Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

World Championship Road Racing Series Round 5, Italian Grand Prix echoed his confidence. "Friday doesn't count for much. but we've definitely taken a step forward,· he said. BRIEFLY••• Garry McCoy aims to be back on his Red Bull Yamaha in time for the British GP on July 14. The Australian star. who pulled out of the French GP because of worsening pain from his right-leg injury. has had further surgery to the injury. clearing up complications that had developed. McCoy broke his right fibula and tibia in preseason tests at Valencia, but came back limping for the first race of the season at Suzuka, with the injury pinned. However. his riding was severeiy hampered by worsening pain. with screws coming loose and even breaking. Surgery in Vienna on May 21 discovered that McCoy had developed bone spurs in his ankle, protnuding from an earlier injury dating back to 1998. "I'm happy that the pain has gone at last." said McCoy, after being able to walk without cnutches a week after the surgery. "The sur9eon said that my leg was a real mess inside - lots of fibrotic tissue in the joints. plus the bone spurs. He gave it a good clean-out." French motocross superstar JeanMichel Bayle will continue to ride McCoy's Yamaha at Mugello, Barcelona and Assen, but team manager Peter Clifford was quick to contradict specuiation that he might become a fixture. "Jean-Michel definitely doesn't want to make a racing return. He is our test rider only, and though he agreed at the beginning of the year to stand in if necessary, there's no question of him wanting a penmanent ride." Ducati iaunched their MotoGP bike (right) to a packed reception on the eve of practice at Mugello - with the veil drawn off the bike by Australian fan Daniel Bretag. The Sydney-sider won the honor with a $10.230 donation to the Riders for Health charity. This was the signal for the prototype to be submerged under a sea of photographers, pressmen and rival factory engineers, eager for their first glimpse of the second European MotoGP challenger to Japan's domination of GP racin9. The occasion was impressive. although there was little fresh information. Much was already known about the Sedici 9O-degree V4 after it was announced at last year's Italian GP, with pictures, technical drawings and technical infonmation on the web soon afterward. The only new aspect was the swoopy logo, designed by Aldo Dnudi. In fact. there was rather less available. Last year. they had said they hop.ed to have the bike out for occasional wild-card rides during this season. That plan has clearly been shelved, with a planned 12,500 miles of track testing yet to begin. There was, however, a motorcycle, which Ducati Corse managing director Claudio Domenicali said was "a working prototype," although track tests have yet to begin. And, in appearance as well as overall conception, it is very much a Ducali, instantly recognizable as such. "At the moment, we are benchtesting the engine," he said, with at least two different firing orders being tried, including the "Twin Pulse" system that gives the en9ine its name, with adjacent cylinders firin9 simultaneously. "We believe that we will need 220 bhp, and our tests make us believe our en9ine will be very competitive," he said. The details of the Sedici machine (Italian for 16 - the number of valves) remain as announced: • An "L· 90-degree V4, at least nominally comprising a pair of the company's trademark L-twin engines. • Desmodromlc operation for the valves, four per cylinder, with a target of 18.000 rpm. the highest ever reached by this system of valve operation. • Trellis tubular-steel chassis like the Superbike and road bikes (wrongly dubbed "Trestle" in the written material). • Aluminum twin swingarm, pivoted on the engine casings - a cast single swinganm as used on the Superbike would have been too heavy, because of the greater length allowed by the more-compact engine. • High-level exhausts, siamesing under the seat into a single chamber, but with two oblong tail outlets. The bodywork was new, with a single intake in the nose, an intriguingly curvaceous upper section, and no vents on the flanks. like the rest of the bike, it had been designed on a computer as a virtual constnuction, cutting out the rough prototyping stage. British Fl engineer Alan Jenkins had been consultant to the project and said that this was one of several versions. It looked relatively large, but "it's not the biggest or the smallest version.· The team had already completed 80 hours of wind-nunnel testing, with another 40 planned before the start of next season. There was much talk of ·passion· at the launch - a factor not only in the remarkable commercial recovery of Ducati from near banknuptcy in 1996, but also in the racing program and ambitions. Of 1000 factory employees, 100 work for Ducati Corse, the racing branch of the organization. The expected budget for Ducati Corse in 2003 would be $30 million, with two thirds of that for the MotoGP project. and the remainder for SBK. The company would continue to support SBK, said Domenicali. Asked if this was not like committing bigamy. he laughed: "It's not bigamy. It's more like people living under the same roof, but in different apartments." Footnote: The prevalence of Passion in the presentation was underlined by the Microsoft Word spell-check alternative for Sedici. It is "Seduce." Who will ride the new Italian GP machine? Fonmer Superblke rider Vittoriano Guareschi has been signed up for two years as a test rider, said Domenicali. But he would not name any names for the two-rider GP team. A broad hint suggested that one of them will be current factory SBK team star Troy Bayliss, who was not at the presentation. "It would be hard to ignore the rider who has won nine of the last 12 Superbike races.· he said. Loris Capirossi and Max Biaggi have both been linked to the team by persistent numors, but the second rider might come from outside Italy. "It would be nice to have an Italian rider on an Italian bike, but Ducati is an international brand," said Domenicali. Other rumors linked Kenny Roberts Jr. with the project. The American 2000 World Champion, whose Suzuki contract nuns out at the end of this year, is known to have had talks with Ducati. The most spectacular numor has Biaggi taking the Marlboro sponsorship money with him to the team, leaVing Yamaha without major backing. The man who unveiled the new bike is an Italian classic bike fan from Sydney. Daniel Bretag had the trip of his life after putting the highest bid in at a Chivas Regal "Riders for Health" Internet auction. "It's been fantastic," said Bretag, whose private collection includes a 1974 Ducati 750SS, a 1975 MV Agusta and a Laverda 750F. He was a VIP guest at the Silverstone World Superbike round, visited the Ducati factory, and also had a ride on the Marlboro Yamaha two-seater with Randy Mamola at Mugello. He was chosen for the unveiling by Ducati, who had been wondering how to include Riders for Health in the high-profile launch, according to charity boss Andrea Coleman. The now well-established charity provides healthcare in underdeveloped countries in Africa, with motorcycles playing an important part in their work. Yamaha's fourth chassis for the Ml four-stroke gave riders Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa a signifi· cant step forward after the promising improvements from the revised slipper-clutch control system at the last race at Le Mans. The new chassis breaks with a long-standing Yamaha Deltabox tradition - instead of a straight line over the top of the engine, the latest version has an angled bend. This was necessary because of changes in engine. position and angle, which not only moved the crankshaft and thence the center of gravity forward by canting the cylinders back, but also changed the positioning of the drive sprocket in relation to the swinganm pivot. to improve the reaction to chain pull. The latest M 1 also has new crankcases; although team sources denied numors that this had allowed the undersize engine (thought to be about 940cc) to be brought up to the full 990cc limit. Either way, the result was a transfonmation in the perfonmance of the bike and the mood of the riders. "I feel more confident in the front. with a more positive feeling, so I can keep rolling into the comers faster, even with the brake on. There's less front-end push," explained Carlos Checa. Biaggi 24 JUNE 12, 2002' cue I e n • VII' 55 The Italian Amateur Dramatic Society had a field day at MUgello, with theatricals galore in front of the home fans. Valentino Rossi limited his personal display to a speCial heimet design, based on his father's zigzag Italian red-white-and-green flag, relieved with pictograms around the rim paying tribute to various aspects of Italian life, including a busty Sophia Loren, beaches, pizza, wine and a special crossed-out hamburger. In his pit. however, he had a massive yellow armchair in place of the usual yellow garden chair, where he could relax fireside-style between practice outings. Sadly, his pragmatic pit-crew boss. Australian Jerry Burgess, turfed it out after one day, preferring to devote attention to lap times and race results. Word is that the anmchair kept suspension and tire technicians at anms length during cnucial post-practice debriefing sessions. In the past. Rossi has run at Mugello with a Hawaiian design on his leathers and bike. a Tricolore design to his bike and helmet, and a swirly Peace and Love design. Asked if his restraint was from superstition, after crashing out of the last two 500cc races here, he replied: "No. Two years ago, I had nothing, and I crashed anyway.· Compatriot Marco Melandri celebrated a tie-up with the Spider-Man movie. with not only an example of the Nolan Spider-Man helmet, but complete color-coded leathers to match. Melandri's team's controversial high·profile pit"wall awning that was erected at Jerez and promptly taken down again on orders from IRTA because it exceeded maximum length allowances returned at Mugello. modified to fit the regs. Fitted with two thrones and five TV monitors, the exFerrari unit reputedly cost $40,000. The opinion in the pits Is that the team could have knocked up something similar back in the workshop for less than a , Oth of the cost. Come back AJex - all is forgiven. When 1999 World Champion Alex Criville announced his retirement at Jerez, Honda was criticized for declinin9 to let him complete a lap of honor on a Honda. The decision was apparently based on the fact that the man who also won 15 500cc-c1ass GPs for them had signed to race for Yamaha this year, though in fact he never did ride the rival bike in anger. Now Honda has reacted to the media backlash. Alex will be given his title-winning NSR500 for a lap of honor at the Catalunyan GP in two weeks' time. Japanese GP star Aklra Ryo will race in the next three rounds as a wild card, adding a third Suzuki to the factory team strength at Catalunya, Assen and Donington Park. The reigning All-Japan Superbike Champion will race in blue-and-white factory colors rather than the team regulars' Telefonica MoviStar colors, but is expected to use Michelin tires, as adopted by the team after three GPs this year, rather than the Dunlops with which they started the season, and that he still uses in Japan. Ryo, who finished second at Suzuka after leading two thirds of the race, is racing the MotoGP GSVR machine in the All-Japan Superbike Championship, with himself and colleague Yukio Kagayama as non-scoring "guest entries." This is to help speed the development program of the bike, brought to the tracks a full 12 months earlier than originally planned. He and Kagayama have been involved with testing the V4 four-stroke since the beginning, with the GP team only starting to ride the bike in January. "Suzuki wants to win races and we need to accelerate the development of the bike,· said Ryo. "That means having another rider competing at the highest level and giving more feedback to the factory. That is my job in these races. " Kawasaki's MotoGP plans are crystalizing, with Superbike team boss Harald Eckl recently signing a long-tenm contract to head the team, while rider Akira Yanagawa has been seconded from SBK to continue testing in Japan. At this stage, the machine is still an expanded Superbike, at 920cc and in the Superbike chassis. The plan is for Yanagawa to nun in the last four races of the season - Motegi. Sepang, Phillip Island and Valencia - as a wild card, by which time the bike will be a genuine prototype, with the full 990cc capaCity, and fuel injection. So far, the rou9h prototype has already scored a race win ... at the Suzuka 200-Mile race, where Yanagawa qualified 1.5 seconds slower than Rossi's pole time for this year's inaugural MotoGP race. Kawasaki is to disband their SBK team next season, and have pulled out of this year's Eight-Hour race. to concentrate on their return to GP racing. The current design is an in-line four, but factory sources suggest that a V4 should not be nuled out in the future. Max Blagg; put the hostility into hospitality on Thursday evening at Mugello, with a temper tantnum in the Marlboro Yamaha hospitality unit that ended up with the awning tom and support brackets bent. The tnuth was rather hard to detenmine, but it seems there was a spat either about free passes for his friends or about whether he should be allowed to eat a special pasta dish prepared by a friend inside the mobile restaurant. where patrons are normally expected not to bring their own food. It depended whose version you heard. Either way, it all ended up with Biaggi ramming the awning with his scooter, reportedly striking a staffer in the process, and later retuming to apologize. Mugello's 0.7-of-a-mile straight. the equal second·longest straight of the year, saw the 200-mph bamer broken for the first time by the MotoGP four-strokes. The super-powerful Aprilia triple was the first to do it. with Laconi clocking 322.3km/h (200.27mph); with Ukawa's V5 Honda beating that a little iater at 324.9km'h (201.63mph). This confinms the new 990cc four-strokes as the fastest racing bikes in the world. The 200-mph mark has only been exceeded once before - by Shinichi Itoh's NSR500 Honda at the Hockenheimring in 1993. Proton Team KR rider Jeremy McWilliams was reporting a chassis breakthrough in tests at Almeria in the week before the Italian GP - but there was no benefit at Mugello. There is only one rough prototype built so far, and the riders will have to wait until the British GP in July before raceready versions are available. "If we can get them done before then, then we will," promised team boss Kenny Roberts. The chassis is based on ideas that he and the team discussed after last year's Malaysian GP, with considerable differences in engine position. weight distribution and geometry. Roberts himself rode the bike at the Spanish tests, where McWilliams and team tester David Garcia did most of the testing. "The new chassis is very, very good,· said McWilliams. "It feels totally different from the bike I'm racing at the moment. with better feedback and a more sympathetic feeling. Right out of the box, it was only seven 10ths off the race bike, and that's with an old engine and without a proper airbox. We were losing three 1Oths just on the straight. It would definitely be a lot faster with just a little tidying up. and I really want to race It as soon as possible.· Kenny Roberts was several seconds slower at Almeria, expressing astonishment at the higher levels of side grip by modem tires in the 20 years since his retirement. "Even at my speeds, I could feel the difference between the current chassis and the new one, and when Jeremy rode it faster he made the same observations as me. It's easier to ride, in tenms of requiring less effort on the steering, with less load on your arms when you're braking. That means you can turn it more quickly. Mid-comer, the new chassis also changes line more easily. It's a much more friendly motorcycle to ride, and more comfortable. Over 30 laps of a race, you could definitely go faster, because it is more relaxed and more fun to ride," said Roberts. The chassis was also dimensionally different. in preparation for the fourstroke engine that the team has under development. "There's more space around the cylinder head area,· said Roberts. He has revealed that the team has started to design and develop a multi-cylinder engine, "of four or five cylinders." He declined to give further details, merely looking quiZZical at reports in British MCN that they will build a V5. Aprilia is considering using an external team to nun their MotoGP four-stroke next season, with the current Red Bull Yamaha WCM outfit a possible candidate. Suffering financially since the introduction of a compulsory helmet law for scooter riders in Italy hit sales, Aprilia already has the smallest budget of any of the MotoGP teams, and passing the operation on to an independent outfit would cut costs to the factory. "I live in Austria, Red Bull is an Austrian sponsor, and I have a very good

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