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Willow Springs Superbike Test By For most it was a Daytona shake- more establishei:! teams to use the T of the season, I'd go to Laguna." Willow, like Laguna Seca in Northern California, was plagued by bad high-speed, 2.5-mile course to get ROSAMOND, CA, FEB. 13-15 he four teams that gathered to test in the winter chill of, Willow Springs all seemed to have different agendas, and testing for the September running of National here wasn't one of them - not when they arrived, and certainly not when they left, by which time they'd learned that the Willow race might not even take place. bumpy. If I wanted to test for the rest down, a chance for some of the new teams to continue to gel and for the HENNY RAY ABRAMS weather. Ducati had rented the track for two days. Monday was a complete washout and Tuesday was only ready for the 200 in March. "We can figure out stuff here that'll work at Daytona because of the speed of the corners," said Gary Medley, Doug Chandler's crew chief at slightly better, with the bikes taking to the track for about 90 minutes. Kawasaki joined the test on Wednes- Kawasaki. "Now it's getting a little bit day and Thursday, under clear, but (Above) Same style, different bike. Aaron Slight had his first ride on the Competition Accessories Ducati at Willow Springs last week. The Kiwi Is a likely candidate to join Lany Pegram on the team. (Left) It was business as usual for Mat Mladin. The Australian showed up, got some things sorted out with the bike, then went out and was consistently fast. 28 FEBRUARY 28. 2001 • cue • e n _ .... s very cold, skies, with Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin, the only fully fit Suzuki rider also moving in. Mladin was eager to ride because foul weather had plagued all of Suzuki's previous tests. "Essentially, we haven't got any track time anyway," Mladin said. "Even Daytona, what'd we get? We got a bit over a day out of the three days. After 13 so-called days, we've probably done four days now." The goal now was the same as it was at Daytona - to feel more at ease on the new GSX-R750. "I haven't really been that comfortable on the new bike at a II since I got on it the first time in October," Mladin said. "I've had a big problem with the steering. I just haven't been able to get it to steer, so we've been going around in circles. I couldn't get any feel in the front. "Yesterday [Wednesday) morning I came in and said, 'Listen, it doesn't matter what we do, I'm not getting any feel, so I need to change my riding style,' and that's what I did," he continued. "I pushed myself forward on the bike, changed all the footpeg positions, changed a bunch of things, put a big pad right in the middle of the seat, and it just lopped me up on the front. Essentially what I've done is I've moved my butt six inches forward going through the middle of the turn and that turned the bike into a totally different motorcycle. Just moved the CG [center of gravity] forward and weighted up the front and as soon as I did that it was probably a second and a half, straight away." It wasn't quite that dramatic, but it did make a difference. Mladin was consistently in the low 1:20s and ran more laps in the 1: 19 range than anyone else could on race tires. The best lap he turned was a 1:19.555, which stood up until late in the day when HMC Ducati's Steve Rapp turned in a string of low 19s. But that didn't matter to Mladin. "Today we might have done 40 laps and nearly half of them were in the 19s and that's never happened here before, not for us," Mladin said. "It's promising." Willow Springs has always been good to Rapp. The Californian set the outright track record in qualifying last year, a 1:19.029 on a qualifying tire, which only he could approach this weekend, and that was on the Dunlop 587, a medium-compound tire which could not be successfully raced on. Rapp's teammate, Scott Russell, chunked a few of the harder 602s, the more likely race rubber. Rapp's best time on the race rubber was a 1:20.19 and he said mid20s were no problem. But he wanted better and the team fiddled with the bike looking for a spark. Instead, they doused the flame, going backward until Rapp decided he'd had enough.