Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

east banking, on last year's race tires, convinced him he was in troubling territory, but he made progress and, by the time the test ended, had conquered it. "I don't feel fazed by the banking; I'm flat-out all the way around it," he said. "Even my last lap on the 16 laps on a tire and my last lap I said to myself as I came out of the chicane, ''I'm holding you all the way around here no matter what.' Just for my confidence, knowing with I6 laps on the tire I can still railroad it around here. I don't feel afraid at all. It's funny at how you just adapt to that banking." The turn he never mastered was turn one, calling it "the slipperiest corner I've ever raced on." He added: "It's horrendous. I'm purposely doing everything I can not to slide the bike, because I know it kills your lap time. My brain says, 'Do a nice picture or you put all that effort into the lap or your starting a lap, don't spin it up because you use a couple of tenths that.' I only spin it up on my last lap, when I'm coming into the pit. It's weird. I'm upright, it's like I'm doing a burn-out. It looks like I've got my fingers on the brake and I'm doing a rolling burn-out." Behind Hodgson came Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates. Yates will race in the Superstock series this season, and he spent much of his time on that bike. With more time on the Superbike, he surely would have bettered his time of I :40.820. He was also returning to the site of the low point of his 2004 season, if not career, when he clashed with privateer Anthony Fania Jr. in the second horseshoe dUring the 200. "I wish we would have got the Superbike going a little better, but we had a lot of pieces for testing on it," the Georgian said. "It's kind of the first time JIve ridden the thing since last year. I didn't spend much time on it at all when we went to Malaysia... a couple of hours. Igot on it late this weekend also. There's a few things I think with a little different gearbox might help a little bit and some stuff that we can't really try right now. I just feel like it should have a little better grip than it does. After riding a superstock bike, I'm a little spoiled or something. We've got some things that should make it go. We're just running out of time." Yates was so anxious to get up to speed that he earned the dubious honor of first rider to crash on the new track. Yates' crash came exiting the first of the two first-gear lefts in the new section. "Just turning the gas a little too far, and the track was dirty and gearing was so tall, and you're just kind of lugging out ofthere." he explained. "When you break traction, it revved up pretty good and stepped out, and I kind of got it back and got a big swap back and forth. I rode it for a while. It finally bounced me off the front." American Honda's Miguel Duhamel was in the rare position of playing catchup. Instead of being supplied with works bikes from Honda Racing Corporation in Japan, American Honda will be racing kit bikes with much of the machine developed in-house, similar to what it did with the Formula Xtreme bikes in 2004. Team coordinator Ray Plumb said the decision to go that route came so late that they're about four months behind. "Because the decision was so slow, we feel that we're behind the eight ball now," Plumb said. "Yesterday, we had some teething problems. Yeah, the bikes ran, but we needed to be more organized. It'll come though. By Daytona, I think we're going to be there." "Right now we're just spending a lot of time trying to work through this stuff, so sometimes I'd like to be more on the track and more focused on one aspect of the motorcycle, but we don't have that luxury," Duhamel said. Duhamel added that the crew, led by longtime crew chief AI Ludington, was "working nonstop, and I'm just thankful to have a bike ready to go, because these guys are working really hard. Even this weekend, we've got a lot of stuff to try. There's a lot of work for the guys and a lot of work for us to sit down and come up with the best combo to win." Among the options was suspension - a choice between longtime supplier Showa or Ohlins. "I think the only way I can make a decision is really go through the data, talk to the guys," Duhamel said. "Usually when you do that, they pick my mind, I talk more, then usually there's a clear winner." Duhamel wasn't as affected by machine trouble as teammate Zemke, who spent far too much time on the sidelines with various niggling problems. Zemke's day netted him the seventhfastest time overall, behind Ducati Austin's Eric Bostrom. "We did a lot of sitting today," Zemke said after completing only 23 laps total for the day. By comparison, Hodgson did 78, and he left at 4 p.m. to catch a flight back to England. "We had a few bike problems that set us back a little bit," Hodgson said. "For the amount of laps I did, things are going in the right direction for sure. We were trying to make progress with the bike. We ran into a couple of electrical problems, and we had a piece that broke on the bike as well. We had to change all that stuff, and I was sitting pretty much most of the day." Ducati Austin's Bostrom was happy to be back on Dunlops for a few reasons, among them the tire's ability to cure the Ducati 999's notorious front-end vagueness. "The tires are really good," Bostrom said. "They are much better than I (Top) Mat Mladin was fast until a crash put him out of action on the final day. (Above leff) Neil Hoclason smoli:es the tire out of turn one. (Above right) Eric Bostrom ended up sixth fastest. (Right) Jake Zemke at speed on the CBR1000RR. remember them. Still, I'm still trying to learn to trust them, so I think I've got a little ways to go with that. That's where an extra second of lap time is. I'm kind of losing it by not forcing the bike enough. But overall, I'm pretty happy. The lap times are coming pretty easy. "I think that the tire seems to be working out particularly well for the motorcycle. It's interesting because the front end of the bike is a little bit peculiar that way, but obViously it can work really well. The Dunlop just gives you, I mean right now it's giving me the feel. Step it up a notch, and so that part's pretty good. It's just got a lot of feel." Bostrom ran into problems with a vibration on Wednesday afternoon and ended up riding Hodgson's bike at the end of the day. "We tried a more progressive link, and it worked out really well for us, so I think that was an advantage," he said about Wednesday morning's progress. "It was unfortunate because right about then we started getting vibration and I lost some of the feeling in the motorcycle, so I didn't get to feel the change as well as I would've liked. It seemed like it just held the bike on the banking, so it kind of gave us some time. We didn't have to work extra hard for it." Yamaha's DiSalvo topped both the Supersport and Superstock time sheets, though the Superstock time was improved with a qualifying tire. Riding the new R-6 and last year's R-I, DiSalvo was tops in both classes for much of the three days. CYCLE NEWS • JANUARY 19,2005 25

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