Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128085
know that with the chance to ride the Roberts XR89 Suzuki at Jerez in the first of the team's winter test sessions, this motorcycle's handling made as big an impression on me as did the '92 Honda NSRSOO's engine characteristics - the first big-bang 500cc GP bike I'd ridden. Both machines represented personal landmarks in terms of control and rideability, providi ng an almost addictive gateway to a level of performance that a h ea v ier, less potent Superbike can't m a tch , yet wi t h the fou rs troke's comparative userfriendli ness . Light, le a n -fee lin g a nd so li v ely in perform a nce, th e is Su zu ki the finesth an - dling 500cc Grand Prix bike I've yet ridden in the 15 years since Suzuki team manager Ga rry Taylor was the first to arrange for me to sling a leg over a Japanese factory racer in the summer of '84. Definitely, awesomely imp ressive. The Suzuki's balance and refinement in terms of setup come thanks to th e effective three-way collaboration between rider Roberts, Suzuki staff back home in Hamarnatsu, and race engineer Warren Willing, who played a key part in re d irecting Suzuki's R&D strategy, enabling the team's existing design to start a ttaining its true potential. For Rob erts' '99 success was obtained with the sa me essential RGVSOO motorcycle aboard which Aoki and Fujiwara had appeared so shipwrecked in 1998, with the more compact version of Suzuki's 70-degree V4 crankcase reedvalve engine. That engine has twin contra- rotating cranks that had debuted in '97 in 54 x 54.5 mm "square" guise, slot ted into a slightly improved version of the XR89 twinspar chassis introduced last year, constructed from alloy extrusions welded together, rather than the sheet-alloy fabrication used hitherto. This ha d in troduced th e concept of "controlled flex" to Suzuki's GP chassis design - but the result was very sensitive to a cha nge in track conditions or se tup (tire, sus pe nsio n, geo me t ry, wea ther, g rip), a nd w it ho ut effective feedback from the rider, and a technical guru capable of translating pragm atically, th e Suzuki team was com pletely at sea - esp ecially with only a sing le twom an team , n ot the fle et o f riders from whom Hond a and Yamah a were able to de rive vital accu mula te d R&D k no wle dge . Th e arriva l of Robert s and Willing cha n ge d all that, w it h th e sometimes intuitive collabora t io n between r i d er a nd techn ici an allowing the Aussie engineer to use his previous experience gai ned during a decade of refining the similar twin-cra nk Yamaha forma t into: wo rld title-winning form in the hands of Wayne Rainey, to help transform the unconsidered Suzuki into a true championship contender. So while Willing and Robert s concentrated on optimizing chassis set.<:rp, working on rebalancing the motorcycle to make it more predictable in its ha ndling res p onses, Suzuki focused not only on ge tting more power out of the V4 e ngine, but a lso on altering th e na ture of its performance. This en tailed fu rthe r overcoming the power-sa pping effects of the u nleade d fu el int roduced in '98, 'while improving the V4 engi ne's rid eabi li ty - mos t n o tably w ith new cy lin d ers introd uced a t Brn o . Th o se cy lin ders' revi sed p ortin g for th e six tran sfer / three exhaus t forma t, coupled with a lte re d ex ha us t pipe d e s ign matched by new mapping for the digital CDI a nd electro nic powervalve curves, combined to prod uce a vita l extra 1000 rp m overrev ca p ability, on a n eng ine w hich ha d previously proved reluctan t to spin mu ch over the peak power mark of 12,500 rp m, where "over 180 horsepower" is now p rod uced. But whereas the same essential package had been ineffective in '98, the fres h start represented by the advent of the Roberts /Willing duo set the Suzuki team wo rking a t last in the right direction , not on ly in terms of overall R&D, but above all in terms of machine setu p at each circu it. So the first thing you notice at Jerez is how beautifullv balanced the Suzuki is, both from the' point of view of basic geometry and in terms of suspension response . The res u lt is that you can turn the bike tight er and make it change direction qu icke r tha n