Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Dunlop's Daytona Tire Test: Part" time. Tommy was sixth against the 750s at Daytona, then won Fontana, with Meiring fifth. Tommy finished the Superstock season second in points; Meiring was sixth. "We didn't start outlast year thinking we'd run the whole deal," Preston said. "We had two new riders. We thought we'd enter into two classes and get more seat time. It helped a lot, and we won races. With a little more displacement on the bigger tracks, I think we can keep up." On the only fuJI day of testing, Tommy said he was trying to change the attitude of the bike. It was acceptable, but he wasn't up to racing speed and wasn't sure how the bike would behave once pushed. "Just trying to get it a little bit more ready for that kind of riding," he said. Fuel injection is new to the Supersport crew, so Tommy and his team had to sort out the mapping, mostly through trial and error. On the final day of the test, they were testing brake pads when the rain started to fall. Meiring worked on suspension and getting healthy. He suffered from food poisoning in Las Vegas on the Friday prior to the test. He could have ridden Monday at Daytona but took advantage of the day's rest. Even when he was riding on Wednesday, he wasn't at full strength and was still having trouble getting food into his system. "For what we were going to do the first day, it was going to be okay," he said. "I'm at the racetrack, and that makes me feel a lot better. I go back to my hotel room, and I don't feel very good. EspeciaJIy when it's raining outside." For someone not totally healthy, Meiring got a lot of work done before running into fuel injection problems at midday. By the end of the day, the machine was working better, and he was able to start testing tires. Suspension was the big issue. Meiring's setup is completely different from both Tommy's and Eric's. "I tried a setup like Eric's [Bostrom] and it just didn't work very well. His is actually quite a bit stiffer than mine in the rear. In the front it's not a whole bunch stiffer, but it is a little bit. And I tried to just to go with his setting, and it didn't work very well for me. Me and Eric are the closest, and then Tommy's [Hayden) is way different. I want to try something Hke similar to his, but we just didn't have that much time." Meiring came into his own toward the middle of last year, running at the front and landing on the podium behind winner Tommy at Pikes Peak International Raceway. AerodynamICs IS a large part of success at Daytona, and Meiring Hkes his chances. Aerodynamics is really what the Kawasaki has and the handHng through the infield," he said. "The banking: it's just the light guy wins. That's me." Last year, Tony Meiring was the surprise of the 600cc Supersport class. He's hopln to build on this year•. BRIEFLY••• way we've got the front of the bike working right now." The improvement was noteworthy because the March run had left him detuned coming into the test. "There's still a bit of work to do on the rear end of the bike: he said. "I guess we've always had trouble with the rear end here anyway. It's just unsettled. You don't know which way it's going to high-side you, but it wants to high-side you. You don't know if you're going to get high-sided on the inside or the outside, but it wants to high-side, you, and ifs pr~ba~ly worst out of the chicane. which is probably one of the worst places you d want to high-SIde. The chicane handed an unlikely advantage to the Kawasaki. With the new run out of the chicane to the banking, the 1000cc fours and twins pick up so much speed that they have to back off in the middle of turns three and fouT. The smaller Kawasaki has no such problem, and Eric was able to ride past Ben and Mladin in the banked turns three and four. "This is kind of a sprint motor, and I hope that our endurance motor will be this fast," he said. "I had a really good buzz horsepower-wise riding with him. I passed both of them on the banking. but it was going through three and four, and they were backing off and I wasn't. Maybe it gives us an advantage. My bike doesn't spin. Not when the tires are good. Earlier today I was haVing trouble holding it wide open on both bankings. At the end, when we were going kind of quick, I could pretty much nail it and go. It's still pretty sketchy, because now you're running into the banking with some speed. It's definitely an extra gear." Uke everyone, Eric was caught out by the lack of time, The team changed the swingarm pivot blocks because it'd been too difficult to ride around Daytona, "and it seems like it keeps getting easier to ride," Eric said, "and the last time I was out, the bike was very easy to ride. But we went out with the idea that the shock was going to help the bike steer, and it started raining. I think that we were really getting somewhere. I'm excited to come back." Eric will race the new ZX-6 at Daytona only but got little saddle time on the small bike in Florida. The front forks weren't going through their full stroke, and the Kawasaki was wobbling on the banking. Eric left the development to teammates Tommy Hayden and Tony Meiring to get it sorted out. Two weeks prior to Daytona, they'd had a brief shakedown run at Thunderhill in northem Califomia, but that was mostly to sort out ergonomics so the team could build the riders' seats. The new machine was basicaJIy stock, yet Tommy was able to go just as fast on it as last year's bike, which was brought along for comparison. "It's completely different from the old bike," Tommy said. "Just the whole bike is so different - the upside down forks, they're totally different. I guess the only thing that's fairly close is the shock. I think the link's a little bit different. I think we're using the same valving in it right now. Aside from that, the bike's pretty much aJI new. It's disappointing we didn't get all three days. We could've used it for sure." Tommy said the new motor revs a lot higher, more like the Yamaha he once rode, with a lot of rpm pulling to the top of the powerband. The 636cc engine Tommy and Meiring will race in the Superstock class has more power. Tommy said, but "ifs not a drastic thing. I can tell the difference between the two." Tommy and Meiring both raced the Superstock class last year as a way of getting seat The opinions of the new chicane were mixed. with the Superbike riders decrying the new speeds they were reaching on the banking, while the Supersport riders contended it would eliminate the kind of multibike crashes that have hurt too many riders the past few years. "The mission was to make a safer chicane." said Dunlop's Jim Allen. who is responsible for bUilding safe tires in the Superbike and most of the other fields. "In my mind. from a rider's standpoint, to make it safer, And they did," The Rip side came from Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts, who suffered a rear tire failure at in last year's Daytona 200 and had tire issues this time around. "Stupid. Asinine, It's the dumbest thing in the world to make this track any faster than it already is. and they did, and you can thank anyone who did it for us because it was stupid." he said. Kawasaki's Tommy Hayden. who was involved in the Supersport crash last year, said. "I have kind of mixed feelings about the chicane, I think that it will take make it a little safer, It's not as likely for some· thing like last year to happen, that I was involved in, so I feel good about that. But it makes the track a little less technical. I think," American Honda's Miguel DuHamel, who races both the Supersport and Superbike classes, said. "On the 600. it's not so bad, I guess, The Superbike guys don't like it so much. The 600 - you go through there, it's all right. It's a Band-Aid, Obviously, they're not going to have a GP here." Jake Zemke had more excitement off the track than on in Daytona. Leaving an Italian restaurant on West International Speedway Boulevard on Monday night. he was rear-ended by a woman who hit him so hard that the car was spun around - he's not sure how many times - and knocked across the median. coming to rest facing oncoming traffic. Neither he nor mechanic John Ethell, in the front seat. or Yuichi Sato, in the back seat, was seriously hurt. The rental car. however. was totaled, What was the woman's response? "You ruined my weekend," she told Zemke. What was that drone heard through the garages during the rainy days? BMWs, it turns out, testing at the Speedway for its March race. Brian Parriott. who last year earned top Superbike privateer honors on the White Tip Racing Suzuki GSX-R750. was putting the Rll OORS through its paces in the rain, With the BMW race replacing the Buell Pro Thunder event on the Sunday morning on the 200. the Genmany manufacturer needed additional test time, When testing here earlier in the year, it ran into clutch problems, Given how little track time it had. it's not likely anything definitive was learned, Randy Mamola is among the riders expected to show up for the BMW race in March, California Speedway is the next test stop for the teams, though not all of the teams will be there at the same time in early January, The next full-scale test is at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca, January 21-23, with all of the same teams that were at Daytona expected, along with Honda's new satellite teams. Annandale Racing and No Limits Racing. Crew news, All of the race teams have new crews for 2002. with Honda adding the most personnel and doing the most juggling, In addition to former Yosh engine"builder YUji Kikuchi, who will build DuHamel's motors, and Yosh mechanic Jason Lubber with him, the team has Greg Wood as DuHamel's chassis man. John Ethell. who worked on DuHamel's team last year, moves to the Erion Honda team as the lead mechanic for Jake Zemke's Honda CBR600RR. Ben Bostrom inherits Nicky Hayden's crew. with Merlyn Plumlee as crew chief, Davy Jones the engine builder and Mark Branwalder on Superbike chassis. Rick Boyles comes over from Yoshimura Suzuki to work on the other Superbike chassis. Dave McGrath leads the technical crew for Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts. Bob Reichman will build the engines. with Chris Vandervoort and Masahiro Izuuka working on the chassis, Yamaha reorganized its Supersport effort for 2003, with two crew chiefs responsible for two riders each. as well as engine building, Jeff Myers will be in charge of Jamie Hacking and Jason DiSalvo, with Tony Romo overseeing Aaron Gobert and Damon Buckmaster, Jefferson Burks is Hacking's Supersport mechanic. with Seamus Taff working with DiSalvo. who will also race Superstock, Steve Rounds will work with Buckmaster. with Greg Groce working with Gobert, The three Fonmula Xtreme riders. Hacking. Buckmaster and Gobert. will have separate crews in the Graves Motorsports Yamaha team. with two mechanics for each rider. 24 JANUARY IS. 2003· cue • e n e vw s

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