Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Series Round B: Pikes Peak International Raceway course. "All the guys were fast this might try to get away. Three laps weekend. There's no running away later, he hit a false neutral going into for me. From my standpoint, I just turn one and lost the lead. "I was afraid to hit the shift lever, wanted to stay with them." That wouldn't be possible, and he not knowing what gear the thing was was passed three times in the hard- going to pop into, leaned over on braking area entering turn three, at your knee all the way into one," the end of the back stretch. Zemke said. "I just pulled in the "We made some changes to the clutch and coasted all the way rear of the bike that essentially through one until I got to the exit, loaded the front up way too much after where the patch over the tunnel going on the brakes, and it was push- is. That's when I finally got the thing ing, moving around and so I couldn't in gear. It really killed my drive." push as hard as those guys," Buck- Fergusson took advantage to take master said. "When we ended up the lead for a lap, then Zemke was fifth, I was just trying to keep them at back in front with Pridmore continu- bay, hold on to fifth. That would have ing his late-race surge. Pridmore was briefly in front on the been good points for us." As it was, he earned ninth-place 23rd lap, then for good on the 24th. points, and still leads the champi- "The last five laps, I tried to keep onship with 136, 13 more than up with Jay [Pridmore], but I just Zemke, after four of nine rounds. couldn't do it," Zemke said. "He was By the time Buckmaster landed in fifth, on the eighth lap, Zemke was in killing me on the drives out of two and onto the front straightaway." Pridmore said he was pretty strong front of Fergusson, Hayden, and Pridmore. Zemke had about a second at going into tum three. the halfway mark and thought he @(J[]DDftjJ ") think that the biggest reason for mw D[fD@@[JiJjJ[j)@fJ@[fD@@ep After an appeals board detennined that the Graves Motorsports' Yamaha R1/R7 hybrid that Damon Buckmaster (6, right) rode to victory in the first three rounds of the Lockhart-Phillips USA Formula Xtreme series was illegal, the team scrambled to build a new motorcycle. Buckmaster made his debut on the R1 at Pikes Peak Intemational Raceway on Friday, earning pole position in the process. The race was less successful, Buckmaster struggling in fifth place with an ill-handling motorcycle, and then a connecting-rod bolt broke on the fmal lap, ending his day. Even so, the controversy over the legality of the motorcycle has not dissipated, and a rival team owner said he was going to force the AMA to prove that the new bike is legal for racing. "The original decision on the whole appeals process is very disappointing," Yamaha race team manager Keith McCarty, who represented Yamaha the appeal board hearing at AMA headquarters in Ohio, said. McCarty said that he was told by an official of the AMA that the machine would be legal. As McCarty interprets the rulebook, it is. The rulebook states that "The class is restricted to motorcycles produced for street use and available in the United States through retail dealers." Further on, it states that "engine modifications are allowed." The Yamaha R7, which is at the heart of the dispute, was street legal and available through dealers, though mostly to racers. Unlike the F1M, which homologates new machinery for five years, with exemptions allowed after the initial period, there is no expiration date on the AMA homologation. If there was, the Harley-Davidson VR-1000 would have been obviated years ago. "That was the best point of the year," Buckmaster said after grabbing a championship point with his pole run on Friday aftemoon. "They're already bitchin' again. [Kevin) Erion is over there waving his arms like a monkey." The only problems that Buckmaster was having in adjusting to the new bike were with the fuel-injection system and a lack of rear-tire grip. "We've still got some fuel-injection issues and some rear-grip issues," the Australian said. "We just need time." One of the things that may have been making a difficult transition easier is the fact that the high altitude makes the bikes less powerful at Pikes Peak. "The altitude has knocked some horsepower off the bike," Buckmaster said. "More horsepower would probably make things worse in the chassis department. It's a lot different with the fuei injection compared to the flat slides. It's really efficient." The saga began last year, when the AMA said that the hybrid was legal for competition. Buckmaster ran it to second in the 2001 FX championship. The issue of legality was brought up again over the winter, prompted bye-mails from an AMA member who wanted to know what machines were legal in the class. Erion Racing's Kevin Erion also had a stake in the matter and asked various AMA officials if the hybrid would be legal in 2002. The answer, he was initially told, was that it wouldn't be, but that the final word would come in the 2002 AMA rulebook. When the rulebook was issued, Erion discovered that no changes had been made. When Erion contacted AMA Director of Competition Merrill Vanderslice, he was told that each of the brands - Suzuki, Honda, and Yamaha - had won races in 2001 and that the class was competitive. "We decided not to make any changes," Vanderslice said, according to Erion. Vanderslice did not attend the Pikes Peak race. Since the protest has to be filed by a rider in the race, Erion's riders protested the machine at the first FX race of the season at Califomia Speedway in Fontana. The initial protest was denied by the AMA, so Erion appealed. The appeal was heard by a three-person appeal board in Ohio on May 21, the Tuesday follOWing the Road Atlanta round. The appeals board ruled that the machine wasn't legal, but that Buckmaster wouldn't lose the points he'd already eamed. "To be given 10 days to get something ready for this event was a new target in motorsports racing that nobody ever had to jump through," Yamaha's McCarty said. 14 JUNE 12, 2002 • cue • • Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore (431 won the Fonnula Xtreme final after a batUe with Jake Zemke (98). n ..... s Graves had heard rumors that the there was change in the wind, but continued making phone calls as the team made its way to Road America for a previously scheduled test. He'd been calling various people from the time he left Road Atlanta, finally getting an answer on the Intemet on Tuesday. (AMA officials left a message at his shop in California.) Once the answer came, Graves left the Road America test, leaving Buck· master to concentrate on the R6. Graves drove straight back to California to begin building a legal motorcycle for the Pikes Peak race. Last Friday, the team took delivery of two R1s from Yamaha's media loan pool and immediately got to work. "We took five guys, shut down the shop. then made it 10 guys," Graves said. ·We worked day and night. Everything was hard to do. There wasn't a simple thing to do. Everything had to be modified or made. Our front forks are the same, but they had to be grafted on." The bike was brought to Colorado and tested at a small track in Pueblo, just south of PPIR. "We just needed to run a couple of laps, give it a bit of a shakedown," Buckmaster said. "It's a tall order to bring a new motorcycle to an AMA event and try to win." The bike was finally completed on Thursday night, after the shakedown. One of the improvements the team's made is the switch to fuel injection. "What we needed was time to get the fuel injection right," Buckmaster said. "We had plans to do it this season." The race was a letdown, a connecting-rod bolt breaking on the final lap. "We've got a lot of room to grow." Graves said. "We're still way off the mark. There's a lot of little stuff we've got to do to the motorcycle. We're not happy. We'll march forward." Buckmaster said that the bike had been a handful. He was passed a number of times on the brakes at the end of the back straight. The team had made a suspension and geometry change in the moming, which affected stability under braking. "We made it for the warm-up and it felt OK for the time we had on the bike, but to try to do it consistently was pretty tough," he said after retiring. The question now is whether the new machine is legal. Graves insists it is, Erion isn't entirely sure. Graves said that he'd sent photos of the chassis modifications bye-mail to AMA Pro Racing Technical Manager Rob King and that King had approved them. Others believe the frame may not comply to the AMA rule which states that the chassis has to be at least 50-percent stock. Erion inspected the frame on the pit lane before the start of FX qualifying, with Graves engaging him in conversation. Erion said one of his riders would file a protest after the race as an academic exercise. The question he wants resolved is, how does the AMA determine 50-percent compliance? "Alii want to do is make the AMA be able to determine so I know in the future how they conduct the examination of my bikes," Erion said. "It's a great opportunity for them to enforce the rulebook, or not enforce it." Erion Honda's Roger Lee Hayden filed the protest after the race. On Sunday moming, the AMA made its ruling and issued a press release which said, "After an inspection of the frame in question, AMA Road Race Manager Ron Barrick determined that the frarrie complies with the Formula Xtreme frame-rule requirements." Kevin Erion said he wouldn't appeai the decision, but that the process wasn't over. "I had a conversation with Ron Barrick, and I'm going to write a letter to the AMA to reiterate my concem about their ability to enforce the rule," Erion said after the race. "I don't believe they can enforce it accurately, and they certainly can't do a visual enforcement, which they did here. It's not over. I'm not satisfied."

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