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/128320
the Ducati Desmosedici, bot h of which have chassis that connect to the engine at least 200mm away from the steering head itself. In addition to this change in chassis design, Rossi has clearly been at work finding a rad ically different setup. Th e swingarm being used on Checa's machine is about than the ones on Marco Melandri and Abe's bikes. It is difficult to see whether the back of the bike has been raised in addition to the extra length, but the fork tu bes appear to have been extended by about 25mm, allowing Jere my Burgess and his crew the option of raising the ent ire bike. As it is now set up, it looks significantly higher than last year's machine. These changes would allow the bike to tum significantly quicker, simply because the cen ter of gravity would be highe r and the bike would fall over more quickly into corne rs; raising the bike on the longer fork legs would rest ore some stability and let the team maintain a similar overa ll att itude to before. A very laid back Burgess had this to say: "We identified pretty early w hat the problems were. The bike had [Shinya] Nakano , Melandri and Oliver Jacque on it for last year, and with all thei r 250 experience, it's easy to understand that they would have developed a bike like a 250. The idea is to have an engine that lets you feel as you get into a slide and let you feel your way back out again. On a 250, when you're sliding, you just try to get it back in line again. They were probably chasing ultimate adhesion, but they would have been giving them- www.cyclenews.com selves a bike that was difficult to cont rol. All bikes operate within a basic circle, and as far as I could see , the circle wasn't anywhere near where I thought it sho uld be. "It's way too early to make any predktions based on the times so far; we have been only worki ng o n this bike for nine weeks, so many things could yet change . As far as the engine is concerned, though , if we now develop it, it should be good e nough until Yamaha decides to design a co mpletely new bike." Rossiwas also happy. "The bike is easy to steer, very agile and it's handling the brakingwe ll," he said. "We are still having some prob lem s because after eight or nine laps the bike is a bit more difficu lt to control, but we w ill kee p worki ng to change that ." Yamaha still calls this bike the MI. But on the basis of what we can see, thoug h, this bike is almost completely different from the bike being campaigned last year. The chassis is new, the engine is changed not only because of the different mounting points for the chassis but beca use of the different cylinder head and crankshaft designs, the swingarm is new, and the fork has been revised. Yamaha has certainly spe nt the money, now it must be looking to Rossito convert some spectacular practice times into MotoGP wins. eN CYCLE NEWS • A PRIL 21,2004 25