Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128137
Colin Edwards' Castrol Honda RC51/SP-2 By degree V-twin Superbike went from prototype to title-winner in just a single season - an incredible R&D feat that no other company has ever managed in the 15-year history of World Superbike (the RC30 was a spinoff of existing Honda V-fours), even if Ducati's achievement in winning the world title in the debut season of the 916 comes close. But they didn't have to start from ground zero with an all-new engine, as Honda did - one moreover which used a format and thus technology that the Japanese firm's engineers were unfamiliar with. However, it's one thing to win a title, quite another to defend it - and that's what the Castrol Honda team's reigning World Champion Colin Edwards had to do in the season just ended, aboard the refined version of his title-winning V-twin (see technical sidebar). But while the Texas Tornado kicked off the season in promising style, finishing just outside the rostrum places in the first two races at Valencia on a track his Ducati and Aprilia rivals had worn a groove in during winter testing, the mechanical ailments suffered by his new teammate Tadayuki Okada cast a cloud ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE y regaining the World Superbike rider's title with their new RC51 in its 2000 debut season, Honda not only wrested it away from the Ducati trophy cabinet, they also took what in retrospect was the crucial step toward turning World Superbike into the Battle of the Twins it has now undoubtedly become. Until one of the Japanese manufacturers went the V-twin route - and did it properly, not like Suzuki's half-hearted attempt with the TLlOOOR - it seemed World Superbike was destined to be an arena in which the dice were so heavily loaded against one set of participants that the others didn't need to try too hard to keep winning. Well, the advent of the Honda RC51 changed all that, and just maybe top management in Bologna underestimated just how determined those clever engineers at HRC were to build a better Ducati, and how quickly they could actually do so - or else they might have fast-forwarded their new-generation desmoquattro. History records that Honda's 90- B 14 JANUARY 16, 2002' c u e I e n e _ s over the season opener. That became a major concern when, after winning the first race at the next round in South Africa very comfortably, the American's engine blew big time in race two - so that instead of leading the points table after three rounds, having splashed to a superbly-judged victory next time out in the only race that could be run at Phillip Island, Edwards was instead playing catchup to the Bayliss/Ducati and Corser/Aprilia duo. That's what he ended up having to do for the rest of the season, with just two more race victories to his credit one each at the two German rounds in spite of a 100-percent finishing record apart from the very last race of the year at Imola, when Edwards got mixed up in Troy Corser's big accident and ended up running off the track to avoid him. This reliability confirms that Honda cured the RC51 's early-season reliability problem very qUickly, underlined by Makoto Tamada's pair of victories in the Sugo round on his Dunlop-shod bike. But with just 12 rostrum visits for Edwards all season, compared to new champion Bayliss' 15, and a mere three for teammate Okada, it's now apparent that Honda slipped backward in 2001, in the face of a determined effort by Ducati to rega in their much-prized world title with the all-new 996R Testastretta shortstroke V-twin engine. That engine, by no coincidence, has adopted the very same 100-bore engine dimensions as the RC51. Now, who's copying whom? The chance to gauge the benchmark against which Ducati engineers had to work in building a better Honda (okay, okay - only joking, ducatisti: call off the contracts ... !) came with a short six-lap session on Edwards' World Championship runner-up at an HRC press test day at the Jerez circuit. This came just 10 days after cutting a good number of laps at Valencia aboard the Bayliss World Champion 996R, in between which I'd done better than race distance on the same circuit on Troy Corser's works Aprilia RSVlOOO. This meant that, in the space of little more than a week, I'd ridden all three 2001 factory V -twin Superbikes: how did the Honda stack up against its Italian rivals?