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/128314
he landscape of the American road race scene is shifting. Teams can no longer rely on the help they 've traditionally received from japan. The dem ise in importance of the World Superbike Championship means tr ickle-down technology no longer flows. Instead , some of the teams are on their own in develop ing and testing new parts, a very expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive process. Partly it's due to the devaluation of the do llar against the japanese yen. With the greenback steadily losing value over the past few years, the cost of special parts out of japan has gotten exor bitant . Not on ly do the teams have to make their ow n parts in many cases, but they have to fi nd a way to make them cheaper. The two-year slide of the American currency against the japanese yen - the do llar declined I I percent against the yen since the end of 2002 mea ns dollars buy that much less . And it won't change any time soon. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is determ ined to keep interest rates at a 45-year low. T From the outside, it looks like Ame rican Honda has an unlimited budget. It looks like it can hire whomever it pleases, build whatever it needs , test whenever it wants . It looks that way because it has the biggest team and spends the most money. After all, how many other teams could afford to send their riders to japan for a weekend of w ind-tunnel testing? Don't these riders know how to tuck in o n a straightaway? C huck Miller is the head of racing at American Hond a. With four overall victories in the Baja 500 and Baja 1000, as well as a gold med al in the 19B6 ISDE, Miller is a racer at heart . Like any other racer, he has very few free weekends . Once the supe rcross season starts in early january, he's flat out through the end of the road race seaso n. By then the plans for the following year are beginning to take shape , and the wheel cont inues to turn . Ifhe has a free weekend, he goes ridingwith his children. Miller was in his office on Presidents Day, a national holiday for most of the country, but not for the racing community. Officially, it was a day off for the race te ams, but they were all there, motocross and road race, as they are most days. Rival tea ms w ere tes ting at California Speedway. Miguel Duhamel would be out there the next day, shaking down his Formula Xtreme Honda CBR600RR, a bike which, in past years , he would have ridden in the Supers port class. 52 MARCH 10,2004 • CYCLE NEWS The most successful comp any and rider in the history of Supersport racing are taking a year off from the class. From the outside, it looks like the overweight Hond a 600 would again be outgunned in the highlycompet itive class, as it was last year when the Yamahas we re domin ant. Suzuki's new GSX-R600, unde r Ben Spies and Aaron Yates, may raise the bar another notch . It's simply saving face is the perception. The truth is somewhat different. "We don't have unlimited resourc es," Miller said about the decision to sit out the class. Honda is not crying poor. It will never be on the dole, but neithe r is it as profligate as some suspect. "We have to cautiously pro - 40th Ann iversary ceed forward and kind of pick and choose ou r battles and wh ich ones we want to go in and fight, and we just weren't able to go in and do every class." Instead it's taken the Formula Xtr eme class head-on, building immaculate 600cc Superbi kes, as trick as any middlewe ight sportbike eve r made . Miller said Formula Xtreme was chosen because he thought all the factories wante d in and because it would allow his crew to work in areas once off-limits. The rumor had been that Hond a's budget had been cut, a curiosity in the face of an ever-expanding consume r market. That's not the case, according to Miller. "We certainly have all the resourc es and budget to