Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Part I: Dunlop Daytona Tire Test Anthony Gobert rode both the Yamaha R6 and R7 during the test. [2000] one I thought was a little bit better." Chandler tried one tire with a lighter construction carcass, but felt it moving around on the banking. "There are two of them I'm happy with," he said, adding that, "Everything is going to be different then. They have a new variation of the softer one. It showed up last March and we ran a fair bit on it. I'm happy with it. We just have to wait and see." Jim Allen is in charge of Dunlop's road racing effort in the U.S. Any time Dunlop comes to Daytona, the first concern is safety. Catastrophic Bostrom said the other tires he he raced on in 2000. "If it's not the tested were more conservative, "more same thing, it's close." or less similar on the left and different "I think I had three different varia- on the right. For the ultimate lap for tions of the 311 [designation] and the us, the choice was clear." Bostrom hard one is the one I'd have to race felt the tire was very similar to what on," Chandler said. "The March lIs....... SIIIIId Still I .proving_ The best just got better. Not content to win the past two AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championships, Mat MJadin wanted more. He wants to win his third title in a row, but he also wants the entire Yoshimura Suzuki team to be stronger, both the Superbike and Supersport efforts. So he asked an old friend to join the team as his crew chief, and the friend agreed. Peter Doyle last worked with MJadin at Kawasaki Australia in 1994 and '95. Before that, Doyle was the crew chief on the Muzzy Kawasaki team that Scott Russell won the World Superbike Championship for in 1993. At Yosh, Doyle will be Mladin's crew chief, replacing Amarr Bazzaz who is now free to spend more time working on suspension and diagnostics and less time cleaning wheels. "Peter has got a lot of racing experience and background: Yoshimura Suzuki team manager Don Sakakura said. "We're hoping he'll help the team out working directiy with MJadin. Amarr will be working directiy with the entire team more.' At the test, Bazzaz spent a lot of time getting newest team member Jamie Hacking up to speed, and leaming what it's like to have a rider his size. Sakakura said he'd chosen Hacking to replace Jason Pridmore, partly because of his skill on a 600. "Yesterday, right away, he got up to speed," Sakakura said. "He's so light and small. We're used to working with bigger guys. Finding the valving and damping take a bit to get worked out. For the 600, he was probably one of our top candidates. With the new bike com· ing out in 2001, we wanted to make a strong push. Physically, t think he fits the motorcycle very welt." Size is an issue with the 600cc Supersport machinery, Sakakura believes, more at the big tracks like Daytona where you have to build up speed. "Aaron [Yates] overcame it at the shorter tracks. Over the entire season, it's asking a bit much." Hacking's first impression is that the bike was bigger than the Yamaha R-6 he'd ridden the past three years. "The 600 is what's going to take me some time to get used to: Hacking said. "The tank's failures at high speeds are extremely rare, but can be lethal, and it's that sort of thing that causes Allen to hold his breath for days at a time. Ben Bostrom had a rear tire blowout on the Vance & Hines Ducati on the east banking a few years back. His hands were beat up and scarred, and he had other injuries, but he was fortunate not to have been more badly hurt. The memory lingers with his brother, Eric, who thinks about it every lap. "I don't like this place at all. It's on the schedule so I've got to get through it," he said. Because of the extraordinary stresses the speedway puts on tires, for some time the Daytona Dunlops have been dual compound, the righthand side soft enough to handle the two infield horseshoes, the left side hard enough to withstand the nearly 2 G-forces the banking imposes. The riders constantly gripe about the lack of grip and like to grouse that the tires come in three compounds, bowling ball, cannon ball, and hard. The tires tested in December are descended from the much larger batch brought over from Dunlop's plant in Birmingham, England, for the August test. "At the August test we did get rid of a lot of the ideas," Allen said. wider and my arms are short. A little bigger tank makes It tough to get off the bike." As for the handling, Hacking said: "I really like the way it turns. You point it and it got where you want it. I'm really happy. That 54.8 Is faster tha.n I ever went around here on the Yamaha." Hacking turned that lap on the first, ralnshortened day of the three-day test and ended up improving on it by nearly half a second. His ........ Hacking .... uHd to the QSX-R. best lap was a 1:54.2 in his first outing on the bike during a Yosh test here in October when he feit the new GSX.R600 ran better. "Seems to be our top speed's not too gQOd rJght now," Hacking said. "I'm riding the 500t out of it in the infield. We get on the banking and they pass me. We need a little more steam on the banking. The acceleration's good. We just need tap end. They'll have the bike ready in March. I'm not worried about it." With inclement weather shortening the fJrst two days, Hacking had to make the most of IUs time and spent most of the third day on the news GSX-R750 Superbike. Tuesday was the first time he did a lap of 1:50.8 around Daytona while the team was constantly making changes. "We're just trying to find a little traction with the Superbike out there," Hacking said. Part of the problem was the slipperiness of the track. "Usually you can fUn over the paint in the chicane: Hacking said. "Now it just slides across them. It makes it tough to get in there like you want to." Hacking was involved in two incidents at the test, one his fault, one not. Early on the first day he was run into from belUnd by Japanese rider Akira Ryo, nearly knocking him off. On the frnal day of the test Hacking crashed, banging up his elbow, but was otherwise unhurt. Mladin wasn't having that particular problem. Using certain lines that few other riders tried, Mladin was consistently the fastest rider, getting on well with the new GSX-R750. On his first hot lap on Tuesday he turned a 1:50,8, then backed it up with a string of five other laps all faster, save one. His best of the test would be a 1:49.87 on a race tire. "That's the quickest I've ever been around here, on a brand new bike on a race tires/' Mat Mladin and his new crew chief Peter Doyle. 20 JANUARY 10, 2001 • cue I e n e _ s Mladin said of his Tuesday time. He'd spent much of the time on Monday working on a front-end problem, at one point replacing the forks. "Pretty major problems," he said. "We found some stuff and it's working pretty good." This was the third time that MJadin had ridden the new bike and he was still getting used to it. "It's quite a bit different than last year's bike," he said of the machine which has a different wheelbase. "The same settings don't do the same thing. The settings of the swingarm angle, the forks, the shock, you put them on last year's bike and you'd be three seconds off the pace." M1adin felt he might have gone faster on Wednesday had the weather been better and the bike been a little fresher. "It was a little cooler this aftemoon and we did a 1:50.5," Mladin said of his Wednesday effort. "We ran laps on the motor. it had 500 miles on it. We just cruised around. I've been off too long. I'm hurting - 480 miles in two days. That's enough." Even so, Mladin said that if he "wanted to hang it out," he could have done low 50s.

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