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/128601
) = i The stars of the show were undoubtedly Honda. who had a grand total of eight RC51 s on parade with the regular riders being backed up by Itoh and new All-Japan Championship contender Tatsuya Yamaguchi. The machine was a complete success from first to last, with good reliability and tremendous lap-time consistency. And the riders just loved it. "There is just no comparison between this and the RC45," said Edwards. "On this, all you have to worry about is where you're going, not where you've just been - because the RC45 would still be slapping out of the corner and down the straight. I'm not worried about Itoh being faster than me. Itoh can be three seconds a lap faster for all I care - because he isn't doing the championship. The bike is real fun to ride. It just does what you want. I have a lot of confidence about the year ahead - I have no reason not to." Even Slight, a big critic of V-twins in the past, was vast- ly enamored with his new mount, even if his final times were shy of his teammate. "The guys who are good and have been good on the twins have all come from riding 250s," Slight said. "Itoh, Colin Edwards, Troy Corser, Carl Fogarty, so it's not so easy for me to go fast on it right away. Even after these three days I'm still leaming what I should be doing on the bike. Colin and Shinichi Itoh have done some very good single laps, which shows what the bike can do, but I've just run about 10 laps, all in the mid-34 bracket on race tires, which is as good as anyone's ever done here. The real test will be in a race situation, when you have to mix it with other riders. I think that's when I'll really leam what the bike can do. Right now I'm learning what I can do on the bike." HRC boss Syuui Nakamoto denied rumors that the Honda was so light that it had to retain its starter motor and battery to make it heavy enough to hit the World Superbike weight limit. By valve gear, Nakamoto said: "We do not have any experience with desmo gear but we have very big experience with nor- mal valve springs." The two-part radiator system, facing the direction of air fiow, as opposed to the normal road RC51 's side-mounted pannier systems, was another talking point at Phillip Island. What at first appeared to be two vertical radiators on either side of the front exhaust downtube have proved to be one long, thin oil cooler and one vertical radiator (even longer), which is linked by a pipe to a horizontal radiator just under the headstock, and mostly hidden by bodywork. "We cannot get the side-mounted radiators to work efficiently enough in a racing application, so we had to find another solution," confirmed Nakamoto. And in terms of alternative solutions on how to go WSB racing, Honda's newest engineering adventure has made an awesome debut - by any standards. GORDON RITCHIE PHOTOS BY GOLD H "The starter motor is retained because it is so hard to start the machine by pushing," he said. "The slipper clutch makes it impossible, so we decided to keep the electric starter. Some people may be surprised at how well the bike has performed - but not us. We spent a lot of time testing this machine to make sure that it was competitive." When asked about how Honda got around the problem of filling such large cylinders without the aid of a desmodromic & GOOSE onda and Ducati vied for the honor of making the biggest splash at recent Phillip Island tests when they both unveiled new innovations for the 2000 World Superbike season. Honda's splash came in the form of an entirely new motorcycle, and the instant speed and all-round performance displayed during the first public outing of their World Superb ike RCS1/SP-1 was nothing short of stunning. Of no surprise to anyone in the HRC camp, the bike's consistent appearance at the head of almost every timed session for three days was nonetheless remarkable. HRC's engineers have made good use of the two-year gestation period enjoyed by the VTR1000 SPW (with the W standing for works version). Ducati's offering was the first proper public try-out of the twinsided swingarm 996, as demanded by reigning World Champion Carl Fogarty. Its presence now acknowledged by the factory for the first time, Ducati nonetheless still tried to hide the machine from prying eyes at every opportunity, despite Ducati's technical manager Carrado Cecchinello giving a description of how it works. Shinichi Itoh proved to be the biggest flesh-and-bone surprise package of the whole test session taking the best lap time on the final day, just ahead of World Superbike cue I e n e _ :IS FEBRUARY 23.2000 21