PHoros IV GolD & GoosE
There has never been a more analytical rider in World Superbike racing than Troy Corser.
At the moment, there are none even close to his consistent weekend speed. Hence, his whopping
861Joint lead. Gordon Ritchie looks at the lab notes of Dr. Superbike, 2005
roy Corser has had a long history in the
World Superbike Series. Champion in 1996,
he has sailed close to the top a couple
more times, stopped only by bad luck, the
winning black hole of Carl Fogarty and latterly the lack of competitiveness of his Petronas triple.
Now, on Suzuki, he's making the rest look pedestrian.
We got Corser to put himself and his season under
the microscope of his own analytical approach prior to
the Dutch round in Assen, the first race of the season in
which Corser wasn't on the podium.
T
Did you expect so much domination this season?
It looks more impressive because I've been more
consistent than anybody else in the top four. They have
42 SEPTEMBER 21,2005 • CYCLE NEWS
all not finished at least one race and had the odd bad day.
But I did think we would be leading because I felt the
bike was going to be good enough to go out there and
do what I wanted it to do - especially after the test in
Phillip Island. We were ready to go racing, right from the
first round of the championship. For me, I was more
ready than I had been in any other year in the championship, maybe except for my time on Ducatis.
It seems none of the others were really ready, even
Ducati, who did not test as much as usual,
I think they had, but they didn't have such good
results as we had. We had fantastic weather at Phillip
Island, and they had some rain and so on, [so] we were
also lucky with the weather.
Your crew chief, Giacomo, mentioned that you did
not race the full KS spec bike until the first race at
Qatar. So, was it evolution of the old one, just baby
steps to get ready to race?
We hadn't made any big steps, because we didn't
really have to right out of the box. The bike they were
working on last year wasn't so bad, they just needed
some more power, and so they improved the engine. I
never had the chance to ride the 2004 bike; I only rode
the '03, then straight to the 'OS [KS]. Yukio [Kagayama]
reckoned that the bike feels very similar to last year's to
the rider, to sit on, but the engine is just stronger.
The GSX·R seems a very simple bike, an across·
the·frame Japanese four • been making them
