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
get the job done, but I will say that all the manufacturers are cautious with those resou rces at th is point because the do llar-yen exchange rate has change d dramatically in the last co uple of years, and the market isn't quite as strong as it was maybe two years ago ," Millerexplained. "Sales are still doing well, and I think Ho nda is still on top of the sales heap as far as numbers go . But at the same time, the pe rcentage in growth has dramatically shran k fro m wha t it was a year or two years ago. And so when that begins to happen , they're just cautious with w here they go and spend their money. I think all the man ufacturers are all kind of up against the same thing. I think the Japanese have a pretty good indicator scale over the re of what the future might hold. Everybody's kind of just paying attention to it right now . Not that we don't have what we need. It' s more of just that we 're making sure of being resou rceful and spending the money in the right places at the right time . And sometimes that's w ith the best rider, and som etim es that's with the best equipment and staff. We're just kind of paying attention to it all. I will say that we don't have any less than we've ever had." T he numbe r o f Ho ndaequipped sate llite te ams is dra maticallyreduced this year. O ut of racing are Annandale Racing and Bruce Transportation Gro up; off to Suzuki went No Limits. All that's left is stalwart Erion Honda, the most successful sate ll ite team in AMA history. Erion was looking at a reduced effort until the recent signing of Anthony Gobe rt. Until then, they had Jake Zemke as part of the Superb ike team and Formula Xtre me , and Alex Gobert in Supe rstock. With Anthony Gobert, they have a legitimate threat to w in races, provided he shows up and shows up ready to work. The prod uction date of the CBR I OOORR is such that the bikes aren't going to be available until after the first race . It meant that the majority of the satellite teams who wanted to run the Superstock class and/or the Superbike class were forced elsewhere. Honda saw last year what happ ens when you rush out a produ ction model. There weren't eno ugh parts , the teams started behind and never caught up. "If you do n't have everything in place, it makes it very difficult for these guys to be competitive," Miller said. There we re several e ntreaties to Honda for support, but they had to be turned down. "We wanted to be fair w ith them and not promise something that we couldn't really give them," Miller said. " I think you 'll see our supp ort effort grow thro ughout this season and then into the future , for sure . "O ur goal right now is to make sure the bikes are available, kit pieces available, so when these teams are ready to go racing and choose Honda, all the reso urces will be the re for them to be competitive and succes sful. Noth ing worse than giving a guy a moto rcycle, just a mot orcy cle, and say, 'Okay, you're all on your own. But by the way, there're no parts available.' And that's kind of the position we were in last year w ith the 600. We got the 600s early, but the re were no parts available; there were no spares . Eve rybody's trying to make something happen, and the development takes time and mo ney and parts ." There will be more Honda 1000s available in April and May, perhaps wit h some support from the facto ry. The co ntinge ncy prog ram has been stepped up . "Certainlyour plans are to continue to grow to supp ort teams in the future ," Miller said. The devaluation of the dollar means more money is spent he re than in Japan. That's why Honda produces motorcycles and ATVs and automo biles he re in the United States , and it doesn't solely rely on Japan to build the products. And whe n it can build that stuff here, it's better profitability for the company. It's the same with racing. If Honda can engineer and deve lop the race machines out of prod uction bikes in the United States , it keeps the money here in the United States , it creates more jobs, it makes Honda more self suffic ient so it doesn't have to rely on Japan or others for its performance needs. Chuck Mille r confe rs with Jeff 5tanto n, the form er motocross a nd sup ercross champ ion w ho serves as a consultant to Honda's mete cross/supercross tea m. "I've caut ioned our guys many, many times already that we have to make sure that Japan and everybody's kind of giving us a lot of rope to do whatever we can, and we have to be cautious w ith that rope and not take advantage of it and make sure we don' t hang ourselves ultimately," Miller said. Merlyn Plumlee, AI Ludington and Dave McGrat h take care of the riders , but they're engineers, as well. Conversely, many of the Honda enginee rs are former racers . Honda Japan has asked its American arm to get more involved in areas like fuel injection, "and they're very cautious w ith that information tha t they trickle out to us, but at the same time , they are allowing som e of it co me out ," Miller said. "W hat we 're finding alread y is, we have so me smart guys aro und, and so does Yamaha and Suzuki and Kawasaki. And if we let these guys use their resource s and give them the ir abilities, they 're www.cyclenews.com capable certai nly of making something work that's really, really well. Yoshimura's a great exam ple of t hat again. I don't know how much Suzuki's involved, but Yosh has done a great job of com ing up w ith all their pieces to make Mat Mladin a champion. We're try ing to do the same here ." Honda pulled out of World Super bike racing after Colin Edwards won his second title at the e nd of the 2002 season . The pipeline for developme nt prod ucts dried up. But, before long, so did the value of the World Superbike series. Its descent elevated the AMNChevy Trucks Super bike Champ ionship as a premier se ries, despite the drastically less-safe racetracks. Wha t's dr iven the change, in part , is that the America n market is the strongest and most impo rtant in the wo rld. American Honda used its muscle to place Nicky Hayden on the Repsol Honda team with Valentino Rossi. American sales have a large impact on the profitability of the co mpany. Though the RC-S I was always a niche bike, Honda sells what it races, and the new Honda CBRIOOORR w ill be a much larger seller, if it's a winner, and early indications are that it will be. The ser ies is being held back by a number of issues, including the tracks . Miller, along wit h the rest of the road race advisory board, has been urging the AMA to improve the tracks fo r years , and "if we can get a bunch of Barbe rs and tracks that will start spending money, we 'll be really happy - fat and happy. It' s frustra ting to go to some of the tra cks and look ove r and think, 'my gosh, we're racing in here.' Th is is not right. It kind of drags our se ries down a little bit w hen we do that . We just need to kee p pushing them to have t he best tracks. Whether that 's changing out Loudon or changing out Daytona o r adding in Barber or adding in the new Sears [Infineon Raceway] now, with their changes, it' s all good stuff." Honda is leading the assault in the Superbi ke class w ith t hree riders , Ben Bostro m, Miguel Duhamel and Jake Zemke. "Here we got the guy who's been ther e, done that, which is Ben [Bostrom]. We got Miguel [Duhamel] , who can always be there and can always do tha t. We've got the new up-and-c omer Jake [Zemke] , who's hungry to get there and do it, and we've got a little bit of all three of the worlds there that will work to our advantage ." With Yamaha and Kawasaki sitting the class out, Suzuki's tw o riders racing a three-year-old motorcycle, and Ducati trying to pick up the pieces after the loss of crew chief Vic Fasola, Honda's poised to have the biggest impact . The radar guns clocked Bostrom at 192 mph at the Dece mber Dayto na tire test, and that on a motorcycle in the earliest stages of development. Honda swe pt the podium in last year 's Dayton a 200, a hard feat to to p, not that it won't try. What the crews built for this week's Daytona 200 will certainly be faste r and quicker and have more of the America n Honda imprimatur. eN CYCLE NEWS • MARCH 10 ,2004 53