Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

3D YEARS AGO..• JULY 25, 1972 Dirt tracker John Hateley is photographed photographing for the cover of Issue #28, behind Dave Hansen's bike. Gary Scott won the race, the Castle Rock TT, at which the cover photo was taken, while Jim Rice (BSA) and Mark Williams (Tri) rounded out the top three. Mark Brelsford (H-D) continued to lead the points after the event. Tom White (Tri) won the Juruor fmal... Rick Woods won the Scratcb main at the Irwindale Raceway Speedway event, with Ed Williams, Mike Bast and Scott Autray following him home, in that order. John Fishburn won the Handicap main... Tim Hart (Mai) won the 250 and 500cc Expert classes at the Ascot Motocross in Gardena, Callforrua. Ray Lopez (Bul) won the 125cc Expert race... During CMC Motocross action at Saddleback MX Park in Irvine, Califomia, Bany Porter (Bul), Gaylon Mosier (Mai) and Rich Thorwaldson (Suz) topped the ]25, 250 and 500cc Expert classes, respectively. 20 YEARS AGO... JULY 28, 1982 Mike Bell (Yam) jumped across the cover of Issue #28 after winning the "last" Super Bowl of Motocross at the L.A. Coliseum. The Coliseum was due to be renovated for the ]984 Olympic Games. Broc Glover (Yam) and David Bailey (Hon) rounded out the podium at the event, in front of 65,684 fans. Donnie Hansen (Hon) clinched the Supercross Championship with his sixth-place finish ... Americans took wins in both the 500 and 250cc World Motocross Championship rounds, held respectively in England and Holland. It was Brad Lackey (Suz) doing the honors in the 500cc class, while Danny laPorte (Yam) swept both motos In the 250cc class. They both led their respective points championships... Jeff Matiasevich (Kaw) won the 80cc Beginner class at the Amateur Super Bowl at the L.A. Coliseum, while Mike Healey (Hon) won the 80cc Expert class... The U.S. team of Bruce Penhall, Kelly Moran, Shawn Moran and Dennis Sigalos topped the World Team Cup Speedway Qualifier in Denmark. Denmark, England and Sweden followed in the results. 10 YEARS AGO... JULY 22, 1992 Following the Los Angeles riots, the final round of the AMA Supercross Series was held during the daytime at the L.A. Coliseum and Mr. Consistency." Jeff Stanton (Hon), took the win, and the championship, at the event. Stanton graced the cover of Issue #28 for the feat. Damon Bradshaw (Yam) ca me into the race with the points lead, a record nine wins on the season, and only needed third place to clinch the title, but Guy Cooper (SOl) held him off for third and Stanton won his third 250cc Supercross title in four years. Mike Kiedrowski (Kaw) finished second, While Jeremy McGrath (Hon) won the 125cc main... Rusty Rogers (H-D) won round nine of the AMA National Dirt Track Championship at the Hagerstown Half Mile... American Billy Liles (Hon) won round seven of the 500cc MX GP series in England with a perfect ]-]-] moto score... Carl Fogarty, Terry Rymer and Jehan D'Orgeix teamed up on a Kawasaki to win round two of the World Championship Endurance Road Race Series in Belgium. l.I P assion works both ways. Hate is, after all, the other side of the Love coin. Certainly, passion is essential for racing success - why else would you do it? Then again, commitment is nothing without skill, luck - and some seriously sound, sensible and impassionate engineering. The P-word figured large at the recent public unveiling of Ducati's Sedici, the prototype of next year's MotoGP V-four. Passion from both company and customers ensured the revered brand's turnaround from near bankruptcy in 1996 to thriving success today; passion secured serial World Superbike success; and passion powered the decision to "take on the challenge of MotoGP: After all the chat (actually, during the chat) the wraps came off the bike, to gasps of appreciation. The machine they had on show may have been a bit rough and ready, but it was a good looker, and very definitely a Ducati. Fresh from the distinctly lower-key world of World Superbike, the assembled Ducati staff may have been surprised and surely gratified at the sheer scale of interest in the machine, and when Corse boss Domenicali said that the bike was "a working prototype," nobody pressed him to start it up and perhaps even run a demo lap. (Although he was obliged to admit that, of the two engines they had been running on the bench, one had blown up.) Closer scrutiny revealed that "rough and ready" might even be too kind a description. Compared with the immaculate computer-generated pictures already seen, the bike was a bitza. Most of it was hidden by bodywork, but the bits you could see fell far short of the standards not only of Ducat;'s own Superbike, but also the well-finished Japanese factory prototypes already in action on the track. It wasn't just the rough welding on the swingarm that looked incongruous. How about the fact that the belly pan of the fairing was bolted to the swingarm? Let passion prevail, however. For the present. Ducati is hugely welcome in the top level of racing, and the task they have taken on goes way beyond their current experience of making a racing version of a production bike. The worry is that they may have underestimated it. Not even Ducati's rivals want to see them fail, but an excessive reliance on passion is not enough to secure success. With these thoughts in mind, I was reassured by British aerodynamicist Alan Jenkins, designer of this and several other fairings that have already been extensively wind-tunnel tested. The F1 man has a close association also with Ducati Corse's Superbikes, and described an organization a long way from the image of a lot of excitable Italians running around in circles and bumping into each other. Their working practices, he said, are highly organized, more along F1 lines than all but a very few of the current MotoGP teams. Latin passion has a recent precedent in GP raCing: Cagiva. Cagiva spent 10 years demonstrating the folly of it, with a bike that was the most stylish in the paddock but a long-running joke in the results. It took the arrival of the relentlessly logical Eddie Lawson and his ex-Yamaha (and ex-MV Agusta) engineer Fiorenzo Fanali to stop them changing two or three things at once, and never understanding the effect of any of them. The bike turned into a race, if not championship, winner. What next for the new Duke? Lots and lots of testing, and lots and lots of interest, especially from the equally passionate Italian press, who are giving them a pretty rough ride so far. For this reason alone, Ducati Corse must already be aware that MotoGP is Coming up in a rather larger prospect than World Superbike, no matter what the British fans may think. And equally lots of interest in who will ride it. Troy Bayliss seems to be a given, even though he was rather unexpectedly absent from the launch. And? Much speculation has Max Biaggi making the move, and bringing the Marlboro millions with him. More intriguingly, the name Kenny Roberts Jr. keeps popping up. Many regard him as the closest to Rossi in skill, and maybe superior in developing machines. But unless Suzuki really does a U-turn and screws up development of their so far rather promising V-four four-stroke (the youngest and least developed of the Japanese MotoGP machines), why should he want to leave? To start again with somebody else? We will see. In the meantime, just feel the passion and ignore the logic. Which is why Ducati can feel justified in pretending that their new machine isn't actually a V-four, but "a Twin Pulse," giving it an emotional, if not an actual, relation to their trademark 90-degree V-twins. Or perhaps you'd prefer to turn to the utterly unwhimsical logic of machines. Can it be a coincidence that the Microsoft Word spell-check alternative for Sedici is "Seduce." eN • Laguna seca WSBK • Laguna seca AMA Road Race • Donlngton MotoGP • Troy, Ohio National MX cue' • n e _ S • JULY 17,2002 91

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