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/128306
MOTOGP De c . 1 2, 2 0 03 _ teammate , t he World C hamp ion Neil Hodgson loo king out of so rts. "Th e bike is perfect fo r my riding style because you can real ly spin t he rear tire ," th e tall Spaniard said . "My lap times weren't bad , but if I was physically better then I cou ld have done bette r, bec ause on t he last day I was pretty tired. The bike is quite a lot differe nt to the Superbike . One, it is really noisy, it has lots more po w e r and yo u have to use different lines. But when you open the th rottle, you co nt rol the bike by sp inn ing, wh ich was a great su rp rise for me because that is exactly how I ride. I like to be aggressive on the bike like Troy Bayliss, wh ereas Neil Hodgson is a lot more smooth and precis e like Max Biaggi. That bike is radical - you really need to ride it rathe r than the bike riding you ." Robe rts was ne xt, riding cautious ly at first after too mu ch time being told by his father what not to do. "The first da y w he n I was putting on my lea t he rs , I w as like , 'I'v e forgotte n how to ride a motorcycle : That's how (T op) The Ma rlbo ro Ducati boy s were aut in full force with Troy Bayliss ending up third fastest while his team ma te Loris Capirossi (above) ended the te st a s th e sixt h-fastest MotoGP rider. be ca use we have the new bike . No w we just tes t so me parts, and the next test we have t he ne w bike ." C ap iro ss i admitted that t he team was testing t raction control for th e first time a nd an antidote to th e w hee lspin that plagued th e po w erful Du cati. "We have man y things to try, but we do n't know which is best for next year," he said . Pra mac Honda test rider Shinichi ltoh was ne xt faste st , w hile testing Bridges tone tires, t he n ca me Ruben Xa us, the World Superbike Championship ru nner-up making t he move to t he big show. Xaus had a silly c ras h - he overdid the carbon brakes on a wh ite paint st rip e - b ut otherwise was methodical and more impressive than this 64 co nfused he go t me," Roberts said . By th e e nd of th e first day, it was clear he hadn't forgotte n how to ride . By the en d o f the th ird day, he 'd do ne so well t hat his fath er w as convinc ed he needed to spend t he money to buy Michelin tir es, if they 'd supply th e m (see Briefly...). H is bes t time came on a quali fier, a lap of I:34 .70, be ttering t he I:3S.S0 t hat N icky Hayd en tu med at th e sa me tes t a year earlie r and ne arly t he e q ual of Xau s' 1:34 .66 . "I'm some what surprised, I gu ess yo u co uld say," w as Roberts' opinion o f his besting Hodgso n. " Th e thi ng t hat I look at, too , that's even mo re maybe than t he Hodgson is th at I was onl y .0 3 off Xa us, too. Both o f t ho se guys are o n the ve ry good Ducatis JANUARY 14, 2004 • CYCLE NE WS The Arrival []f Robe rt5 , Part III "I was so nervous today with the rain. and I just didn't want to get on the thing. With having my dad as the team owner, if I screw up. I get to get yelled at not just in normal business hours, but for about a month." That 's how Kurtis Roberts felt before start ing his MotoGP career, joining his father and brother in the overseas adventure. By the end he'd impressed everyone, lapping faste r than Nicky Hayde n had gone here a year be fore , faster than his teammate, Nobu Aoki, faster than Wor ld Superb ike Champion Neil Hodgson , faster than any Proton had ever gone around Valencia, and hundredths off the time set by Ruben Xaus, the Ducati- riding Spaniard with significant experi ence at Valencia. It was all done on a bike he'd never ridden and a track that was new to him. "I wanted to be at least in the 35s," Roberts said, a mark he eclipsed with a lap of I:34.70. "I think when the first day started, I didn't know if I was going to go that well. because of the weather and everything. The tires were quite off. They never realty were what we needed them to be at all. I kind of w as getting frustrated toward en d of the day because every tire we tried , or everything we tried , didn't work - just well enough to ride the bike property. They were so off. We couldn't set the bike up. My crew chief said we'd been through all th is befo re where we just keep setting up. We 'd go in a big d rcle, and we can never actually make up for it for the tire loss and lack of grip. We put In some softer stuff, and it actually just helped with entry grip to where I could ride t he th ing in property and we nt into the 35s and 34 no pro blem. The 34 that I did on the qualifier was very easy for me . Even the 3Ss on the race tire were real easy because I didn't want to throw the thing down the road and deal w ith that the first test. I'm quite happy with the bike. I'd say we went a little better than I expected. But I didn't rea lly know what to expect at the same time because I'd never been there." After the first day, Roberts said the Proton was "so much different than a big twin 5uperbike: there's quite a lot to leam . 1think all in all the day wen t pretty we ll. I still kind of don't know where I'm going yet . 1hope to get used to the thing a bit more, and hopefully the track temperature will be up a bit more tomorrow, and hopefully get going a bit faster." T he Proton KRV-frYe was a little more ridable than he thought it was going to be . "I th ink, powerwise, it' s a lot like the RC-45 hit: ' Roberts said. "lt was pretty smooth. It doesn't run on the bottom quite as well as the RC-45 did, but it pulls quite good all the way to the top. It's kind of like a mix between a two-strok e and a four-stroke com pared to the big twin I was on. It doesn't have muc h mo tor break to me . Y u can get o n the th rottle, and it picks up o the revs quic ker. Of co urse , it' s got a lot broader powerband. Like wh en the twin picked up , It felt it. This is just like the RC-45. It keeps pulling, and it just keeps going. The RC-51 only revved to II; this one goes to about 14,800 or so , so it's a lot more to work with . You can run these things in the corner a lot de eper, and you got to carry more co rne r speed with them , and it actu aJty rums a bit better - the faste r you kind of let off everything and throw it in and just learning that. The bike 's quite good right now as far as what you expect it to be . I fee l w e can go a few sec o nds faster - two or three. I hope so ." In fact he wou ld go nearl y four seconds a lap faster, end ing the test with an impressive lap time of 1:34.70. "Th e grip here is better, where in America it just feels like it's sliding all the time ," he said. '" don 't know jf Nicky [Hayden] woul d agree with me or not , but it's hard for me to get my bea rings over here on the trac k and brake markers because it's so wide; you've got so much roo m. In America you 're looking for a concrete wall or some house - yo u've got all kinds of references." Freddie Spencer instilled trail -brak ing into Roberts, and the results were appa rent in his 2003 improvement. Using carbon bra kes for trail-braking proved to be tou chy. "Fro m what I noticed right now , they don't have as much feel as th e steels - they don't have as much lever play," Roberts said. "I can control the steels 10 percent, 20 percent, whereas these you go by 20 percent, 40 percent, 60 percent. I'm so tentative with that stuff because if you' re trail-braking like I developed with Freddie [Spencer) , you hear all the horror stories . You're just kind of tentative on everything right now. I just don't wa nt to fall off right now." One of the more difficult aspects of the new adventure was working with his fathe r. Asked if he listened to his advice , he said: "I try not to . Sometimes he can tell you what not to do so much , it just realty gets you paranoid. 'Y u got to watch out for this.' Ifyou put all that shit into o your head that he tells you , sometimes you go out and you 're riding around like a snail because you 're so worried about the thing . That doesn't help me learn to ride . If I'm so tentative, I'm not going to go out there and fee l my way around the thing, and I ride mainly just by feel - so I've got to not listen to tha t so much ." By the end he hadn't mastered the bike or the track, though he was getting closer with both . Mostly he was there for seat time, something he'll get more of in t he next test at je rez late in january. There he'll probabty spend more time on a development chassis , one that po ints in the direction of the new model that's to debut at the end of February. Roberts had a few uncomfortable laps on the mach ine that Aoki gave high marks to. "Speaking with Nobu, it's quite a lo t better, better on tires and everything else," Roberts said. "just from the two laps that I rode, I can feel the differences they 're talking about, but not on a scale that I can judge. I can see what they 're talking about already. It should better for sure." What it needs is more power. Roberts estimated the current V-five to put out around 200 horsepower, with the new mill set to de liver 25 more. "It needs to be quite a bit more. Because those guys just leave you - everywhere. It seems quite good off the bottom, through the long gears; shifting is where they just killyou ." 40 t h Anniversary