on, no w in its seven th year of I believe tha t we're tryin g to d o something th at can't be d on e. Actua l hou rs of development, it' s still qu ite low ." By the end of the second day, Picotte was no t happy. He'd spent more time in the pits than on the bike and was wa ry every time he got on it. "Terrible test," he said . "Engine problems, lot of service. thin gs, clutch doesn't really work p roperly. It's Of the two riders, Picotte was the mor e consistent - no t a su rp rise considering how he finishe d never been good so far. Sometimes it wo rks good, la st year, culminat in g in a secondsome ti mes it doesn't. The elec tric shifter neve r wo rks properly; just a lot place finis h in the fina l race at Pikes of d iffere nt parts. It's hard to be ou t Peak. Russell su ffered tw o engine failures the first day - he had to pus h his there . You d o one lap , so methi ng is VR1000 back to th e pi ts after o ne wrong; you 've got to come in. You d o m ot or ex pire d - bu t, when he was another lap, somethi ng is leak in g, running, he turned in his best lap ever you've go t to come in. "We've been blowing engines up on the Har ley. Illness kept him away from the tra ck the second day, but he one yes terday an d two today. Russell was back for the third . did tw o . At leas t four all toge ther," he Team mana ger Steve Sche ibe sa id added . the team had a number of new comRu s sell sai d h e co u ld fee l h is engine tyin g up on th e lap befor e it pon ent s to test at Daytona. Some were internal eng ine parts that were below s to p ped - fat ally - going d own th e stan dard . Getti ng an accurate accou nt back straig htaway. of blown engines was tricky, but , the "1 cu t the chican e a nd pushed it in," he said . For the rest of the da y, he best it cou ld be figured, Russell did two the first da y an d Picotte one, then said, he "was a littl e spooked." Picotte went through two on the sec, The only bright spot was that the ond day, in ad di tio n to a few ot her 16.5-in ch fro n t ti re Du nl o p h ad niggling issues . brought ha d improved the ha ndling Scheibe said the team was concenof Russell 's VR1000. He lapped at trat in g on sus pension and the ne w 1:52.2 at the end of the first day, his fastes t lap on the Harley aroundDayclu tch. " We' r e just fine- tuning a lot of tona. co mpone nts," he said . "Th e ma jor It was a revela tion, considering Pascal Picotte and Scott Russell didn 't get a lot accomplished at the tire test. cha nges will co me la rer, b u t w e that he rod e the VR1000 all of last yea r ha ven 't had ti me to get the m d on e and never d id ge t comfo rtable on it. (befor e the seaso n)." "The fron t of the machin e is very stiff," he sai d . we finally go ," Scheibe said. "Even at Sears Point , "Th e rear is not so stiff. They d on 't match up. It we don 't need the hor sepower, but we were a little Th e team plans to test again befor e Daytona and during the two-mo nth break before the next bit late ge tting our engine program going. It startdrives throu gh the chicane an d throu gh the faster ed makin g mor e power. We go t a little repriev e corne rs like a tru ck. I was never happy with that race, at Sears Point in May. from that." part. We were here for tw o d ays last year and I "We'll have quite a window of opportunity to ge t the work don e," Scheibe sai d . The VR1000 has been raced since the 1994 seawa s not happy. The 16.5 soa ks up the bumps bet As for why the engines were breaking, Scheibe ter. It see med to turn in qu icker and a hold a line so n and it wo uld see m the engine is at the end of its development rope. No t so, says Scheibe. better. There's more contact patch and it gave me said that there was a small batch of bad internal "To be honest, we' ve sp en t so little on engine engine parts. "It' s a problem we haven't had for more confidence." devel opm ent that I d on ' t ha ve any reason to Though the 1:52.2 was a good time, he rememyears, but we now have," he said. The Harley's finishing record has been spotty at believe that we'v e hit ou r ceiling," he said. " If you bered that Picotte had qualified in the low 49s for best, but it's never been due to major engine probthe 1998 Daytona 200. "We 'll see if we can do that look at other configura tions, like the Honda or the Du cati, they're su rp rising ly similar to ours. I don't again," Russell said. lems. II By Henny Ray Abrams T he star of the annual winter Dunlop Daytona test was the new 16.5inch front tire . Riders w ere unequivocal in their praise, many suggesting the tire saved them a second per lap, so me even m or e. But th ey didn't "It's always the little things, just th e tid yin g things up th a t we've never had time fo r tha t's s to p ped us in the past," Scheibe sa id . "And so tha t's exac tly what we' re wo rking on now ." How they proceed from Dayton a has yet to be determined. "We' re in the process of reviewin g all the possibiliti es against the workloa d and the budget that we have a t the mo ment, as far as w ha t directio n neces sarily find the savings right awa y. To ge t the time you had to ride it hard, , and it was on ly then tha t the improvement was evid en t. It was a less on that Australian Troy Bayliss.quickly learned in his first ride on th e Vance & Hines Ducati. In his first-ever trip to Daytona, on a b ike he'd never see n before, Bayliss sw iftly went to th e top of the charts, with help from the 16.5-inch front. "He wa s pretty damn happy," Dunlop ' s road race coordinat or Jim Allen sa id of the 30-year-old Bayliss. Allen said Bayli ss wasn 't initially impressed , but knew he had to put more effort into it. "He tried a 16.5 yes terd a y on the fron t, cam e in and said 'not a lot of diffe rence, ma ybe I need to go harder.' Wh en he came in th e seco nd time he said it was clea rly better, he could carry more corner speed, way more grip on its side." At the end of the seco nd day of test-

• Cover