Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

ROAD RACE Dunlop Daytona Tire test Yoshimura Suzuki still The Champs _ Yoshimura Suzuki is standing pat for 2002, and why not? The team has won the past three AMA Superbike Championships with Mat Mladin, and both Aaron Yates and Jamie Hacking have shown the ability to win on occasion. The 2001 season was the first on the new Suzuki GSX-R750, so there were teething problems, which were eventually overcome. For 2002 they're a little stronger. Now what they need is consistency from Yates and, especially, Hacking, whose front-end woes caused him to crash an inordinate number of times. Yates wasn't free from the vagaries of gravity, either, executing a spectacular high-side at Laguna Seca. The injuries weren't grave but continued the theme he established before the start of the year. Yates was injured in a motocross accident before the season, then again at Laguna Seca. His season was compromised. Mladin broke his leg while training at home in Australia after Daytona, though it didn't severely impede his championship run. Though he won his third championship in a row, Mladin was uncharacteristically inconsistent, some· thing which he likely won't be able to get away with two years in a row. But you still have to get on with your job and try to figure out if the stuff's working suspensionwise and things like that are actually getting better. I wasn't happy all week. Any lime I can't pull 14,000 rpm on the front straight when I should be pulling 15,000 is a worry, absolutely. Suzuki has to get their act together and get things happening." Despite his carping, it appeared that Mladin was able to run with the Honda RC51 of MIguel DuHamel. The reality was something less. "MIguel IDuHamel] was full lock sideways going onto the bank and smoking the tire up and you can run with anybody when that's happening," Mladin said. "So that's a difference. Top-endwise, even here, the bike's actually not too bad. But the unfortunate thing is when we're doing 180 here," he added pointing to the finish line, "they're doing 180 200 yards back down the track. Unfortunately, that's acceleration. We know what the bike's doing. It's defmitely just not performing like it should be. And the other thing is, when there are guys like Jamie IHackingl and even myself, when you get in someone's draft, it makes a difference as well. I've been around too long. I know what my bike's like." Mladin appeared to spend an inordinate amount of time in the pits, changing suspension components. There weren't a lot of changes, but they take time. The final verdict was encour· aging. "I think we found some stuff that's going to work for us," Mladin said. Working with his team, Showa had come up with new gear for Daytona. "I think we definitely found some stuff that we'll run next year. We only tried one link this afternoon and it was a link that we knew probably wouldn't work, but we just wanted to revisit it. We keep trying it every year when we come back, just to see if our new suspension stuff maybe will help that link work. It's the link that we run at most other tracks, but it just doesn't work here. There was that link. We sort of knew what would happen. But we thought we'd run out of stuff to do, because I was going to pack it up at three o'clock. They said let's try some stuff. Swingarms - we had one new swingarm to test. It wasn't really a test, it's just next year's swingarm is what we're going to use. You rarely put a swingarm in there and find anything in lap times. It's just something they believe might be a little better for some reason, and most of the time I never feel anything. Forks: We got new size forks and we definitely think they could be good to us. Only thing is, they were very limited and we really didn't have enough stuff. We want to change the forks around a bit and this sort of stuff. Again, it's Daytona, and anything we may feel works here probably, we'll have to test it at Laguna or somewhere before we actually know if it's better or not. Because, again, it's hard to test forks when the back end's coming around on you because you've got no grip. You can't push the forks when it's like that." Yates didn't have the same difficulties adjusting to the new GSX-R750 last year as Mladin, though he also had trouble with feel in the front end. By the end of the test. he'd made something of a breakthrough. "We ran through a few things that seemed to really make the bike better or just make it feel better to me," Yates said. "Right there at the end. we put some kind of different tire in the rear that really had a lot better grip than what I'd been going around on, and I wasn't really prepared for that. I didn't know it was going to be something better. I probably could have gone pretty quick on it. Most of the time I was on last year's race tire out there. It was suffering from no grip for a pretty good while. We tried the other tire and it really got things rolling. The other change we made is to the front end. We actually got some input from the bike now - some feel from the road, which makes a big difference." Hacking spent far too much time on the ground last year and he knows it. He was maddeningiy inconsistent, even in the course of the same weekend. The season began with his getting caught up in the pace-car disaster at Daytona, scuttling his Superbike hopes, but he rebounded with his first Superbike win at Road Atlanta. The season ended with a high-side at VIR, more down than up. AaI"Oft Y.... had a quality test and left _ the fastest of the llOOcc Supersport rtders. Team manager Don Sakakura said the plan for this year is to stay the course. Mladin struggled with the new equipment, but worked his way through it. Part of it was due to testing, and Yoshimura Suzuki has seven tests scheduled this year. "It should help keep the guys a bit motivated and tighter·scheduled," Sakakura said. "Once we get going in March, it's pretty much nonstop. I like it; I like the second race a little closer to the Daytona weekend. They always give you too much break." The major change at Yoshimura Suzuki is a reshuffling of personnel. "We're going to keep a working team together, a successful team, especially with Mat's crew . they're going to be back for another couple of years - This year and next," he said. "But as far as the other teams, we've kind of shifted some guys around. Chris [WeidJ) now is working with Aaron. His function is primarily 60Occ-Supersport development. I thought we failed a bit in that class last year, so we're really putting a major push for that 600cc title this year. Jamie IHacking], we have one new guy there - Steve Meyer, came over from one of the Honda teams last year. He's fit right in with Jerry. Jerry Daggett's the crew chief this year for Jamie." Mat Mladin's team remains the same, and the strongest in racing. The results speak for themselves, not only in the championship, but at Daytona as well. The team has won the past two Daytona 200s, a close one in 2000 and a runaway in 2001 while everyone else fell by the wayside. Mladin is under no illusion that it's going to be the same in 2002. The test was a mild success on the suspension side, but the engines were never up to speed. It left Mladin in a surly mood on Tuesday, but he brightened somewhat with Wednesday's progress. "I wasn't positive about the bike because the thing wouldn't run," Mladin said about his early pessimism. "Any time you come to a test and the bike is 800 rpm lower in top gear than what it was in the race, and it's supposed to have had a year's development, it doesn't make you very happy. Yesterday I was pissed off all day and today I wasn't real happy either. 38 JANUARY 9, 2002' a U c I e n e vv so "That's what we're trying to work at; we're trying to work at the consistency right now," Hacking said, "trying to get the thing from track to track, week to week, and last year, when J rode the thing, it never felt the same to me'and I don't know why. I always crashed losing the front. Every time I fell on it, J lost the front. It just wouldn't give me no feeling out of it. I couldn't see where the edge was. We're trying to get that out of it. The Showa are doing what they can for me to try to make it as best as it can be." Even after a season on the machinery, Hacking admitted that he still wasn't comfortable. "The front end won't do what I want it to do," Hacking said of the GSX-R600. "It makes me uncomfortable. We keep working on it, trying to get comfortable on it. The front ain't what I like." There's also a new technical team this year, headed by Jerry Daggett. "I've got kind of an older team behind me now," Hacking said, "a little calmer, to keep me calmer. I get kind of wound up kind of easy." Jamie HlIcIdng I. hoping a calmer ab..o.phere w1111.ad to m_ . u . . In 2002-

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