Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

sure how much better it would be than the Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R600 he rode last year. "Right now, we're still working with pretty much production stuff," he said. ''I'm sure it will be better after they get the good motors, but as far as ridingwise, it suits me a lot better. It fits me, fits my size, how I ride a motorcycle." Hacking said the Yamaha didn't have the front-end chatter he had with the Suzuki, but it wasn't as sensitive as he likes. "That's the only thing I seem to be lacking right now, is feel from the front." he said. The team's data-acquisition logger went out early on the first day, so they were "like two men in a dark closet, trying to search around," Hacking said. "We had no idea how the bike was running, no idea how the suspension was working. We were just kind of tweaking on it ourselves. We kind of hit a dead spot. We kind of got stuck today." Aaron Gobert was returning to the track that nearly ended his career in March. Gobert, his brother and a few others were all involved in a fiery wreck exiting the chicane in the Supersport race. As this wreck came on the heels of a similar crash a year earlier, the AMA was prompted to rework the chicane so the riders hit the tum-three banking straight up and down, rather than heading for the upper wall, as they'd been forced to do in the past. Aaron's injuries were catastrophic, with a closed head injury, a broken right leg, broken ribs and a collapsed lung. He rode the final three events of 2002 while continuing to recover. "Yesterday was like a weaning day," Aaron said, "weaning myself back to this place, and the times were pretty respectable still as well. "I'm not 100 percent, but I'm nearly there," he said of his recovery. "I've been working real hard. I know that when I come back here, I should be good to go by then." Ducati Austin: !JJUDliDD@UDWf)f;B [ffJfi]@[}J "It was like riding a bicycle; you never forget." So said Anthony Gobert after riding a Ducati for the first time in three years. Anthony last rode a V-twin for the Vance [, Hines Ducati team, finishing third that year - his best AMA Superbike Championship finish ever - before embarking on a world tour of secondary race teams in 2000. Proving he could ride anything. he gave Bimota its first World Superbike victory in years before the team imploded. Next he tried to squeeze himself onto Kenny Roberts' Modenas triple, a machine built for smaller riders. Then he went to the UK to race for the Virgin Yamaha team in the British Superbike Series, after which he retumed home to Australia to race for the Winfield Honda team. Yamaha welcomed him to America in 2000 and again in 2001, hoping he could breathe life into its aging YZF-750 Superbike. On occasions he could, but keeping pace with the emerging V-twins and the other Japanese four-cylinders landed him on the ground too many times, essentially ending any title hopes by midseason both years. The future for Yamaha is not in the 750 class, so it shut down the Superbike program for a year while concentrating on Formula Xtreme and Supersport. With Anthony's maintaining a desire to return to the world stage, he believes that only the Superbike class provides the profile to make the move. The AMA Superbike regulations will penalize the V-twins in 2004; thus evening the playing field. For 2003, the twins should still have an advantage. Given Ducati's history of success in World Superbike, it was natural that Anthony would want to get back on the Italian V-twin. "I've been looking forward to riding one the last couple of years." Anthony said after setting the third fastest time of the Dunlop tire test. "The way the Superbike class is going, you kind of need a V-twin. It's kind of a little bit better that they've upped the four cylinders to 1000 - it should make it a bit more even but I still think the V-twin is the bike to be on. Only after lying on his back for three months could he begin physical therapy. From then on he worked incessantly, with a therapist and in the pool. The past two months, he's been training relentlessly, and the results are more noticeable. "Like, before, I'd train and train and train and do physio, and you wouldn't see any change," he reported. "Like, your legs would still hurt to walk up and down stairs, and your knees would be weak and lately, the last couple of months, it's really coming back." Aaron said the bones in his leg weren't strong enough to allow him to ride a dirt bike. The right leg was shattered so badly that cavities formed in the bone. "There's 12 different pieces of bone that have to join like a spider web, and they all have to fill in the holes, and they're still working on filling in the holes; it could take a while, too," he said. "The exact same leg I shattered exactly the same five years [ago], and it's still got cavities in it five years later that are stili healing now. It takes a long time for the cavities to fill in, and at the moment I have so many that I can't risk spiral-fracturing it out on the dirt bike." Aaron agreed with Hacking that the new bike was too new to make a quantitative comparison. "It's still at a stage where we're trying to get 100 percent out of it for racing, so it's hard to really compare properly," he said. "It's definitely a lot better improvement chassiswise and the way it handles and everything." Though he couldn't match the time set by teammate DiSalvo, Aaron was happy that his times were near the best. Of all the riders. DiSalvo had been at Daytona most recently, during the fall races, though that was on last year's bike. "The bike itself - there's so many new things to it; the engine and the frame is completely new, but it feels like the same old Yamaha feeling, just better, just improved," he said. "I think that it's got a lot of potential, and we've only just started to tap into it. Hopefully, by midseason we'll have the bike at its fullest and be really doing some damage." With limited experience at Daytona, the more than 90 laps DiSalvo put in were invaluable. He called it the "Daytona curse," the difficulty of lowering your lap time. "It's so hard to find time," he said. "It's probably the easiest track you could ever learn. It's only got, like, six turns and a chicane, and it's the hardest track to go fast." Personally. I think the Ducati is the best, and over the years in World Superbike. it's proven it's the best. I'm just happy to be on the best bike, and it seems I'm getting the best support from the factory, so I couldn't be happier at this time." Whoever runs Ducati has what can best be described as flexible allegiances. The decisions have previously been made at Ducati North America. They've gone from backing the Vance [, Hines Ducati team in 2000, to splitting the funds between Competition Accessories Ducati and HMC Ducati in 2001, to HMC Ducati exclusively in 2002. Now that those teams are history, the focus has moved to Ducati Austin, though Larry Pegram's Dream Team Ducati is also on the horizon, and the decisions are now being made by Ducati Corse in Italy. It's clear that Ducati is in trouble in the United States. According to Ducati's financial statement, sales in the United States declined 22 percent for the first nine months of 2002. Their flagship store, Ducati Manhattan, was shuttered. The factory desperately needs an advertising vehicle to raise awareness of the new 999R. Last year the Austin Ducati team got a late start, with Pascal Picotte's joining the team cue I e n e _ S • .JANUARY 15, 2003 19

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