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Harlev-Dallidson's John Bake.r By HENNY RAY ABRAMS ["CJ or most of its eight-year existence, the Harley- t...r Davidson VR1000 Superbike has done nothing to uphold the great tradition of the Motor Company, one of the world's great brands. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Superbike effort, which showed initial promise in its rookie year of 1994 under the savage floggings of Miguel DuHamel, has steadily declined to its current perch of infamy. There are the occasiona bursts of brilliance - the inspired ride of Pascal Picotte (another spirited French Canadian) at Pike's Peak in 1999 comes to mind - but little else. Mostly, the race weekends have become a recitation of weaknesses, down 10 mph and more on top speed at the faster tracks, unable to accelerate off the corners at the smaller tracks. Noble as some may see it, the team is racing an almost 10-year-old motorcycle against cutting-edge Japanese and Italian technology - and it shows. After years of struggle, someone at Harley-Davidson suddenly decided they'd had enough. The program would be turned around this year and there 26 FEBRUARY 14, 2001 • DUD •• n would be virtual carte blanche. The man chosen to head the program is John Baker. Baker is a long-time H-D employee with experience in both the racing and business ends of the motorcycle industry. The 32-year-old holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and an MBA from Marquette University, and that combination has allowed him to work in a variety of jobs at Harley-Davidson. He's been involved with Harley-Davidson's Engineering and Business Planning groups since 1993 and, most recently, he was instrumental in the development of Harley-Davidson's long-range strategic business plan. Baker was among those who helped launch the 1994 VR 1000 Superb ike, the streetbike that the race machine was based on. He was also the Platform Manager for the recently introduced Buell Blast. One of Baker's first orders of business sent a clear message about the team's intentions: He announced the formation of a 12-man development team to work year-round on the Superbike program. It is an historic first in AMA racing and it's what Baker believes the team needs to get on track. __ • "We're establishing a focused development team to do year-round development effort," Baker said during the recent Laguna Seca test. "We're increasing the resources associated with that, and we're making some organizational shifts to support that as well." If you listen to his speech, you hear less the gearhead and more the business side of Baker. In casual conversation he's one of the guys, but speaking on the record, Baker talks more in the tongue of the businessman or politician than the mechanical engineer, staying on message, and resolutely accentuating the positive. "We believe there's potential left in this design," Baker said of the machine that Pascal Picotte rode to 11 th and Scott Russell to 17th in last year's AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship. "I think, as you know, the design is probably close to a decade old, and that's one of the challenges from a technical standpoint when your competitors have iterated once or possibly twice in the same time period. So part of the efforts of the development group will be to understand what that potential is and understand the limitations." The limitations are, it would seem, simple: It's slow and it breaks down a lot. (I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Picotte at the Laguna Seca test in 1999. Picotte said the motorcycle needed only two things, a new frame, and a new motor.) Last year a determined and undaunted Picotte throttled the VR across the finish line in all but the final race at Willow Springs, where he crashed. The French Canadian's best finish was an eighth at Loudon, a stop-and-go kart track where horsepower is secondary to survival. Scott Russell's legacy wasn't as grand. Six mechanical DNF's in 12 races, though one was because of an overflow problem with the perennially problematic one-piece seat/fuel tank. The former World Superbike Champion's best finish was a 10th at Road America. Picotte is back for the second year of his fouryear contract, now joined by Russell's brother-in-law Mike Smith, and it's Baker's job to give them the tools to compete, which is why the development team was formed. The development team is an extraordinary and unique undertaking. A dozen people working in their own, dedicated race shop full-time to make a nearly 10-year-old motorcycle more competitive. To some it seems like a fool's errand, and the consensus at the Laguna Seca test was that there was a new bike in the pipeline, something more modern than the VR1000, the road racing equivalent of the leisure suit. Baker equivocates here slightly, though the message is that this is the one. "The design right now, being a decade old, presents some unique challenges versus what the competitors are doing, and this development effort and the technical expertise will assess and evaluate what those potential gains can be both on the chassis and the powertrain, and also the limitations of that moving forward, and we'll take the necessary steps to become a leader within the series," Baker said, sounding like someone who has something up his sleeve, though he denies it. "I certainly can't speculate about future products. From a need to become competitive, we'll be looking at many different alternatives to improving the performance of the bike." After seeing a photo of what a French magazine purports to be a liquid-cooled Porsche-engined Harley on a test run near the Porsche factory in Stuttgart, I asked Baker jf that was something we'd be seeing on the racetrack in the future. Baker just laughed and repeated that he couldn't comment on future products.