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/128602
the end, the difference was .14 of a second, a blink of the eye, the width of a front tire at around 185 mph. Miguel DuHamel crossed the finish line the winner of the 1999 Daytona 200, and a few milliseconds later Mat Mladin followed. The two championship stalwarts were worthy adversaries every inch of the 57 laps, and there was a palpable sense that it could go either way. But the person with the most insight knew better. Mladin knew he'd need a miracle to win. Arguably the single most crucial piece of the 3.56-mile road course at Daytona International Speedway is the transition from turn six, the infield exit, up onto the west banking. If you're in front and you get it right, you can break a draft. If you're in second and get it right you can catch one. Done properly, you can work enough of a gap to make the all-important run from the chicane to the start-finish line superfluous. Getting it right means going around the four yellow barrels at rider's left, aiming for the wall on the outside of NASCAR Turn Two, gliding over the Iii bumps, and properly hitting the transition from the flat infield racetrack to the 37-degree banking, on the gas and under the bubble. At the end of the 200-mile race there are a number of factors conspiring against a smooth exit. Tires, even the third set, will be at the end of their useful life, and the suspension will be hot and used up. Brake components will be worn, which means braking is less predictable. Traffic can be infuriating. As for the expected rider fatigue, it just isn't a factor, not with the caliber of riders who run at the front of the AMA Superbike Series, and not with the long corner entries and even longer, restful runs on the tri-oval. Mat Mladin hadn't been getting it right all day. All through practice he and the Yoshimura Suzuki team hadn't been able to come up with a solution that would allow the GSX-R750 to handle the transition. The bumps caused the Suzuki to skitter and skate and delay -the onset of power. DuHamel's RC45 was smooth as silk, and once he hit the banking it was so stable he said he could have carried a beverage in a cup-holder on the handlebars and not lost a drop. A Mat Mladin 12 MARCH 1, 2000' eye • .. n • vv s "Just getting onto the banking over there, Miguel was just getting me like 15 bikelengths getting onto the west banking, he was just gapping me... to the point that it was just very, very tough," Mladin remembers nearly a year after almost stealing the victory from DuHamel. "It took to get back into the infield to catch it up." Which meant riding that much harder, deteriorating all vital components to the end. So when he was asked what he had to do to change the outcome in 2000, Mladin knew the answer. He'd worked on it for three days during the December Dunlop Daytona tire tests with little success. "And to tell you the truth, now that we've done this testing and stuff, we haven't found anything that's any better, because that was our main priority for these three days was to find something that was going to work going up there better," Mladin said. "Essentially, for two days, we worked on a bunch of stuff and never found anything, so we're just going to have to resort back to what we know unless we think up something different before the race." To try and win it somewhere else usually means in the pits. The Daytona 200 is a unique race, the longest on the schedule and the only one with pit stops. The top teams routinely change both tires, usually dual-compound, as well as add fuel, during precision-executed-under-10second pit stops. A lot can go wrong see Harley-Davidson 1998 or Yamaha 1999. Which is why the top teams relentlessly practice their pit stops and are constantly looking for ways to improve their efficiency. Honda brings the personnel who work the Suzuka 8Hour. And it shows. "Since the race has been concluded and the season's finished, we've had time to go over things, and we took a look at the pit stops on a video camera and we believe that Honda did a better job in the pits than us," Mladin said. "Suzuki has now developed a totally new quick-change system front and rear, a new stand system, which we believe is going to help, and also the way we fuel the bikes, which wasn't right, so that's something we're going to practice a lot. If you lost there a couple of seconds, it makes a big difference sometimes. Not that it really