Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

"Apparently, I was pretty drugged up and wrestling around, but once the day was past and I came to and the drugs wore off, I was pretty alright, just really slow," Slight remembers. "After a week I was wondering what they actually took out. I was sitting there thinking 'I could sit by the swimming pool for six hours at a time and it wouldn't worry me.' I wouldn't be reacting, I wouldn't even be thinking, it was just time going by. And /'d look down and go 'Shit, there goes the whole day gone,' but it didn't worry me because that was just how slow I was operating. It was a long time coming anywhere near normal." On the left side of his head he has a rambling, threesided rectangular scar surrounding his ear. Of the operation, it is the most visible remnant. The unseen effect is what it did to his World Superbike career, the end result of which was landing at Willow Springs to test the CompetitionAccessories.com Ducati. Twenty-four days after the operation he was training again on his bicycle, but it was too (!.~~~~~:;~; soon. Recovery from this sort of operation is usually much longer, though his doctor had told him to do what he had to do. If you can't do it, your brain's going to tell you, he was told. Immediately after this type of operation there's a heightened risk of epilepsy, but Slight got through the crucial 24-hour post-op period. If you have this operation in England you lose your driving privileges for two years, a year in Australia. That was the standard the FIM used in wanting him out of racing for nine months. They decided on three months, which Slight interpreted as 12 weeks. Either way, he'd miss the remainder of the pre-season testing, which was crucial with the new RC51, and the first three races. After two runner-up finishes in the championship, he knew the 2000 title was lost. The three-month period coincided with the World Superbike race at Donington Park. The FIM insisted he pass a test before racing. On the Wednesday before the race, Slight was observed as he rode for 15 laps on the short circuit at Donington. From there, Slight had to go to London for more scans and exams by Formula One doctors. The FIM still couldn't make up its mind. They finally told him he could ride Friday's free practice, but he would be examined before and after the hour-long session to see if he'd deteriorated. "That was the first hour on the bike and then it was qualifying that afternoon," Slight said. "I wasn't perfect. I was definitely away. The whole time I'd been struggling with it. I'd been changing different bikes as well. If I had to jump on the RC-45 I would have been pretty okay, but I had to get on the new bike as well. I wasn't really confident on the thing yet. At that race, they'd done a lot of racing with it they'd done three races and about four more tests. I hadn't done much work on it really, only the year before doing the pre-production stuff trying to get it ready, but not that year. And all through those tests I was feeling bad anyway." The enduring effect of the medical episode is fatigue. Slight needs to get about nine hours sleep, no more late nights, and no alcohol. "It just knocks you back. If you're trying to race as well, it's not worth it." Slight finished ninth in the first race at Donington and seventh in the second on a machine he knew wasn't perfect. "My very first words were, 'This is a great bike, but it's not a race bike.' If you're by yourself, you can do anything you want with it. If you're in traffic, you're in trouble because it doesn't get off the corners, it spins a lot, and it doesn't tum in good. It's got a very good engine package, but it doesn't have much else." Colin Edwards struggled with the new machine until the season was nearly over, crashing inexplicably on three occasions. It was only in desperation Coming to a racetrack near you: Aaron Slight will ride a Competition Accessories Ducati In the 2001 AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. SUperbike Championship· if everything falls Into place. The KIwI tested the bike recently at Willow Springs In Southem Califomla. that the team hit on a solution for the front-end vagueness, and that came with three races to go. Slight was struggling as much as Edwards, with the added burden of knowing that he was being scrutinized for his physical condition. The results weren't what he was used to, but he was riding as hard as he could. In addition to the new bike, there was new management at Honda. Control of the team had been moved from Japan to Honda Europe and Slight wasn't getting the support he'd always enjoyed. "The bike didn't suit me and I thought the bike wasn't correct: he said. "It needed some changes. But because Colin [Edwards] was doing so well in the championship, they didn't really see that. So I didn't get really any bits at all and that was disappointing because /'d always been treated really well. If I needed some parts, they'd make parts. I was considered a good tester. We didn't really get many parts, which really blasts me off. I think it was easier because Colin was out there winning it. He was leading the championship." But that was also deceptive. After the first race, Ducati's Carl Fogarty, the championship stalwart, was gone. Slight was never a factor. Yamaha's Noriyuki Haga had his championship hopes muddled by a failed drug test. Troy Corser had moved from the proven Ducati to the upstart Aprilia. "Suddenly a lot of people weren't there, the championship wasn't a true championship anymore," Slight said. "If Troy [Corser] hadn't been on Aprilia, had he been on a Ducati, it would have been a different thing. He was winning on the Aprilia, which wasn't hardly the bike the Ducati was." Fogarty is retired and Haga has moved on to the GPs, so two of the toughest riders are gone. But there are a number of riders who should challenge this year including Troy Bayliss, who has the benefit of a full season; Ben Bostrom, back on factory machinery and with Dunlop tires; Neil Hodgson, back in the series after a two-year stint in British Superbike; and Corser, back for another year on the improving Aprilia. "They're [Honda] going to struggle this year," Slight believes. "That's what I told them from the first test and everybody was, 'Look the lap times, good.' I was like, 'You've got to race the thing.' When Colin's out front by himself, no problem." Slight's problems with the machine showed in his results. His best weekend was at Assen, Holland, where he finished fifth and fourth, the closest he got to the podium all year. Mostly he was fifth or lower and he ended the season in eighth place. Honda needed a place to put GP hanger-on Tadayuki Okada and Castrol Honda was the perfect place. Okada was in and Slight was out, something he wasn't told until the Saturday night of the final race of the year at Brands Hatch, "and by that time, all the good rides had gone." David Roy is in charge of racing for Ducati North America. Roy went to Brands Hatch to talk to Slight, originally about riding for the HMC Ducati slot that Scott Russell woUld fill. At about the same time, Roy was talking with Anthony Gobert. CompetitionAccessories.com Ducati general manager Tim Pritchard thought at the final AMA race at Willow Springs that Gobert would be signed, though he left open the possibility of losing him to a better offer. That offer came from Yamaha. John Kocinski was also in the mix to the very end. America wasn't on Slight's radar. He didn't follow the racing in the U.S. because there's very little overseas coverage. He knew Mat Mladin, because Mladin had replaced him at Kawasaki Australia when Slight left for World Superbike in 1992. They'd raced at the World Superbike races in 1992 and '93 when Slight was riding the Muzzy Kawasaki World Superbike machine and Mlactin entered the World Superbike races in Japan and Australia as a wild card. Mladin's crew chief this year, fellow Australian Peter Doyle, gave Slight his first factory ride, on the Kawasaki Australia machine. Doyle was Slight's crew chief from the very end of 1988 through the 1992 and '93 cycl. n III _ S • MARCH 7, 2001 19

• Cover