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/128312
acceleration without push ing th e front wheel. OK, great-handling bike - so why didn't it win mo re race s, like the equal ly new Honda did? Exiting a slow t urn behind the Ten Kate Hondas I was sharing the trac k with, I could see why Foret and Riba we re complaining - the Dutch bikes just motored away from my Kawasaki in t he bottom three gears , even if I repeatedly screa med the engine to the 15,500 rpm revlimiter to try to keep it turning over as hard as possible before grabb ing th e nexthigher ratio. I had to rev it ove r 12,000 rpm to be going anywhere fast, whereas its rivals drove well from four-figure numbers. But at 14,700 revs or so the powe r alread y started to tail off before the re d searchlight in fro nt of my eyes flashed brightly at fifteen grand to tell me to shift up. Though the EFI delivered a clean, swift thr ottle response cranked over in a turn without too abrupt a transition, the Kawasaki didn't have that jump out of it that its boss rivals like the Belgarda R6 or Ten Kate Ho nda have - and that's what hurt it. After riding the bike he did it on, I reckon Foret's Misano victory was trem endo us achievement, with Kawasaki's more leisurely po delivery compared to its rivals' (well,everything's re lative!) mo re suited to slipstream ing duels at faster circuits like Monza and Assen than stop 'n' go tracks where acceleration is crucial. On paper, the Kawasaki seems tailor-made for track success and with more acce leratio n, it s bound to be a winner. With the new power·up version announced for next year, it seems like ly Green will be Go in 2004. It's a big ask to go world-class-es th ree -year-old motorcycle in a cutthroat and com pe tit ive Supersport, w here today' s headli bing race-winner becomes yesterday's pape rs practicallyovern ight. Which made the achievement of the Alst are Corona team in 2003 all the greater, kee ping the only holdover model in Wo rld Supe rspo rt , the GSX-R600 Suzuki, at the front of the field in its third year of competit io n, wit h Stephane Cham bon Winding up seco nd in t he championship and teammate Katsuak i Fujiwa ra fourth, after eac h winning one race . Alsta re has succeeded against all expectatio ns in maintaining a fierce 2003 challenge for racetrack supremacy in this most competitive of championships, in contrast to the total ob literat ion of the GSX-R600 from the results sheets at Nat ional-level racing in key Supersport countries like the UK and the USA. What does the Belgian team know about keep ing this bike competitive th at its counterparts in other countries do n't? Riding bot h Suzukis at Misano allowed me to mark the repo rt card of the men eepln ed GS 00 at the front of the World Supersport pack - Alstare Corona's in-house R&D engineers, led by technical guru, Bruno Bailly. Their efforts have lengthened the Me of an engine that, in street guise, produces I IS bhp crankshaft hor sepo wer on the Alstar e dyno but was increase d in 2003 to 134 bhp w ith a 16,000 rpm revlimiter - some going on an engine designed more than t hree years ago to rev much more conservatively. "The big help this gives the riders is a w ider spread of power so they can save gearchanges and ho ld a gear between turns if they need to ," says Baily. That's the kind of robust and fo rgiving engine performance tha t's kept the Suzuki on the pace at twilight time in its road -racing career - and why the new model that' ll replace it next season will surely be a competitive package from day one. Provided Bruno and his boys are the o nes doing the race track R&D on it, tha t is. For the Suzuki's long-lived com pet itiveness has been achieved using many Alstare components, including a cylinder head w ith different porting, revised valve seats and an altered shape for Alstare' s own wa isted inlet valves, fitted with new race springs, which cure the valve float, a limiting factor in revving the engine much over 14,000 rp m. Alstare has tuned the Suzuki motor to the limit of its potential with a Magneti Marelli EC U, and the resu lt is a wider spread of power than before , with mo re tor que. Riding Katz's bike first at Misano, in 9S-degree heat - exact ly as he'd finished second on it in the race the day before - revealed the fuelinjected Corona Suzuki has a real appeti te for revs. Yet thanks to the raised rev ceiling, its wider power band also makes t he bike easier to ride hard - you can opt to change up just as Katz does when the power starts to tail off and the blue light on the MoTeC dash starts flashing at 14,500 rpm, or else you can buzz the motor another ISOO revs higher if you really want to, like Cham bon does, w ith the bright red lamp he prefers flashing in his eyes as he stutters the sixtee n grand revlimite r. I tried hard to find that by ho lding second gear down the short chute betw een the last Misano hairpin ",i1d the chicane before the pits in an initial but flawed attem pt to lap faster by saving a couple of gearc hanges, Stef-style . Alstare's French pocket rocket had gone to the bea ch to recover from his effo rts the day before , but a conscientious Katz-chan had donned his team shirt to come supervise my efforts at least to go less slowly on his race bike, and his advice at my first pit stop only emphasized the Suzuki's potent but user-friendly power delivery by the increasingly frenetic standards of the 600 Supe rsport class. "Alan-san, I hear you revving t he engine very hard in the chicanes and the right turn op posite us, across fro m Pit Lane," he said. "Please use one gear more in ch icanes and maybe two gears mo re in right sweeper. Y u will gain more corner speed beca use o