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/128386
By MICHAEL IN THIE PADDOCK Scon Turn One acing is never about just one corner. But when racing people start talking about Laguna Seca, it seems that this time around it just might be so. The corner in question is not the notorious Corkscrew, but the less distinguished but nowadays much more fearindUcing turn one, a near flat-out kink to the left over the brow of a hill at the end of the short pit straight. With the low gearing demanded by the rest of the tight and hilly track, riders arrive there still under hard acceleration. If they keep accelerating at full pitch, the climb is almost steep enough to launch the bike like a rocket. Trouble is, the track goes left just there - and on the right is a daunting vertical bank. Alex Barros, the only active Grand Prix rider to have ridden a 500 at the track, remembers how you hadn't even quite got to top gear yet when you arrived. How the bike was tight and jumpy. How scary it was not to back off. Wayne Rainey's way through on a GP bike was to get the back wheel spinning before he hit the crest to take some of the bite out of the power. Max Biaggi and Loris Capirossi have ridden 250s at Laguna. Ruben Xaus and Troy Bayliss have ridden Superbikes there. Kenny Roberts Jr., Nicky Hayden and Colin Edwards have competed on all manners of bikes at Laguna. The rest, including Valentino Rossi, are left to wait and wonder, with considerable trepidation, because if it was that scary and tippytoe on 500cc two-strokes, what will it be like on a big 990? The two-strokes were light and feisty, but leisurely compared with the 215-plus-mph MotoGP monsters. Especially under acceleration. There's a good reason for the recent decision to cut engine size back to 800cc in 2007. Even at tracks with good safety facilities, they reckoned to be just too fast for their own good. Laguna's turn one has always been daunting, and some considerable earthmoving has taken place to give the MotoGP bikes a bit more elbow room though in truth the topography is such that there can never really be enough runoff. Let's hope this doesn't add too much in the way of temptation, because the previous incarnation was totally unforgiVing. Possibly as a result, not even American old-timers could remember anyone ever having actually crashed there. Other changes are extensive. The cleaned-up Corkscrew has a lot more room for people to get it wrong and still survive. Now it's just scary because it's blind and difficult, rather than potentially R deadly as well. A rather more worrying corner is halfway around the lap, on the climb to the Corkscrew - a turn that Wayne Gardner has cause to remember. He suffered a broken leg there and ruined his title defense. It still lacks runoff, and it still lacks ambulance access. Genuinely scary and very old-time, rather paradOXically. The U.S. GP follows the Dutch TT at Assen, where for the last time the classic full long circuit - the fastest track of the year - was used. Next year, a truncated version, much more like the average European short circuit, will take its place. The Dutch TT defined the end of the old era of racing. Laguna Seca in 2005 is very much of the new era. Nevermind that it is a revival: That was then, in the dog days of 500cc class. It's all different now, and that's not just the motorcycles. Since 1994, the date of the last U.S. race, GP racing has been through an intensive period of commercial development. The stakes are much higher now. Two things have remained constant: the need to get into the world's key marketplace, and at the same time achieve genuine international credibility; and the fact that Laguna's safety provisions fall seriously short of what is expected at other circuits. Lots of work has been done to try to change that. But there are still grave fears that all concerned have turned a blind eye to safety, prepared to make high-risk compromises in order at last to achieve the goal of a race in the USA. It's been quite a long struggle to do so. After the series at Laguna foundered in the mid-'90s, there was a bit of a false start at Road America. Next up was Homestead outside of Miami, earmarked as a definite, a few years ago. That all fizzled out, too. Then there was plenty of big talk from the private Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. They said they were all but signed up. That turned out to be untrue as well. There have been other circuits proposed, but in the end it was back to Laguna, where, to be fair, an impressive amount of money has been spent to comply with the FIM's requirements. But was the FIM stringent enough, or was it also carried along by this increasing desperation? There is a rising tide of nervousness as the big day approaches. The big question is how the riders will respond when they arrive at Laguna. They have been given an extra hour of free practice to get familiar with the track. (Colin Edwards jokingly suggested he was going to protest at this rule infringement since it was prejudiced against him and the other American riders.) The fear is that the regulars might not even want to make use of it. It's been many years since a riders' protest on safety grounds, but if there is to be another one, this track is made for it. It would only take one crash, or even a serious near miss. So soon after the F I debacle at Indianapolis, where all but six participants pulled out after the warmup lap, this would be a death-blow to MotoGP's American dreams. One man hoping this won't happen will be Kenny Roberts Jr., whose comments perhaps unwittingly echoed the general concern. His only real fear was a freak accident - a tire blOWing at speed, a throttle jamming open, an engine blowing out all its oil onto the tire. In a normal accident, he didn't believe anyone would hit any walls "with any significance." You will note that there have been recent examples of each of these types of accidents. Dorna will also be hoping against hope that it all goes smoothly, if for rather different reasons than Roberts. It needs this race to succeed. You know what? I also hope it does. Then I too can stop biting my nails, at least for another year. eN CYCLE NEWS • JULY 13, 2005 95