Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

machine. We showed up the first on the banking, Kurtis pulled disgruntled rider suggested he might In this week's [Part 1} and next day and it was, like, easy 55s, 54s away." have gone straight at the chicane, a week's [Part II} issues, Henny Ray with my eyes closed. In March I did Bostrom's performance, like Kurtis Mladin's, also caused some grum- [Roberts] the whole time. Once I got bling and disbelief. More than one a 54.2, but following BRIEFLY•• • Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates broke a bone in his right leg practicing on a motocross track near his Georgia home the week· end prior to the tire test. causing him to miss the Daytona Dunlop tire test and putting a crimp in his off-season conditioning. Yates broke the tibia in his right leg just above the ankle. according to his manager Cliff Nobles, who was at the Daytona tire test. Yates flew to Laramie. Wyoming on Thursday. December 14. to be operated on the next day by Dr. David Kieffer. No timetable has been set for his recovery, though Nobles was encouraged by the initial prognosis of the emergency room physician. The attending doctor said that it was a clean break and there was no vascular damage. which meant the operation and convaiescence should go smoothly. If there's a target date for his return. Nobles said. it would be the Laguna Seca test at the end of January. -It's all speculation at this point. - Nobles added. The accident happened when Yates was taking part in a track day at a local motocross track. He'd been riding for two or three hours and. as he was rid· ing up the face of a jump. his Suzuki DR-Z400 suddenly quit. causing him to land short on the other side. and badly. "He was just riding." Nobles said. disputing the notion that he was practicing for the upcoming Crossover event at the Anaheim Supercross. "Aaron rides every day. He rides his dirt-trackers. his motocross bikes. his DR's to stay in shape." The cause of the crash hasn't been determined. At first. Yates thought he'd run out of gas, but he hadn·t. As for his state of mind. Nobles said he was "depressed and despondent. knowing how important this test is for Suzuki and their new 600,' Pneumatic jack stands are back in for 2001 after a decision by the AMA Pro Racing board reversed the recommendation of road race management. Last August. AMA Director of Pro Racing Merrill Vanderslice. Road Race Manager Ron Barrick. and National Technical Manager Rob King proposed the banning of all pneumatic. electric. or hydraulic jack stands for the 2001 season, Any and all jack stands would have to be operated manually. But the board of directors felt that a few teams didn't have enough time to create manual jack stands in time for the 200' Daytona 200. so, during their meeting at the AMA banquet the weekend prior to the test in Las Vegas, they postponed the ruling until the 2002 season. Barrick suggested a compromise that allowed the use of non-manual jacks at Daytona, with their use banned from then on. but the board decided on the 2002 implementation. Why the ban after Daytona? Barrick said it was because there will be pit stops at the final race of the year, the inaugural running of an AMA Superbike event at Virginia International Raceway. "We're going to make that a 150 K [about g3-milel race. which should allow for some interesting strategy,' Barrick said, "because it's oniy long enough for one stop and some may be able to go nearly the whole way, some may choose to go half and half, I don't think anybody can go , 50K at racing speeds on a tank of gas.• One other rule that was proposed and impiemented was a restriction on the number of people over the wall during a pit stop. The new rule calls for a maximum of four people to work in the pit lane. But at least one team manager said that would mean that the gas man will have to perform another chore. compromising safety. he felt. Dale Corser may not look much like Kevin Costner, but that didn't stop him from being hired as the lead in the "Waterworld" show at Universal Studios in Japan. Corser auditioned. and won. the lead role played by Kevin Costner in the film of the same name that was a commercial and critical disaster a few years back, The younger brother of Aprilia's Troy Corser finished third on the HMC Ducati in the Buell Pro Thunder class in his first season of AMA racing. and first season of racing in some time. He wanted to continue racing. but this deal was too good to pass up. This isn't Corser's first venture into the world of entertainment. Before joining the HMC team last year he'd been a water-skier in a revue at Sea World on the Gold Coast of Australia. "His heart's really in racing," Mitch Hansen. the HMC team owner said at the Daytona Dunlop tire test. Hansen said it was a financially rewarding deal with his Japanese hosts paying his expenses. He expected Corser to start work in a couple of weeks. Corser teamed with Shaun Conrad last year In the Pro Thunder class. with Conrad also campaigning a Ducati Superbike. This year Hansen has considerably stepped up his program. joining the AMA Superbike class with riders Scott Russell and Steve Rapp, and significant heip from both Ducati Corse and Ducati North America. But it meant he had to sever a five·year relationship with Conrad. who won the Pro Thunder title for Hansen in , 999. "The only negative thing about the whole deal." Hansen said, 'is not working with Shaun and Dale. I hate to cut somebody off when they're doing so well." Conrad may be running the Wrenchead,com National Road Race Series on Suzukis, Hansen said. Abrams takes a look at each of the notion Bostrom quickly dismissed. . AMA Superbike teams who were pre- "If I cut the chicane, I'd have done sent at the test. .. eN a 49," he said. Racing in Japan. Suzuki's Akira Ryo never saw a track like the high banks of Daytona. • He came back and his eyes were like this." Yoshimura Suzuki team manager Don Sakakura said, holding his hands a foot apart. "The Japanese courses have so much grip, He'd never seen anything like this." On one of his first laps out, Ryo ran into the back of newest Suzuki recruit Jamie Hack· ing in the first horseshoe. nearly taking out the trail· ing Kurtis Roberts. "I dragged my knee on the left getting out of the way," the Erion Racing rlder said of his dodge in the right hand bend. Ryo's times were well off the pace. except when he caught a tow from Kawasaki's Doug Chandler that dropped his time into the 51·s. "He doesn't know how they do that around here." Ryo told Sakakura. "His lines are completely different and they have so much grip," Chandler said. "He gets to the end of a comer and he's got nowhere to go." In addition to racing in the Japanese national series. Ryo has done a lot of development on the new GSX-R750 and came to Daytona, along with a host of Japanese technicians. to continue the development. Yoshimura Suzuki took a step into the future by employing a real·time data acquisition system at Daytona. Though such systems are banned from AMA competition. the team has found it to be a very useful analytical tool. "It's very helpful for testing. especially for analyzing data," Yosh team manager Don Sakakura said of the $4500 Motec data logging system. "You can make decisions for the rider before he comes in." The system uses a GPS (global positioning satellite) system for map- _ - - - - - - - - - - - _ ping the track and relaying data with a sensor set in the rear tail sec· tion. seen at right on Jamie Hacking's bike, though it could be placed anywhere. "It just looks neat there," one team member said. Measurements taken from sensors all over the machine can provide instant feedback on any number of details: including exhaust temperature, miles per hour, throttle position, RPM's, engine speed. engine parameters, and engine pressure. There was speculation that Suzuki could some day use this with a traction-control system. For the first time. the Suzuki has a digital display where the rider can see immediately if they picked up speed the previous lap. Sakakura said that the rider could conceivably change his lines on the track if he saw an improvement in the lap time, "I wish some day we could see that in AMA racing," Sakakura said. Mat Mladin is going to have a very busy 2001, In addition to defending his AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike crown, the Australian is hard at work at opening a dealership in his native Australia. "Mat Mladin Motorcycles" is scheduled to open mid2001 in Narellan, a town about 45 minutes from Sydney and near the Oran Park racetrack. The dealership, which will sell Suzukis and Italian motorcycles, is oversized, with Mladin building in space for both motocross and road race teams. He plans to be involved in racing when he leaves the U.S. for good. That likely won't happen until 2003. At Daytona, Mladin had a contract that he expected to sign that would keep him with the Yosh team through 2003, "If we can get a few things worked out. I'll be staying," Mladin .. U said. One of the deciding factors was that Yosh, at Mladin's request. had hired crew chief Peter Doyle, who's expected to be with the Mladin squad for the duration of the contract. Doyle, like Mladin and chief mechanic Reg O'Rourke, is Australian. prompting some to name the group "Team Australia," Engine builder Yuji Kikuchi doesn't qualify, he's Canadian of Japanese decent. John Kocinski was sitting around waiting for the phone to ring when Terry Vance called last year. Carl FogartY had gotten hurt, Troy Bayliss was off to the World Superbike Championship, and Vance needed a rider. He'd been courting Kocinski for a number of years, ever since Vance got burned when Anthony Gobert failed a drug test during the 1998 season. Kocinski joined the team just prior to the Road Atlanta National. the first of three races in a row. There would be no time to test. so Kocinski had to make the best of it. After the rocky start, he and the team were at loggerheads all season for a number of reasons. This year Kocinski is starting fresh, training hard in the off-season for his firstever shot at the AMA Superbike title. "I've been riding motocross in Sacramento," Kocinski said. "I've been riding a fair amount at Hangtown, just trying to get ready for the season." Kocinski said he'd talked to other teams about 2001, but said the problem was that there wasn't any money to go racing. "I don't want to be on the bike to go around, That's easy to find. It's hard to find the right people and the right tools to win the championship. It's so tough for everybody. It's going to be a hard season. That's why I'm preparing for it." More tests have been promised, which is something Kocinski needs. "If we're not going to do testing, there's no sense running the season," he said. Suspension was a contentious issue in the Honda camp last year. Because they're a satellite team, Erion Racing was free to use whatever they wanted and Kurtis Roberts chose Ohlins. The American Honda team had to use Showa, a company that they own. That all changed at the final race at Willow Springs where Roberts went with Showa and Nicky Hayden and Miguel DuHamel fitted Ohlins gear. For 200' the rule is that there is no rule, "A little bit of competition has created improved suspension all around," Honda's incoming race chief Chuck Miller said. "Showa has given us some new pieces. We'll run whatever wins a race. Every rider has a different feel and it's totally up to them what to run." Last year the Ohlins seemed more compliant on the bumpy courses, like Loudon and Mid-Ohio. a track where Nicky Hayden slid off while trying to keep up. Nicky Hayden and Kurtis Roberts to race the Suzuka Eight· Hour? Maybe, maybe not. but that was the speculation generated after the pair tested a 2001 spec RC51 at the Suzuka Circuit early in December. The pair, along with Honda's Chuck Miller, went to Japan for the test as a way to meet the Japanese hierarchy and give them a chance to see the talent of the young Americans firsthand. It was Hayden's first time in Japan and Roberts' third. Roberts put in very few laps racing an unreliable Aprilia RS250 at the 1997 Japanese Grand Prix and was a reserve rider at the 2000 Suzuka Eight-Hour, Roberts practiced on the Michelin-shod Honda RC45 at the Eight-Hour, but wasn't called upon to race. This was his first trip on the Superbike with Dunlops, but, since they had only two days, and the pair had to share one bike, they couldn't customize it to their liking. "I could never get comfortable," Roberts said of the 55 laps he put in over two days. "We were just trying another seat pad and handlebars." Roberts' best time was a very respectable 2:09.3 that he felt he could have improved upon had he been able to make the bike his own. "I know I could do 2:08s easy," he said. CastroI Honda's World Superbike Champion Colin Edwards complained all year of vagueness in the front end and Roberts experienced the same feeling. "On my first flying lap I ran off of turn three. The front tucked bad." There were a number of other riders at Suzuka including Edwards' new teammate Tadayuki Okada, Red Bull Yamaha WCM's Noriyuki Haga, and Antenna 3 D'Antin's Norick Abe who'd traded his VZR500 for an R·7 Superbike. As for the EightHour, the subject hasn't been broached with American Honda yet. In recent years, American riders, with the exception of Edwards, haven't been invited. How hard are the dual-compound tires? According to American Honda's Miguel DuHamel, going from the 600 to the RC51 "feels like Fred Flintstone getting in his car. " HMC Ducati's Scott Russell used to be one of the riders Dunlop relied on for feedback. Not this year. Russell had plenty to get used to with the new bike and was more concerned with learning how to get around Daytona quickly than he was with tires. "Out of all the tire testing, this might be the worst track condition-wise and grip-wise," Russell said, Rain had cleaned the track so there was little rubber anywhere. The 200 comes a month after the 24 Hours of Daytona, where sports cars will condition the track for the motorcycles. ... e n __ ... • JANUARY 10. 2001 23

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