Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

All new he Vanc e & Hines Duc a ti team came to Daytona with two new rid ers, Troy Bayliss and Steve Ra pp , form erl y of Yoshimura Suzu ki, and five new crew members. Th e bikes were the same, as was the boss, Jim Leonard, the crew chief in charge of mak ing it all wo rk har moniou sly. Leona rd said the team was using the bikes that Ben Bostro m and Anthony Gobert raced in 1999, but that his team would soo n be going to Italy to build the mac hines for 2000. They've been gua ranteed the sa me lev e l o f fa ctory s u p p or t they received in 1999. Leonard has been coming to Dayto na for years, bu t for Bayliss, this was a first. It was also his first trip to the Ll.S, and he mad e it here after recen tly ea rn ing a nu m ber-one pla te from t h e Bri tis h Superb ik e Championship . T h e Aus t ra lia n won th e title ridi ng a Oucati 996 for the INS GSE team, bu t Leona rd found there was some adjus ting to d o. "With Troy, our bike setup is qu it e a b it differen t th a n w hat he' s used to," Leonard said. "So for him , hitting Daytona's Superspeedway the first tim e is half of it an d ge tti ng used to our bike is the ot her ha lf. At the sa me tim e, he 's getting used to working with new peopl e. He' s a grea t guy, easy to wo rk wit h. "For Steve [Rappl, it's a little more difficul t. He's coming off a d ifferen t brand on to this th ing. And th e bike has cha nged a lot since he rode it twice in '98. At the same time, for me, all the crew members on tha t side are new . There's a lot go ing on ove r there to adjust to." Ga ry Med ley, who wo rke d wi th Ben Bostro m in 1999, retu rned to his long- time em p loye r, Kaw asaki. "Gary obvious ly wante d to b e w ith Do u g [Chan d ler] and one guy went with him," Leon ard said. "As the level of competition goes up and the costs go up , it's getting ha rd er an d harder to get good peopl e, and we're getting robbed ." It makes wi nning the title th at mu ch hard er. Dep end ing on 'your poi nt of view, the team lost the cham pionship last year either du e to mechan ical problems or hiring practices. "We mad e a mistake at Ohio," Leonard said of the oil-line failu re wh ich d ro p ped Bostrom we ll back jus t as he was about to take over the points T lead fro m Yoshimu ra Suz uki's Mat Mla d in. "It was human erro r, that wa s our fault. The d eal at Willow w ith An tho ny [Gobert] cou ld have been avoided. Basi call y, he cam e in a nd told u s th e engine had blown up . We'd just found a lot mo re horsepower so we were a little concerned abou t it anyway. It turns out it w as just a circu it on the electric shifter and there's a switch on the das h he cou ld've turn ed off and kept going. But when he cam e in and told us it was the engine, we did n' t go any fur ther. He didn't need to stop at all, bu t even if when he s topped he had told us that it was some type of electrica l problem, we could've turned the shifter off and sent him back ou t and still got a lot of points. Hop efully, we'll avo id those thi ngs in the future." everyda y you shou ld go faster," Bayliss said . "Th e guy s are always mucki ng arou nd with the bike to change something here and there, jus t little thin gs. Obv iously, I know the bike's pretty good. Just little things to make me mor e comforta ble a nd a bit mor e track knowledge and the condi tions weren' t so bad . The conditions w eren ' t good, bu t th ey were consistent a long time so to d o a few fast lap s wa sn' t a problem ." Learning the track means getting two specific areas right, the turn-six run on to the west banking, and exiting the chicane. "I think I'm ge tti ng on to the banking not so ba d , ou t of turn six," Bayliss sa id . "My bi gges t prob lem is a t the chicane , the whole lot of the chicane. Th ere' s still a bit of time in tha t for sur e. I d on ' t want to rus h, it 'll come even tuall y an d h op efully tha t w ill b e w or th a lit tle bit mo re time." Hi ring Gobert was a blessing and a curse, as usu al. Bostrom finis he d second to Go be rt fou r tim es in 1999 . Co nver t those to fi rs ts a nd the cham pionship looks d ifferent. Having two number-one riders, wh ich is wha t V&H had last ye ar, tu rned ou t to be a mis take. This year it would seem Bayliss is the number one, given his recent credentials, and Rap p is the solid num ber two , though they' ll have the same equipmen t. Bayliss was new to the high ban ks of Daytona, but you would n't know it fro m his riding . From th e minut e he hit the track he was learnin g an d improving, and bythe end of the seco nd day he had set the fastest time. "I t w as a combi na tio n of fee li ng good , a n d What impressed Bayliss most was his gas tank, literally. Th e high g-forces fro m the sustained runs on the ba n ki ng fla tten a ride r's torso on to the gas tan k. "I 've go t a bi t o f a so re chest ," he said . "I think I might pu t a bit of bubble wrap in there tod ay." Rapp ro d e the V&H Duca ti twice in 1999 while he was still racing Suzu kis for 1-800CYCLEGEAR. This time aro und he foun d it considerably d ifferent. "There's a lot of new s tu ff, new team, new bike," Rap p said. "I h aven 't rid d en a stree t bi ke for three months. My lap times are faster than last yea r by the end of the third day, so I think it's off to a goo d star t. It seems a little more powerful. They sa id it'd be more p ow er fu l. Thi s th in g' s a lot more powerfu l. It' s not hard [to adjust to], but just a different riding style that I ha dn' t do ne ." The differences are in shifting, how yo u shift, where you shif t, engine braking, he said . "On a four-cylinder you're cons tantly downshifting at 11, 12,000 rp ms to slow it down, bu t this one it doesn't slow it down . You jus t downshift a little bit. The engine rpm off the corners is like at 4000, instead of 9000 or 10,000 on the Suzuki. You don't back it in, you want to keep it straig ht-lined and turn it. It felt rea lly fast at first, jus t becau se I hadn 't ridden for a couple of mo nt hs, but I'm startin g to get used to it again. It wasn 't that fast here, but it wa s 191 or some th ing, top speed . I a lway s th ou ght it wa s mid-180s. It was fast, rea lly fast."

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