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/128367
Team Test at Laguna Seca works the best. The only time I ran one of those was this morning when it was wet on the ground. I definitely think there was more there." There was some disagreement on how well the big Yamahas performed. Superstock Champion Aaron Gobert was happy with a suspension change that did little for teammate Damon Buckmaster, who said his crew was working on getting the power to ground good drivable grip. "He [Gobert] reckons he came up with something that worked," he said. "I put it on the track, and it really didn't make much difference in our lap times. I definitely venture off in a little bit different direction than Az [Gobert] all the time." ting up to shoulder, I started getting pump in my forearm, which I never get pump in my forearm," said Hacking, who only rode his R-6. '~t first, I could only do about five or six laps, and as the day went on and the more I relaxed and the arm started getting used to blood going to it and stuff, I was able to put seven to 10 laps together, which is okay. I've never had an incident take this long to recover from. It's been tough. I've just got to get through Daytona and then I got a month. My goal for right now, the way I've been progressing, I should be close to 100 percent by Barber." With his brother Roger Lee sidelined by a bicycle injury (see In the Wind), Kawasaki's Tommy Hayden bore the brunt of the testing duties. HaVing won on the I000 at Laguna Seca in 2004, Hayden spent most of the day on the all-new ZX-6RR. "The bike is totally different," Hayden Buckmaster spent more time on the 600, while Gobert and DiSalvo only did a few laps. "We just wanted to work through a few more things on the front suspension," Buckmaster said. "Had a few chatter problems." Gobert said it took a while for the track to develop any traction. Once the greenness was gone, he tried a race distance on a new Dunlop rear. "I think 28.9 was the qUickest on the 1000, and I'm pretty sure at the time the superbikes weren't going any qUicker," he said. Jamie Hacking, the fourth member of the team, was making his track return after a six-month layoff. Hacking broke his collarbone in two places during a MidOhio test the week before Laguna Seca, last July. The bone was plated, but then he re-injured it with a spill at Laguna Seca, followed by a much bigger crash at the Mid-Ohio race when the plate was bent. The plate was removed, but healing was slow and a new plate was surgically attached in late December. '~t first, when the blood started get- said, adding that it didn't work better anywhere in particular. "It's just different all the way around. Most of it's better. I definitely think I can carry more corner speed on this new bike once I get it dialed in because it doesn't chatter as bad. Here, that's sometimes a struggle." Attack Kawasaki's Ben Attard will only be racing a 600 this year, in both Supersport and Formula Xtreme trim. The test was spent on the Supersport machine, until he crashed. "I was coming out of the pits and went out there [turn five] and was a bit to the inside of the race line, and before I knew it, I was on the deck," the Australian said. "No idea what happened; was on the ground before I knew it. I have no idea. No idea, how or why or what. I was on the ground. I wasn't even going fast. I'm a bit puzzled. We only went out for two more laps, and it started to rain again after we got the bike fixed." Attard said his best time was a 1:30, slower than the I:29.2 he did last year: "Not the way I wanted to end the test before Daytona, at all." eN It wasn't as bad as the photo looks: Miguel Duhamel ended up second quickest. Bostrom preferred the feel of last year's bike, a feeling American Honda's Jake Zemke could relate to. "Today, if I had a choice to race the two, I'd take last year's bike because it was a sorted machine," Zemke said. "We had a whole year behind it. All three of us won races on it last year. We just have to get this bike up and running." Easier said than done. "We've still got some work ahead of us for sure," Zemke said. "We're still searching and we're still kind of going around the block with suspension stuff and finding a nice balance with the motorcycle. We've definitely made progress in the fuel-injection area and also in suspension. We've got a direction that we're going now at least. Kind of narrowed a lot of things down and had a lot of things to try so far, and we've definitely got a direction to go in right now." His best lap was a I:27.9, which, he said, he'd eclipsed on a Honda 929 during a winter 2001-02 test. In the 2004 Superbike race, Zemke's best race lap was a 1:26.056. 48 MARCH 2, 2005 • "I think we're a little off," Zemke said. "I've been around here much faster." Like Ludington and Duhamel, Zemke agreed that the kit bike has the potential to be better than the factory bike, eventually. "There's areas we can go to that we couldn't go to in the past and different ways to solve problems and more things that we can solve, whereas before we were more tied up with what we could do," he said. "In the end, we should have a better motorcycle for sure. Just looking at lap times, yeah, last year's bike was better than this bike today." Zemke's time was bettered by the Superstock R-I of Graves Motorsports Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo, despite DiSalvo's insistence that the day hadn't gone well. "Just kind of got caught out," DiSalvo said. "We started wanting to make some changes, and actually made it worse, and eventually just came around in a full circle and were right back to the old setting. The time that we did a 27.8 was on a tire that wasn't even working really well. The good tires that we usually run, the 640, the standard everyday tire, that's what CYCLE NEWS