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and skill last season and had also learnt all the circuits and shown he could go fast on them, as well as displaying a very determined attitude," says Garry Taylor of the newest half of Suzuki's 100 percent Made in USA riding team. "He's going to be a real contender for us next season; wait and see." I have to admit I wasn't sure what to expect when I clambered aboard the four-stroke Suzuki GP racer in Sepang's pit lane, after the Team Suzuki mechanic with the magic starter package had plugged it into the insert on the left flank of the GSY-R fairing and fired the lusty-sounding Y4 up. That's because this was the first of the new generation of MotoGP contenders that I'd actually ridden, and while I have some past experience of testing factory Superbikes and 500cc GP bikes, the "over 210 bhp" claimed power output of the GSY-R represented a new threshold in race engine performance for me especially in a bike weighing just 146kg (321 pounds) dry. Plus, having had a serious talking-to from KR himself just before hopping aboard, warning me to watch out for the clutch operation and to take care when backshifting under braking, I was pretty apprehensive as I clicked the one-up race-pattern gear lever into bottom and set off down pit lane - quite apart from having to learn a new race track that is renowned as being one of the most demanding new circuits in the calendar, which to make things worse still bore damp patches after torrential overnight rain. Worse yet were such unlikely hazards as snakes and lizards crawling across the tarmac, which, more than one rider has found out the hard way, don't give the greatest grip when you run them over! Still, I needn't have worried, for in a race-distance test session with a stop halfway through for a muchneeded drink - Suzuki "made" me ride the GSY-R in Malaysia's 32degree [Celsius] heat and 85-percent humidity, which Kenny Roberts insisted was relatively balmy compared to the torrid 36-degree conditions he and the others had to race in at Sepang a month previously! - I soon real- (Above left) Cathcart and Roberts talk shop. (Above right) The GSV·R at rest and (opposite page) naked. ized how effectively Suzuki project leader Yasuo Kamomiya and his team have worked on developing a bike, which, by the end of its debut season proved it was rostrum-ready on a dry track. However, I must admit that for the first five laps or so I focused not on the bike but on working out where I was going and trying to avoid the worst of the damp patches, rather than on what the Suzuki was like to ride. But then, haVing gotten the track straightened out and gradually picking up the pace, I suddenly realized how "normal" the GSYR had been behaving, to the point that I hadn't felt daunted by its explosive performance. While not exactly cuddly, it's not at all the fire-breathing, wheel-locking mega bike monster I was half expecting. It's more like a direct step up from a Superbike, just with a lot more power low down and undoubtedly more refined in the handling department. Here's why: . To produce that amount of power at least 10 percent more than any Superb ike in a motorcycle weighing over 10 percent less - Suzuki hasn't needed to narrow the powerband and produce a peaky package that has to have the nuts revved off it. Quite the opposite, in fact, because if anything the GSY-R is too torquey and userfriendly low down - even if this does explain why it's evidently such a nice bike to ride in the rain. According to Kamomiya-san, maximum torque is delivered at 11,000 rpm on a bike which produces peak power at 14,000 rpm and has a soft revlimiter cutting in 300 revs higher. Roberts says he revs it out in every gear, as confirmed by the row of changeup lights he has set up on the dash, which start illuminating at 13,000 revs and flash brightly at you at 13,500 revs to tell you to get ready to shift gear. But while there may be fractionally more power available a thousand revs higher, I have to say that changing up at 13,000 rpm appeared to suit the Suzuki best when accelerating through the gears, because doing so puts you back in Maybe that's why Yamaha opted to use carburetors on its M I? If so, Suzuki definitely has an edge here, because the GSY-R's pickup out of a turn is completely predictable: very, very strong with acceleration that grabs your attention. You can use a higher gear to surf the torque curve through a slower corner, but be prepared to have the front wheel waving around your ears if you crack the throttle open at 10,000 rpm in any of the bottom three gears, and get ready to be thankful that the rear Michelin stays planted when you do so, even leaned over exiting a turn. I can see how this must be a really effective wet-weather tool, especially using the softer of the two engine maps stored in the on-board ECU, which can be accessed via the switch on the left clip-on - an advantage, too, when the tire goes off toward the end of a dry race and a less aggressive throttle response is needed. However, I have to say I did take good care to make sure I kept using a bit of muscle to haul the Suzuki upright early in order to power out of a bend, after hearing from KR about the problems he's been having with side grip under power on the GSY-R and that's with the best Michelins that he's been using, rather than the more "normal" ones I was assigned. And the tires did indeed start sliding around when exiting right-handers three-quarters of the way through my race-distance test. Hanging off the side of the Suzuki to push it upright sooner out of turns became necessary rather than just desirable when that started happening. But the clean, smooth but ever-so-potent power delivery, thanks to what felt like a pretty-well-mapped fuel-injection system, made this easy to handle even for someone of my limited experience in dealing with 200-plus horsepower levels. Nice. Still, I can't help feeling that the Suzuki's power is in the wrong place for a MotoGP contender. Though it builds power in a linear fashion, there's too much of it down low, and probably at KR's race pace as opposed to my gentler survival strategy. This must make tire choice a problem, because he'd have to go for the meaty part of the powerband on the fairly closed-up set of gear ratios which Kenny employs. Revving it any higher seemed pretty counterproductive - the power curve seemed to flatten off, and the bike stopped pulling as hard if I did. Though the GSV-R seems quite slim, and there's good protection from the well-shaped screen and the angled fairing wings embracing it, top speed down either of Sepang's two long straights - even using all the revs in fourth and fifth gear and 13,000 rpm in top - seemed not a lot better than a good factory one-liter Ytwin Superbike, which the GSV-R actually even sounds a little like at peak revs, with its growling exhaust note thundering in your ears. But it's down low that the Suzuki really delivers. It accelerates far faster than any Superbike yet built, but does so in a way that makes it easy and rewarding to ride through slow turns and tight chicanes, like the first two turns at Sepang, which were the only time I needed to use bottom gear on the track. There, I could run the V4 engine as low as 7000 rpm as I rode the slow rollercoaster dip in the middle of the left-hand second hairpin, then fed the power in smoothly and progressively as J hauled it back across the track to drive hard through the next right s'lleeper while shifting up through the sweet-action gearbox. The bike's slick powershifter (working only on the ignition at present, says Kamomiya, though Suzuki also has the option of cutting fuel supply, too, Honda-style) is perfectly set up. There is none of the oversensitive, harsher change action of so many works Ducati V-twins down the years. Crack the throttle wide open in second gear exiting uphill out of Turn Four at Sepang, and the Suzuki again responds so silkily but with real menace, so that even if you tr<'\il-brake into an apex with the throttle closed, there's no abrupt snatch when you get on the gas again as on other Japanese fuel-injection packages like the R7 Yamaha's. cue I e n e _ S • DECEMBER 1 1. 2002 17