Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Dunlop's Daytona Tire Test: Part /I Part II of our report on the recent Dunlop Daytona tire test... By HENNY RAY ABRAMS nl n last week's issue, we reported on the recent Dunlop Daytona tire test IJ while also focusing on some of the teams that participated in that test namely, American Honda, Yoshimura Suzuki and Bruce Transportation Honda. This week, we look at the rest of the teams who were in Florida for the partially rained-out test. Teanl YSnlaha: @J@o[ffJW@ ©rIJ[f)@[ff2)DDJ@~ After spending the past two years in a quixotic quest for the AMA Superbike title, Yamaha finally gave up. Making the aged Yamaha YZF7SO competitive required a Herculean effort on the part of the team, especially after Yamaha abandoned World Superbike and the trickledown development it provided, and forced Anthony Gobert to ride so close to the edge that he too frequently went over it. Gobert suffered major injuries each of the past two years: In 2001, he had what he described as the worst crash of his career at Loudon, and this past year he broke his leg after sliding off at Road Atlanta. The cost of having a presence in the premier class, weighed against the advantages of reallocating resources, convinced Yamaha that it was better off playing to its strengths and looking to the future, specifically next year when it wjJI be back in Superbike with the R-l. "We definitely want to be back into Superbike," Yamaha's Tom Halverson said. "That was our plan all along: Build the team into a good working race team to take on the Superbike challenge in 2004.' For 2003, Yamaha has four riders, all of whom will compete on the new R-6, with three doubling up on Graves Motorsports' Yamahas in the Formula Xtreme class. Yamaha's presence in FX, through its partnership with Chuck Graves, has been as frustrating as it has been rewarding. Frustrating because class stalwart Damon Buckmaster has been in the title hunt going into the final race the past two years, only to have machine troubles derail him. Frustrating because of the AMA's flip-flopping on the legality of the R- J /R-7 hybrid Buckmaster raced the first half of the 2002 season; after Road America, the AMA reversed course and decided that, from the Pikes Peak round forward, Bucky's bike was no longer legal, forcing the Graves crew to throw together a competitive bike in just over a week. Rewarding because Buckmaster has been the winningest rider in the class the past two years, and he did it most· 18 JANUARY 15, 2003· eye I e nevtl's lyon his own in 2002. Teammate and fellow Australian Aaron Gobert was badly injured in a wreck in the Daytona Supersport race. Not riding was driving him insane, so he retumed at Laguna Seca, though he wasn't a factor for the remainder of the year. The two Australians will be joined by Jamie Hacking, late of the Yoshimura Suzuki squad, on the FX and 600cc machinery. The fourth member of the team is Jason DiSalvo. The New York teenager was impressive in his first outing with the team in this past fall's Formula USA Honda Pro Oils Supersport race, which he won handily. No doubt his diminutive size is an asset at Daytona. DiSalvo is looking at 2003 as a learning year. To that end, he'll compete in both Supersport and Superstock on the same bike. The team got together for its first test at Fontana prior to Daytona, but it was a blow-out. Uterally. Gusts of 60-mph winds meant that they couldn't get anywhere near race pace. Mostly they spent their time with Yamaha's Japanese engineers, working on fuel injection - new to the all-new R-6 this year. Yamaha beefed up its team with Mark Bull, a data-acquisition and fuel· injection specialist who worked with DiSalvo last year, and Jun Suganuma, a Fox Racing suspension whiz Yamaha brought in·house. The Supersport class is the real battleground for 2003. Yamaha, Honda and Kawasaki all have new machinery to try to dethrone current Supersport champion Aaron Yates of Yoshimura Suzuki. Yamaha's new machine, even in its earliest stage of development, made almost as much power as last year's highly evolved R·6, but with quite a bit better acceleration. The comments from the riders were uniformly positive, with most pointing to the potential of the new machine. "The bike is completely different," Buckmaster said. "They don't look completely different from the outside, but when you start having a good look at it, everything's different - chassis, the fairing, fuel injection, the wheels, suspension, Everything's different. It's actually really nice. Just a comfortable bike to ride. It's nice and light, It's a pretty good package. "It definitely turns different, It turns a lot better, I think it's got a lot to do with the geometry, but also the weight. The main thing I've noticed is turning ability and also the weight... in changing·direction stuff. The big thing is just trying to dial the fuel injection in, to get it as good as the carburetors, because there's a fair few years of development of the old bike. It was working quite well, to be honest, but we need some more time to get the fuel injection up to speed. That is one thing we noticed, and it's one thing we worked on yesterday,' Buckmaster said the team was starting from scratch on fuel injection, He and Hacking, the more-experienced riders, worked on it in the limited time they had in Daytona, allowing DiS· alvo and Gobert to concentrate on race setup. "There seems to be a couple of holes in the power delivery," Buckmaster said. "But nothing that's untuneable." In addition to working on fuel injection, Buckmaster worked mainly on race setup, trying to cram three days into one. "Really, we didn't get enough done," he said. "I'm actually a little disappointed with that. But all in all, the general feel of the bike is that it has good balance and good speed. I think we're still in the baby stage of the development stage. I think there's plenty of potential there." Hacking was back with the team he left at the end of the 1999 season. The evolution of the machinery meant that the machine was all new. The bike was so new, he couldn't say for

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