Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

intend to order via your right hand the famous "linear feel" beloved of Mick Doohan and other 500cc riders but I now run it on to 12,000 rpm, Through the chicane and down the to riding around off the cam at where Domenicali says peak power next bit of straight, and the Ducati around 5000 rpm, but hit 6000 revs of 170 horses is delivered, 7 horse- surges forward irresistibly again and without the slightest sign of the laps in the damp, it's quite amenable is right here and ready to go on this on the multi-program info-center dig- power up on '98. I'm not sure how so-called "diesel," a motorcycle that ital dash, and the engine note hard- this relates to HRC's claimed figure kind of jerky pickup from a closed is arguably quite a bit more sophisti- ens and it begins to take off. Howev- of 191 horsepower for the RC45 of throttle that so many other fuel- cated both mechanically and elec- er, it's above 9000 rpm that the '99 similar top speed, but let's just say injected bikes suffer from, though not the Honda V4. Instead, there's just a tronically than any 500cc two-stroke. Ducati really starts to fly, when accel- that the Ducati at least feels that It's also incredibly potent in terms eration becomes much more vivid, powerful, and, unlike the RC51/SP-1 smooth-but-instant response from of performance - an impression con- and the figures on the dash scramble prototype Honda V-twin I will sample the perfectly-mapped EFI, as the firmed by the way Superbikes now into five-figure realms faster than a couple of weeks from now, it runs engine note hardens and you - vie with GP racers for outright lap your eye can keep up. Wow! Sudden- happily to the 12,500 rpm rev-lim- whoops! It's raining: what a pity. Oh records. The Ducati's trump card is ly we're in four-stroke GP bike mode, iter without the power falling off - - here's Loris just arrived. Sorry, the way it puts the power to the with of that useful if you want to hold a gear, like mate - rain stopped play, as we say ground out of turns; actually, it's smooth-running motor now not as in the short straight between the last in cricket. You know - the game we more of a turbo-charged tractor or lazy-sounding as it was at lower revs right-hander and the first chicane at play in England, where Carl Fogarty locomotive than a diesel truck, in the - not by a long way. Misano, where two gearshifts defi- comes from... the muted rumble way the rear Michelin digs in as the Carl later tells me he normally nitely lose you time, compared to V-twin thunders out of a turn as if on shifts up at 11,500 rpm to keep in holding the engine and fluttering the rails. As I discovered on my first few the meaty part of the torque curve, eN limiter. CARL FOGARTY:· How I Done It Viewed dispassionately, there's grounds to insist that Ducati's eighth Superbike world title in the past decade was more thanks to King Carl's brilliance as a rider, and his noprisoners thirst for taking the checkered flag first, than any ongoing technical supremacy of the dominant desmos from Italy - now completing their sixth racing season in 916 guise. With exactly the same equipment, teammate (and former World Champion) Troy Corser could only finish third in the 1999 title chase, ceding the runner-up slot to Honda-mounted CoUn Edwards - yet in the process, the two of them both finished a massive 128 points (more than five race wins) behind Britain's best. Who better to explain the basis for such crushing dominance than the man himself - so while the rain beat down on the Misano garage roof, I asked My Hero how he done it. Sunday - if I put in the hard work in practice, then I can have a ride round and enjoy myself on race day!" On why Australia was important: "I set off on Saturday to do 15 or 16 laps - and on the 13th lap, the rear tire blew out. That was the one I'd wanted to use for the race - but if we hadn't set out to do race distance in practice, we wouldn't have found out it wasn't going to last. So then they put a different tire on the back and sent me out agllin. I just managed to get in 15 laps before they put out the checkered flag - and just as I crossed the line it went, bang, chitter-chitter-chitter it had gone again! So that was two different 17-inch tires, both blown before race distance was up. That left only one choice go to a 16.5, which would run cooler but not give so much grip. So Sunday morning, we lifted the bike up a bit at the rear to com· On what be had to work on pre-season: "Without being big-headed, I've got to say that I won the championship again this year thanks to working bloody hard at each circuit we went to. That's because in '98 we had a lot of trouble with the rear tire - it didn't cost me the championship, 'cause I won it anyway, but that was the reason that Honda got so close to beating us. It lost me a lot of points, at places like Brands Hatch, South Africa and Austria, where I was just sliding around coming second, instead of winning races. So that was the big thing on the bike we worked on last winter." On why he doesn't train: "I worked so hard on the race track on both Friday and Saturday. That's one reason I don't do any training, apart from the fact I hate running - I get loads fit enough, just the amount of riding I do! Before, I used to go out and do a couple of fast laps in qualifying, come back in, look and see who else had gone quick - then put another tire on and go faster again. I was treating it all as a bit of a race, worrying about out-lapping everyone else. But in '99 I just ignored alJ the others - I forgot about what they were doing, and just concentrated on setting the bike up and working a lot more with the telemetry and the' mechanics. I'd not really done that before, but we've got a great team of race engineers here at Ducati, now, and they convinced me the only way to get round the rear end problems was to work harder at setup." pensate for the smaller diameter wheel. did another long run in warm-up, and it felt fme. Troy got the same tire, and we finished 1-2 in both races - mission accomplished. But without putting in the hard work on Friday and Saturday to get properly prepared for the race, I'd have had the same problems at the back end as in previous years, and wouldn't have scored in either race." On why race day is easy: "Because of the troubles we were having at the rear, It's no good doing three or four laps on a qualifier and then asking for a new tire - especially as Superpole is all that counts, timewise, anyway. That makes the two qualifying sessions same as the practice - use them to get the bike right, and don't worry about times. But it meant J was doing near race distance. each session at every race meeting, and that was so bloody hard at some circuits, because of the temperature and people getting in the way and so on. Basically, Saturday for me is now harder than On why he suspected the single-sided swingarm: "When I rode the Honda in '96, when it also had a single-sided swinging arm, we had nothing but rear-end problems all through the season - I couldn't find a tire, couldn't carry corner speed, the back end was coming round everywhere, and yet now the RC45 is the strongest bike out there in terms of rear-wheel grip. The biggest thing that's changed is they fitted a double-sided swingarm. Okay, our bike's got a bit faster, but they don't suffer the same tire problems we have with the same make of tire, and they have more grip. So for 2000 we've got to concentrate again on the rear end of the bike - that's where the championship will be won or lost, in my opinion." On why chassis setup doesn't change much: "We hardly ever change the chassis setup from one track to the other, especially not at the front, where we might stiffen up the fork springs at a couple of circuits, or lift the front end to give more ground clearance like at Sugo, for instance. You've aiready found out I prefer to run low footrests, so llike to raise the bike up a bit, so I can lean it over more and keep up peed in the bend. But really, chassis geometry stays pretty much the same the whole year - all the work goes into finding the rear tire, and that just takes mileage. My main strength as a rider is carrying corner speed, so I tend to use a slightly harder front tire, but even that we don't change much - everything goes into the rear. In fact, most of the races this season were so warm, I ended up using the hardest front in the truck most of the time, as well as the hardest rear. But at Brands Hatch, it was so baking hot that even that blew apart - not just in the first race, where I had to make a pit stop, but in the second as well, which nobody knew because it was on the last lap. " On why one comer will always be crap: "We have a choice of two different gearboxes for the Ducati, and Troy generally used the Eva one with a longer first and second gear, and I'd swap between the two, depending on the track. First always seems too bloody Iowan the stock gearbox - couldn't really use it at some places like Albacete where you need it, without upsetting the bike, which is why I asked for the longer first two gears. Ideally, you'd prefer the option of just changing between the two at the track, but on the Ducati it means you have to change the engine, because there's no way of altering the gearbox without splitting the motor. So gearing is a problem, because there's always at least one important corner the bike's going to be crap on, and you can't do anything about it like the Japanese can, because we can't change the gear ratios. Having loads of torque doesn't necessarily make up for it, even if at a lot of circuits like here at Misano, we only use five gears - you're still wrong for a lot of turns. At Sugo this year for the first time we used all six . and the rear sprocket was so big and the overall gearing so low, it was like riding a two-stroke rocket-ship acceleration, and change gear five times between here and the pit waUl Punched pretty well up the hill out of the chicane, though!" eye I e n e vv s MARCH 15, 2000 21

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