Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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Aaron Slight World Superbike campaigns. Reg O'Rourke, M1adin's chief mechanic, also worked on the Muzzy teams in 1992 and '93. But Slight didn't know much else about the racing in America. "I just sort of hadn't even been thinking about coming to America," Slight said. "So I just talked to him with no real intent about doing anything about it." The future for Aaron Slight is in four wheels, and, after the brain operation, he thought it was time for a change. "You can look at life in a bit wider perspective and that's why I started chasing my touring car dream, to drive a car, because that was actually the best avenue, the people who were more interested, which was a bit of a shame after 10 years in World Superbike, and suddenly people in car racing were more interested than the bikes, and we started pushing that avenue." When the season ended, Slight went to Australia to work on his car racing career, fielding offers from a few private Ducati teams, including NCR Ducati, the team which Ben Bostrom rode for most of the 2000 season. "The deals all seemed pretty good to them, but not to me," Slight said. "If I went to their team they got factory bikes, they got this, they got that. I didn't get too much out of it. " On Thursday evening, February 15, three days from the one-year anniversary of his brain operation, Slight got a call out of the blue from David Roy. Earlier in the day, Roy and Pritchard had broken off talks with Kocinski after he'd asked for a few things the team couldn't deliver without compromising the racing budget. They needed a rider quickly and Slight's name surfaced. At home in Masterton, New Zealand, Slight was in lingering talks with the Remus Ducati team and there was the car racing avenue, but this seemed real and immediate. "The first thought was, 'this is amazing, '" he remembers. "I hadn't ridden a bike for four months and suddenly someone wants me. Let's go. And I keep saying to my wife, the problem is I haven't given up that love for racing motorbikes. If that had gone, I could have said bye." The only way to move it forward was to come to the U.S., which he did, arriving in Califomia on the Monday morning. "I think maybe the initial thing is I'm good for advertising, but I have to ride as well," Slight said. "And so they want to see if I can ride and I want to ride the bike and I want to see the team and then we'll go and we'll weigh the options." The only possible hitch in the deal is his car racing commitment. The current deal he's looking at calls for him to race the car for a European factory in five or six rounds of the British Touring Car Championship, none of which conflict with the AMA calendar, followed by a full factory season in 2002. The only possible conflict might come if he's asked to test the car between races. He expects to know by the end of February. 20 MARCH 7, 2001 • cue • e n e _ "All I can offer is that I can come over and test and race Daytona and hopefully everything works out, but I can't really offer anything more than that at this stage," Slight says. He's reluctant to turn the car deal down, because "if I turn it down now after all this work it might never come back. Being 35, I've probably only got a couple more years to ride a Superbike. " Ducati's Roy said that there isn't a rider waiting in the wings if Slight isn't available. "I feel pretty strongly that Aaron is going to be with us all year," Roy said. Slight had never been to Willow Springs, he'd only ridden a Ducati once for a magazine story, and he hadn't ridden on Dunlop tires since leaving Kawasaki in 1993. The weather at Willow Springs was cold and wet the first two days, then generally cold. Slight looked tentative at first on the machine, but quickly got down to reasonable times. "He has that World Superbike mentality where you have to go for it from the second you get out there," the crew chief for another of the teams at Willow said. Slight has spent the majorlty of his career racing Castro' Honda's, including 2000 when he raced the team's RC51 - despite early-season brain surgery to repair an artery. Slight finished with a best time of 1:20.65, which wasn't bad considering the obstacles. HMC Ducati's Steve Rapp put in a few blistering faps on a softer than race tire at the end of the final day to top the test with a 1: 19.31. "I'm happy with it," Slight said of his first impression of the CompetitionAccessories.com 2001 Ducati 996 RS. "I think, and I've always thought, that the Ducati package seems to be good, but you can get it great. On a bad day it's still good. But when you get it right, it's great. Once you learn about it, you'll be able to set it up so it's great. So many other bikes I've ridden, if you haven't got it somewhere near, you might as well be in the back of the truck." Having just come off a V-twin, the Honda RC51, which is designated as the SP-1 outside of the U.S., Slight had a point of comparison. "I think the Honda power package is stronger, but this revs more, is a bit wider, is a bit more useable. 50 So far, the traction seems better straight off. I think the chassis is just more user-friendly," he said. Switching from Michelin to Dunlop tires is almost irrelevant, Slight says. "The whole thing about the tire situation, I didn't give it much thought, is that if you race in America you've all got the same," he said. "It doesn't really matter. If they're bad, they're bad, if they're good, they're good. Everybody's got the same stuff, which is quite good. But definitely the Dunlop's move around more than the Michelins and if you spin the Dunlop, it's still got traction, it doesn't wear out. Where if you start to spin a Michelin, it wears out quicker and doesn't go forward." Willow Springs is the third track on the AMA calendar he's ridden on. The first was Daytona, where he raced both a Kawasaki KR-250 two-stroke, then the Superbike in 1993, the year he was Scott Russell's Muzzy Kawasaki World Superbike teammate. Slight ended up racing with Muzzy Kawasaki's American rider, Miguel DuHamel, after losing the leaders. "It was me, Eddie [Lawson], and Scott [Russell]. The pace car came in and they shafted me with the pace car, got a few people between me and them. Then the pace car pulled out and Miguel was right with me." Slight ended up fourth behind DuHamel. The only other track Slight's raced on is Laguna Seca, where he finished eighth in both legs in 2000. Other than that, he's been told about places like Loudon and Sears Point, tracks where safety is a concern, or Brainerd and Elkhart Lake, where the high speeds will remind him of circuits like Monza. "The tracks, I keep being told, are really dangerous and that's probably all true, but I raced on some shitty tracks in New Zealand when I started," he said. "Like I rode around roads and around streets. It's what you want to put into it. On the bad ones you ride 90 percent around those corners. It doesn't turn me on that you have to ride these tracks, especially when you come from Europe and they're so good then you think, here, obviously, they'll be better in America. They're actually a lot worse." But the competition is more intense. This season the AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship may well be the most competitive in the world. Out of the 16 factory riders, five have extensive 500cc World Championship or World Superbike experience. On any given weekend, there are more than half a dozen riders who could be expected to win. Where Slight fits in remains to be seen. The first race on the calendar is Daytona, a track where Ducati has never won, though the outright track record is held by Anthony Gobert, then of Ducati. Ducatis have proven they can go fast there, they just have to be around for long run. "Who knows? It's a different place," Slight said of Daytona International Speedway. "And what we've done here is probably only rider miles, it doesn't count for Daytona." eN