Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

an extra minute in the pits to set right. Out back you could hear the fat lady warming up her vocal chords. Edwards, in the next pit stall and waiting for Rossi to come in two laps later, watched Barros and crew blow their chances for victory. When Edwards rejoined the race for the final time, he enjoyed a healthy 38 seconds on Barros. In the waning hours of daylight, Edwards deftly threaded his way through backmarkers to keep the interval to Barros at 30-some seconds. "I disappoint, I very disappoint on the last pit stop," said a sad Barros. "I see the guys don't finish their work; I don't know what's happen with back tire. So ( said I must try best again, I know at nighttime I can go faster. So I say, 'please, dark come very quickly. God help me.'" Edwards, though, knew he had this race in the bag, "The fourth hour, ( just did what I had to do. Just cruised it around, didn't take too many chances, and just relaxed." "My mind, 1 just think of victory," Barros said, "But the gap is too big. 1 see the board the last seven minutes of the race and I am 20 seconds behind, Okay, I try to keep the pace, but it is too many seconds for just three or four laps." Edwards took the win 14.286 seconds ahead of Barros, Kagayama piloted the Team Suzuki bike home in third, while Ukawa finished the riding chores on the third factory Honda, Poor Haga walked in, with the drive chain from his Yamaha lost somewhere in the dark. eN Sum.. Cin:uit Sum•• City, ......n Resuhs: lulust5,2DDl FINAL RESULTS: 1. V. Rossi/C. Edwards (Han); 2. T, Okada/A, Borras (Han); 3, A. Ryo/Y. Kageyeme/A. Watzmebe (Suz); 4. T. Ukawa/D.Kllto (Hon); 5. K. Kitegllwa/T. Arakaki, (Suz); 6. Y. Tekede/T. Yamaguchi (Hon); 7. N. Fujiwara/N. Numoto (Yom); 8. D. Sakai/H. Nod. (Han); 9. S. Mertens/W. Nowhmd ($uz); 10. H. Senmyo/K. Nllkamura (Hon). Distance: 217 laps. 7870 miles Time: 8 hours, I min., 30.173 sec. Margin or victory: 14.286 sec. BRIEFLY••• In a cruel Irony, Haga was fined 250 Swiss francs over theoweek for speeding violations in the pits. "I check tachometer. For first gear, 8000 rpm. Then· I don't know. They speed limit me," The silver·haired Haga said. One interesting statistic from the 8 Hour results are the median lap times from the top teams. The median time is the time which one finds an equal number of faster lap times compared to slower lap times. In endurance racing the median represents the lap time that a team actually rides at. as the average lap time is significantly affected by pit stop laps. The best median lap time from the 2001 8 Hours was from the Okada/Barros team at 2:10.760, followed by Edwards/Rossi at 2:10.816, Ukawa/Kato at 2:11,069, and Ryo/Kagayama/Watanbe at 2:11.277. Last year' 5 best median time was from race winners Ukawa and Kato at 2: 11.858, thus clearly indicating that race times this year were a full second a lap faster than last year. Complaining about slow riders seemed to be every factory rider's number·one complaint. Edwards: "I was royally pissed-off [Friday] morning. Trying to qualify - my first lap out of the pit was my only clear one, because I was in front of everybody. After that it was just disgusting· a lot of slow guys. You've got about a handful of international guys that come over here, and then you've got to find 100 other guys to fill the grid. There aren't 100 other guys in Japan that can ride a motorcycle. Some of the guys are just ridiculous. It's crazy. There are times when you'd just love to have a shotgun out there, and get rid of a few," Yanagawa: "Too many slow riders. They have good bike, I mean, straight speed, really good. Difficult to pass." Okada: "Every session, for me, big problem was backmarker. This year particularly, it was big problem for me. Everyone complaining. The 600 guys are like stock machine, running together - not like Grand Prix. I don't know backmarker, which way they go - very different cornering speed. " Hooters Suzuki made the long trip to Japan, as part of a sponsorship tie-in explained by Skip Dowling from Orient Express. "We're the importer for TiForce exhaust systems, which are made right here In Suzuka. Part of our marketing plan was to get an American team over here to get TiForce a lot of publicity in their home country, as well as go back to the States and advertise it as a real high-end, high·performance exhaust system. Last year (Orient Express! got signed up with the Hooters team to put exhaust systems on their bikes. We ran Daytona, and there we had a meeting with the people from Suzuka to put everything together, Last few months we gathered a team up. We've got a team of 21 people here, marketing people as well as Hooters team members, support staff, whatever. But it all came together pretty smoothly, organizing flights and all that. The staff here at Suzuka IS absolutely fantastic, as far as support and all that. They've gone out of their way and have been first class in every- thing they've done. The initial plan for us was to prep the bikes at home, and get them shipped here. But we just kind of ran out of time to get bikes together and get them prepped and shipped over here. In the end, the bikes were prepped here. We brought WORLD ENDURANCE C'SHIP POINTS STANDINGS: I. Suzuki-Costrol (141); 2. GMT94 (133); 3, (TIE) Zongshen/Free Bike (58); 5. Wim Edwards hoists the big trophy high as the Texan and his teammate Rossi celebrate their victory. Rossi became the first Italian to ever win the prestigious event. Motors (56): 6. Phase One (48); 7. Police Nationale (4Z); 8. Hondo·Elf (40); 9. Junior Team LMS (37); 10. Motomox/Derbi (36). we were going to do the final dialing in over here and what not. Koiichi spent the last couple weekends dialing the bike in, getting some pretty respectable lap times in here, and just sorting It out. We took It to the final stage; changed a fair amount of things to suit Mike Barnes and Mike Ciccotto, and it turns out Occotto will not be riding. Our general plan was have a small team here, just to support the 500 tests here in Japan. All the 500 teams now, they have a GP team, and test team. We have two people here lin Japan! to support With tires for these tests BaSically, these people help prepare us for Suzuka 8 Hours," According to Goubert, Michelin's place In the motorcycle tire market was not strong enough to JUStify a high·profile to come here, get our feet wet. and then maybe over the next presence at natIonal level events. couple years to come back and be familiar With everything. " department. IS very small. compared with the four·wheel one. We don't sell that many two-wheel tires. When you look at the invest- our own suspension. and Hooters Racing rider Michael Bames was enjoying himself as a Suzuka newble. "Shortly after I spoke with Steve DeCamp about going to go Hooters, I was aware that the Suzuka trip was part of going to the Suzuka 8 Hours. (Suzuka Circuit! is an immaculate track, super fast guys. I was intimidated, but I was excited and not that nervous because of the fact that I've done some world endurance this year, and that gave me a lot of confidence. The biggest thing is the heat. I"m used to hot weather, but this is incredible hot. This is like Gateway in St. Louis, the Superbike National we had there a few years ago. This is really, really hot. And the track is so physically demanding. Recognizing a lot of the riders has helped put me at ease. Also, haVing Takahito Mori here was a big help, He talked me through the track, showed me some secrets and whatnot. He told me not to crash In the fast right before Spoon Curve. He's like, 'don't crash there, many people have been injured there.' So he crashed there yesterday, and now he's done! He has a shoulder and a knee injury, but he's okay. I was sitting here watching it on the monitor, and I was trying to figure out where that turn was from the camera angle. Then I real· ized it was him!" Barnes had an eventful race, and became a member of the Spoon Curve Crash Club while running inside the top 20_ "It was going great until my second stint, when I lowsided coming on to the back straightaway, It really bummed me out. I didn't get on the gas soon enough. It stayed on it's side, I picked it back up, took the gravel out of the lower, and got back out there. Then we suffered a transmission problem, which the guys fixed. That cost us 14 minutes. Then another problem from the accident: we broke the front-fairing bracket. We had to repair that when we turned our light on, because they noticed our light wasn't in the right spot. I had just gotten back up to 33rd from 49th. But I had a really good time. I stuck with Valentino Rossi a few times· it's on video tape!" Barnes planned to ride with Mike Ciccotto, but Ciccotto withdrew due to strength issues in his left hand caused by a broken bone. "I wanted to ride, and I went out and did a few laps, and got up to speed okay, but not at the speed I need to be. It was pretty irritating. I did not feel comfortable on the bike, and I didn't want to throw it away, I'd rather go home, get some surgery, and get ready for the AMA events." In past years, the four major manufacturers always had at least one team on Dunlop tires, and another team on Michelin tires. Beginning this season, Michelin stopped supporting riders in the All-Japan Superbike Championship, and the domestic teams, as in AMA Superbike, have uniformly converted to Dunlop. Nicolas Goubert from Michelin took time out to explain. "We're not racing In Japan anymore. Basically, we've stopped competing in big national events. It's the same In U.S., we stopped a few years ago, we stopped thiS year In Japan. Cost reduction, mainly. We M Michelin. for the two·wheel ment. for what we have to do to be In the national racing. It'S huge, compared to what we sell. So we decided to withdraw from all of that. and keep only in worldwide activities, which is 500 and World Superbike." Withdrawing from national events does save Michelin money, but at a cost to some of their international level effort. "We knew from the beginning, when we decided to with· draw from all these national championships· I mean, all three main ones: UK, USA, and Japan· we knew this would cause us problems at the world level. Basically, when you don't race in national championship. it gives you less inFormation. You need to ride and optimize tires for each track. We knew it would be more difficult for 8 Hours, more difficult for Donington, more difficult for Brands Hatch, Laguna .... well, for Laguna it's always been diffi· cult." Michelin's return to Formula One is not related to downslz· ing of motorcycle racing activities, though. "We're really happy the way F1 has been going. We didn't expect to be on top of the field so quickly. For us, it's unbelievable. You know, from the beginning, when the big boss said we were going to enter the Formula One races, he said straight away that all the other racing departments would be the same. Our involvement in World Rally championship, GT, and two wheel would be the same. And it's what we've been doing. We do expect to have some return from Formula One, We don't know exactly when we'll have that return, because Formula One puts a lot more money into the racing divi· sion. It means a lot more about research and development. material. Of course, all the stuff we use in Formula One is not good for two-wheel, but part of it will eventually be good, sooner or later. We're very positive about that." Hanging out in the paddock at Suzuka was Dale Corser, third in the 2000 AMA Pro Thunder Championship and brother of Aprilia Superbike rider Troy Corser. Dale Corser now works as a stunt man at Universal Studios Japan, located in nearby Osaka. "At [the last AMA NatIOnal atl Willow Springs there was a lot of action in the pits with Ducati talking with Mitch Hansen at HMC. Ducati said, 'Here's the deal: you've got these bikes and these two riders, which are Scott Russell and Steve Rapp,' That sort of let me out in the cold. I flew out of Willow Springs about four days after, went back home, and made a few phone calls. I heard about an audition down under with Universal Studios Japan. I thought I"d go for it. I went for the audition. I was pretty confident I"d get the job, and I did. The money is pretty good. The show 'Waterworld' is the number one show in USJ [Universal Studios JapanJ. it's pretty popular. I play the Mariner, which is Kevin Costner, and the hero of the show. It baSically involves riding a Jet Ski, a stand-up 750. A lot of high-speed chases, submarines, sprays. My only weapon is my Jet Ski spray. Maybe this will eventually lead into acting, that's the whole goal. I"d like to try to get In to Universal Studios Hollywood, and maybe this will lead In to stunt work. I"m pretty versatile: Jet Ski, water ski, skateboarding, BMX, and all that sort of stuff. " cue' e n e vv s AUGUST 22.2001 13

• Cover