Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Team Yamaha One [iDes FDr One _ "My only goal this test, unlike last year when I went for the quickest time, is to test tires," Yamaha's Anthony Gobert swore after clocking the fastest Superbike time on the first day of the Dunlop tire tests. "I want to find the best one to use in March. I want to make a package that will run for 57 laps. That's what I'm all about: getting the package to get to the finish line first." But by the third day, the red mist had set in and the qualifiers had come out three in all, the third of which nearly gave him the track record. That said, Yamaha, like Gobert, does have a new strategy for 2002. Like Kawasaki, they'll run one aging Superbike with a legitimate title contender riding it. Kawasaki has placed two riders in the 600cc Supersport championship; Yamaha has three - Gobert, his younger brother Aaron, and Damon Buckmaster, an all-Australian line-up. In addition, Gobert and Buckmaster will race the formula Xtreme class out of the Graves Motorsports Yamaha camp. "We kind of felt with the R-7 being third-generation, or whatever the heck it is these days, that .if we could support that one guy 100 percent, then things would be okay," Yamaha team manager Keith McCarty said. "And Anthony obviAnthony Gobert will go it alone on a ously was that guy, and having him back Yamaha RT. on the 600 made a lot of sense as well for us. Because Yamaha really wants to win, they'd love to win the 600 and formula Xtreme class. "With the job that Chuck Graves did, we kind of lightened his load a little bit," McCarthy said. "Everybody would like to get as much track time as possible in formula Xtreme. At the moment, they're not getting as much as the other classes, so this is another way for us to help those guys a little bit. We've got both Damon [BUCkmaster] and Aaron [Gobert] on 600s. We'll help them from our side, and Chuck [Gravesl will focus on the formula Xtreme." Last year, the Yamaha teams were better defined; Anthony Gobert and Tommy Hayden rode the Superbike and 600s, with Aaron Gobert and Buckmaster racing for Graves Motorsports Yamaha's in formula Xtreme and most of the 600 rounds. Because Daytona doesn't have an Xtreme round, the team skipped it, putting them out of the 600cc championship. Along with Anthony Gobert, this year they'll be on factory Yamaha 600s from the start. The 600cc Supersport title is arguably more important to Yamaha than the Superbike championship, given that the R-6 is a top seller and constantly updated, whereas the R-7 is a bit long in the tooth. Some consideration was given to abandoning the Superbike program altogether. "The thought was certainly there," Yamaha's McCarty said. "We just wanted to be careful. It costs a lot of money to go out there and do this, and, like I said, our bikes are a few years old now. And with a lot of things changing, you can kind of look at World Superbike and MotoGP to see that that the whole look of road racing is changing, and I think it's going to be for the better but, unfortunately, there's going to be a little downtime when things aren't going to be just perfect for us. I think we're going to be competitive. We can't win every race. I think that some of the other teams are in a good position at this point; where they'll be when all the rules change, maybe that'll be not such a good situation for them, but we'll take it one year at a time and see what we can do." for this year, that means Anthony Gobert is back on the bike he rode to victory last year at Sears Point and Road America. "I can't believe how comfortable I am on the bike after a year," he said at the end of the first day. "I remember how much we struggled last year getting confident with the setup and the tires. I'm working really hard, and it paid off." Gobert was fastest on the first day on race tires and ended up second fastest overall with a 1:48.428 to Nicky Hayden'S 1:48.141 after both had fitted qualifiers. Hayden did his best time on the 2001 RC51, though he spent most of the test on a 2002 model. Gobert was encouraged that he was able to stay near the times of the other riders using last year's bikes. "Suzuki is on their '02 stuff with a few technicians from Japan; Honda's got a zillion technicians and their '02 stuff; where we're here on our old, worn-out stuff that we used this year and we've pretty much dominated the whole thing," Gobert said. "We get our '02 for this race. It's only engine modifications. Generally when you hear that, it just means more horsepower, so that's what we need." It would have helped on the third day. Gobert shredded his first qualifier and was on a flyer with his second one when American Honda's Miguel DuHamel blew up the 2002-spec RC51 on the back straight. He was well on his way to the best time of the test with his third one when HMC Ducati's Pascal Picotte latched on to his draft out of the chicane. The negative effect of the two caused him to clock a time .004 of a second slower than the pole time of 1:48.424 that Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin tumed in March 2001. The time was faster than the 48.6 Gobert had predicted, but not the mark he was aiming for. "I was a little bit disappointed, because Pascal [Picotte] jumped on the back of me, cut the chicane, and jumped on the back of me, friggin' drafted me down the front straightaway here and I missed out on the track record by like four one-thousandths," Gobert lamented. "I hardly even pulled top gear. My geating was that tall anyway here, not even really pulling top. And I saw him cut the chicane and I was trying to shake me head a bit, like get out of it, and I \q)ew he'd jump on the back. Then it was like fifth gear and when I clicked sixth, it just went brrrrr. And I never pulled it back. And I was, like, can't say what I felt. Then to come in and just miss the track record by nothing. for that I'm disappointed, but on the other hand I went quicker than what I expected to do anyway. The test was a real overall success for the whole Yamaha team. Dunlop tires, I feel, are the best in the world. They've always been my tire of choice." Gobert ended up second-fastest Superbike, and his brother Aaron was second-fastest 600 to Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates - a considerable feat. since he'd only been to Daytona once before, and then on a production Aprilia RSV-250. "It was definitely a lot more exciting, I would say," Aaron Gobert said in comparing the production 250 to the race-ready R-6. "The 250 you would be tucked in for like 15, 20 seconds, thinking 'When am I going to get there?' On the 600, it's like, 'How deep should I go at the end of this straight?' You're sort of getting ready. I've seen the Superbikes go by a few times and I hate to imagine what it's like on one of them." In addition to familiarizing himself with the track. Gobert had to run through the gamut of new Dunlop tires and run a few for race distance. The harder tires were the ones with the durability, but those didn't make for blJstering lap times. "All up, we had about three, maybe four rears, and three different fronts," Aaron Gobert said. "The good stuff - there's only so many of them. It's the harder ones, the hardest stuff that tends to go race distance, no worries, that you've got to put up with going around on. Only the monitor with the lap times is what everyone looks at. That's the problem - to get your confidence going, you waot to do a quick lap, so just putting up with that hard stuff for a while - it's annoying, but you've got to do it." Gobert's teammate Damon Buckmaster last raced at Daytona in 2000 on Chaparral Suzukis. Daytona tires are different, even the Supersport tires, and Buckmaster was sorting out the production tires for much of the test. "We're making progress, making some headway and collecting some information to get us 90in9 for our next test, which is Laguna," Buckmaster said of the late-January test. "Things are going prettY well, really. Times are good on our own. There's a lot of guys blowing the chicane and getting drafts and stuff IJke that. I haven't been concentrating on any of that sort of stuff. I've just been keeping my heed down and getting through the stuff we've got to test. It's coming to us, which is 99od. We've put laps on tires, but we haven't actually done a whole race. We seem to be getting the tire wear we want, which is really good. It depends on the weather in March. I think they got one new tire, but I think that's about it. Maybe a replacement for the 501, which is kind of used as a qualifying tire at some point. There's one new one that we've tried and I liked it a lot. I think it'll probabiy end up being our race tire here. It Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts leads the Honda duo of Miguel DuHamel and Roger Lee Hayden In a preview of things to come in 600cc Supersport action at Daytona. n e vv s

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