Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

ROAD RACE Dunlop Daytona Tire test Team Honda Just Win, Baby Honda has to win this year. That's the indisputable message coming out of the Honda pits this year, a message no doubt imparted to riders Nicky Hayden, Miguel DuHamel and Kurtis Roberts. The last time Honda won a Superbike title was in 1998 with Ben Bostrom. This year they've mostly abandoned any chance of winning the Pro Honda Oils 600cc Supersport title, leaving it up to their satellite teams, to allow their trio of riders to concentrate on the Superbike title. The level of their seriousness was evident at Daytona. For the first time in years, they showed up at the test with next year's bike. Normally, Ray Plumb and Merlyn Plumlee and crew head to the Honda factory in Japan in February to build that year's machines. Not this year. There was a sinister-looking carbon-fiber-black 2002-spec machine delivered to Daytona along with a half-dozen Japanese technicians. The new bike made brutish power, prompting Dunlop's Jim Allen to remark, "They're going to be fast, but they're going to be hard on tires." "This is our first shot at seeing one and getting to ride one, and it seems to be better in all areas," team manage Chuck Miller said. "We made some pushes. Hopefully, we're going to have some little different strategies both with testing and also Japan's involvement, and hopefully having them recognize our series over here and it's arguably as important, and more important, for us than the World Superbike market, so our new management group at Honda has helped convince HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) and Japan that this is where they need to be, they need to focus on this area. We've got a bike testing here in December that we've never had before. In fact, normally we gel our bikes two weeks before Daytona. And we've gol a bike now that we're going to gel to keep till Daytona. And now we're going over, we're going to build our bikes earlier, we're going to get them back earlier, we're going to get to test before we get to Daytona. "We're really trying to do our homework so we've got three strong guys on the starting line come the 200. We'll have five machines total for the whole team, so Nicky [Hayden] will have two, Kurtis [Roberts] and Miguel [DuHamel] will have one, and we have a spare between the two, but we're going to utilize that spare in a different fashion this next year." That Hayden has two rankles Roberts more than DuHamel, to the point that his lawyers took a close look at it last year. "We've got some real good synergy between all the crew chiefs now and everybody's working real well together," Miller said. After two years with Kawasaki, AI Ludington retums to American Honda_ The move was something of a surprise, since he was essentially exiled at the end of the 1999 season, but DuHamel has had two down years, and his best times, and most of his success, came with Ludington. "AI's bringing some new ideas and now that Dave [McGrath, Roberts' crew chief] has the ability to kind of step up to another level and oversee more areas, he can kind of look at a bigger picture. We've got Danny [Hull] just focusing on the chassis for Kurtis and another just doing the engine. We've added one other person to [Nicky hayden] team to allow Merlyn IPlumleelto kind of look at a bigger picture also. We have dedicated guys for each position under each rider; it kind of allows a guy to focus a little more on his expertise, then let the crew chief kind of oversee a little bit bigger of a picture and also hopefully gather more information from the other crew chiefs that they're testing and developing their machines, so they'll get a little bit more done during the weekend." In total, there were four new hires for the road race team. In a contracting economy, Miller said that Honda was keeping an eye on expenditures, small as well as big. "Certainly, they're giving us the resources we need to do our job, but they're scrutinizing every dollar that we spend and making sure that we're keeping an eye on it," he said. "We're cautious with what we spend and how we spend it. Our management, although they're giving us resources, they're checking us weekly. I don't know about the past, but I can say that they want to make sure that you spend the $50 correctly. We're not talking about hundreds and thousands of dollars here; they're concerned with the 20s and 50s and I've kind of become the Scrooge of the team a little bit because we just want people to treat it like it's their own money and not spend anything frivolously or do anything that isn't really necessary. If it's going to impact and win the championship, then we'll certainly look at it real hard." The team looked at the Superbike schedule and realized that, if they wanted to win the championship, they had to let the riders concentrate on that one class. "Just looking at the schedule for next year and all the doubleheaders, it's a little bit more difficult for a rider to do both classes," Miller said, "and also, with acquiring Mike Hale and Roger Lee and Alex {Gobert] and Jake [Zemke], it just seemed like a good move at this point. We feel like we've got the 600cc class covered. And it just gives the other three boys an opportunity to get us a good shot for the Superbike championship." Officially the three Honda riders are equal, but it's clear that Nicky Hayden is first among equals. For the first 2 'I. days, Hayden was the only rider on the 2002·spec RC51. Having fin· ished third and second, respectively, the past two years in the Superbike wars, he's eamed it • not that it doesn't chafe the others. "Unfortunately, for some reason, Nicky's [Hayden] been on the new one for f... ing two and a half days, and now me and Miguel [DuHamel] get to share it for four hours," Roberts said. "Go figure that one." It got worse. The engine exploded on the back straight after 10 laps and Roberts didn't get on the new bike until the final hour of the test. Hayden made good use of the new bike, but better use of the old one. With about 40 minutes to go in the test, Hayden clocked the fastest lap ever for a Superbike around Daytona International Speedway, a 1:48.141 on a qualifying tire. "I wish that was for the watch," Hayden said of the Rolex Daytona Chronograph that goes to the pole-winner for the Daytona 200. "Any time you're quickest, you feel good at the end of the day - especially Daytona, since it is kind of an important test. That lap felt so good. It felt real clean. I don't want to put too much into it because we've got a long way to go." More important than bragging rights was the progress of the new machine. "It's got a lot more feel to it, like the front end," Hayden said. "You can kind of feel it work· ing more. That's the biggest thing· the front end. A little bit more power. They've got to work on making it smoother off the bottom." Hayden tested parts for HRC, doing an endurance test at one point, which meant that they didn't do a lot of suspension work. DuHamel was reunited with Ludington prior to Daytona and immediately felt the old chemistry. "All the tests we've had prior to Daytona have gone so weU," DuHamel said. "AI and I have really clicked and my confidence in him and in myself is really high right now." Ever since Ludington left for Kawasaki, DuHamel has struggled. Much of that can be attributed to his horrific crash at Loudon in 1999 and the effects that lingered into 2000 and 2001. Ludington came to Daytona, then left. His wife, Jocelyn, went into premature labor with their first child. DuHamel did three laps before Wednesday's lunch break and seven laps after lunch before the motor expired on the back straight, leaving a hole in the cases and a long line of oil entering the chicane. Hayden and Plumlee had set it up for Daytona, so DuHamel was quiCkly up to speed and liked what he felt. "I knew that our time was going to be short on it, so I was just trying to get laps to get a feel for the bike," DuHamel said. "I was really pleased with it. The thing seems to work good. Funnily enough, the way the bike slides coming out of comers, through the dogleg mostly, you could really tell - it felt to me that it had a little RC45 sort of swivel to it, the way it slid. Before, when it would slide, it would take the whole bike off the track almost. It was hard to rear·steer it. With this one, when you initiate your rear-steer with it, it swivels around the steering head more and has the whole bike going sideways so you can actually steer it with the rear. That's better for me and I was really pleased with it. It has shades of the RC45 and I like it. You can slide it and keep it on track." Roberts didn't get a lot of time on the new bike - not that it mattered. Roberts arrived at Daytona with bronchitis and developed a stomach bug, though you wouldn't have known it from his times. "We went considerably faster than we went here last year," Roberts said, though he added that everyone else went faster also. "We've got a lot of improvement to do, a lot of stuff to work and feeling better is going to just help. "These tire tests are so weird. Look at Nicky [Hayden] last year. He was doing 51s and then came back here for the race and he almost gets pole. And then Mat [M1adin] is doing high 50s and 51s and we know Mat's going to bet there and Anthony [Gobert] is defmitely going to be there and myself probably. We've all got a lot of work to do, and once we get everything sorted out, we should be right there.' Roberts was one of the riders who seemed to be enjoying himself on the track, smoking the rear tire of the black-and-silver Erion Racing RC5! out of tum one. It's productive in that it helps test tire durability, but it doesn't do much for lap times. "You have to have a little fun," he said. "You're here for three days. With the bike that's not set up right, it lights up a lot. I mean, you probably saw yesterday when I was straight up and down, the thing was still moving around for quite a long time. And as we got the bike better, it started to soak that in, and that's what I was trying to do. We definitely have some more to do."' Roberts, like DuHamel and Hayden, will race the Honda F4i at Daytona only. At the test, he spent little time on the 600. Mostly Roberts wanted to get familiar with his new crew. Dave McGrath is back as the crew chief with Danny Hull, with whom Roberts won the Formula Xtreme title with at Erion in 2000, back at Honda. "I'm trying to win the Superbike championship, so I want to get more familiar with the bike and get my guys familiar with working with everybody together," he said. "That's the plan right now." 34 JANUARY 9, 2002' eye I _ n __ s

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