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/128167
The A/stare Corona Suzuki GSX-R600s The A1stare Corona Suzuki QSX-R600 In World Supersport trim. Currently, both KatsuakJ Fujiwara and Stephane Chambon sit Inside the top three in the World Supersport Championship riding the Improved GSX-R600. By Supersport title, has found the ideal expression for his undoubted talents in what is currently top-level road racing's hardest-fought class. The Suzuki GSX-R600, now in its second season of competition in allnew, fuel-injected form, is the only bike so far to have sent two different riders to the top of the rostrum this season. Chambon gave the new model - which went winless at the world level in 2001 - a dream onetwo debut victory on Suzuki's home ground at Sugo, with Fujiwara second, and Fujiwara has won twice along the way, most recently at Brands Hatch. He now sits just nine points behind Foret with three rounds remaining in the series. Coupled with the fact that the same motorcycle just won the AMA 600cc Supersport title in the capable hands of Aaron Yates and you can see that the sleeker, lighter and more powerful new Suzuki has come good in its second season. However, this didn't happen overnight, for as I found when I came ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE AND Lac VERBA EKE N orld Supers port has been as close-fought as ever in 2002, with all four Japanese manufacturers each winning at least one of the first six races to kick off the season, and Piergiorgio Bontempi's NCR Ducati booming its way to a well-merited rostrum finish in Australia. But although Fabien Foret's Honda leads the points table going into the midsummer break in the championship program, he has two Suzuki riders breathing down his exhaust pipe, each having tasted victory in a series which looks likely to go down to the wire. They're the Alstare Corona duo of fellow-Frenchman Stephane Chambon, the former World Supersport Champion who's stepped back down from the Superbike class to try to regain the crown he took in 1999, and his teammate Katsuaki Fujiwara, the former 500cc Grand Prix rider who, in becoming the first Japanese rider to challenge for the World 22 AUGUST 14, 2002' cue • e n e _ s to ride the fuel-injected Corona GSXR600 for the first time one year ago, this was a bike bursting with potential, but strangled by an over-conservative rev-limiter, and also very sensitive to chassis setup. When it was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was - well, let's just say it was off the pace. Repeating the assessment one year later by riding both Alstare Corona Suzukis at the Liege-based team's Zolder home circuit just four days after the Misano round in June, exactly as they'd both finished in the points after each leading the race at various stages (complete with the scraped fairing on Chambon's bike, from where he stepped off when leading the race and remounted to finish 13th) allowed me to mark the report card of the men responsible for bringing Suzuki's fuel-injected GSX-R600 to the front of the World Supersport pack in the past 12 months - Team Alstare Corona's in-house R&D engineers, led by the Belgian team's technical guru, Bruno Bailly. The team's efforts have transformed the nature of an engine that produced 115 crankshaft horsepower in street guise on the Alstare dyno, to 124 hp at the gearbox on the same testbed as supplied in race form by the Suzuki factory at the start of 2001, fitted with various Yoshimura racekit parts. The Belgian team already increased this by the end of last season to 131 hp at the gearbox at 13,800 rpm, and now in 2002, with further development, to 134 hp at the same revs, but with a much higher rev limit of 15,200 rpm, compared to the 14,300 rpm of the bikes I rode a year ago - and 13,900 rpm as delivered from Japan. This has been achieved using Alstare camshafts, developed via their own in-house computer program - the team has a choice of five different designs for both inlet and exhaust cams, each with different profiles which they can use together with altered valve timing at different circuits, matched to an Arrow exhaust system with stainless-steel headers