Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

spinning the rear and sliding a bit. It didn't work good, but it suited my style." In 1998, the chance to go 500 racing came, with the Shell Advance 500 team, riding a Honda V-twin. It was a step in the right direction - but not the right kind of boots. "A twin compared with a V-four doesn't have the right kind of power for my style," McCoy admits. "It's really doggy off the bottom end, more like a 125 - good for high speed, but without the acceleration of a V -four." His best finish was 1Oth, in a season when he scored points more often than not. But it all came to a premature end at Brno, with a crash in race-morning warm-up that left him with a badly broken ankle - his worst-ever injury. He remembers the details vividly. "Michelin had given me a different tire to test, and I'd come up behind Mick Doohan, and he had a few people following him, so he pulled over and slowed right down. I was just interested in getting a good time, so I went past and the first half of the lap went pretty good. Then going down the back straight, down the hill, Mick blew by me again. I thought that was okay, because I could get a tow off him for the rest of the lap. Then he suddenly pulled right across in front of me and hit the brakes really hard. "I don't think he was brake-checking me. That was just where a V-four needed to brake - but it was much earlier than I was braking, and I didn't expect it. Because he was on the white line there was nowhere for me to go. I hit the back of his bike, and that caught my front brake lever and locked the front wheel. It tucked under, then as the brake came off, and the wheel got traction again. That started a big tank slapper, and I was down." The injury kept him out for the rest of the season, but worse was to follow. Led to expect continued employment with the Australian-based team, he instead found himself let down flat as they switched to the 250cc class, taking on Japan's Tohru Ukawa with the factory Honda that he brought with him, and new Australian bright hope Anthony West. Once again he'd picked the wrong team. Once again, he'd been let down. "I felt pretty sore about it: McCoy said. "And the injury had made me think. I'd never been on crutches before. There'd been a lot of times I'd thought that was it, I've had enough. No team seems serious enough for me. You're putting your life on the line, and they don't pay you, or let you down some other way." It was almost six months later that he got the call from the Red Bull Yamaha team that changed his life, and gave him the chance to reintroduce the rooster-tail to the 500cc class. It had only been January when he'd gotten off crutches, and even longer before he could get back on a motocross bike. "I didn't want to put too much weight on the footrests - I'd only been riding for a couple of weeks before I got the call from Red Bull. I still wanted to race. I was thinking about the AMA Superbike Series in America. I thought that might be a happy life. Meanwhile, I was just about to start working for my uncle, fitting garage roller doors." The call came at 3 a.m., and team boss Peter Clifford needed an answer within a couple of hours. "I felt a bit iffy - not 100 percent. I'd never ridden a four-cylinder before, and I didn't even have a day to think about it. But my mum and dad said - like, go for it. So I called him back and said yes." McCoy's baptism was at Assen, something of a hard place to start. The bike was still set up for Simon Crafar, whom McCoy was replacing. "His style is pretty different from mind, and at Assen the bike was like a raging bull, trying to throw me off everywhere." I wrote at the time: "McCoy looked like a monkey on a greyhound." But he stayed on, narrowly, and his new career had begun. By the end of the season, just six races down the road, he'd scored a rostrum finish at Valencia, after having by then gone through the all the arguments of those who wanted him to change his style, and decided just to keep doing it his own way. "My crew chief Hamish [Jamieson] was happy with the way I rode from the beginning. People forget that seven or 10 years ago everyone rode that way. I think he was glad to see it again - he'd had experience working with Kevin Schwantz and people back then." But it was true that tires had evolved in the interim, and that the' rubber used by everybody else wasn't quite right for McCoy's style, which is slightly different from that used by the likes of Schwantz and Rainey in that he uses a higher corner speed and cracks the throttle open with the bike still leaned over - a possibility that wasn't available to them on the tires they had then, and it took another change before McCoy could achieve his full potential - moving from the regular 17-inch tires to the new 16.5inchers already coming into fashion in the Superbike class. "I noticed that the other riders would be slower than me mid-corner, and get in my way because I'd open the throttle sooner: McCoy said. "They would pick the bike up a bit on the exit before getting on the gas, but I like to open up when it's still leaned over. The 17-inch doesn't put as much rubber on the road when the bike is on its side, so it would tend to snap sideways when I did that. The 16.5-inch has more edge-grip mid-corner, where I like to spin it up. "Last year, there wasn't a big choice of different tires in that size. At the start of this year we sat down with Michelin and asked for me. They said okay, they'd do it - but that I mustn't come asking for 17inchers. Actually, the agreement was that they'd give me what I wanted for the first four races, then we'd talk about it again." His win in South Africa made that plan somewhat redundant, however, and by the second race all the other riders were asking for 16.5-inch tires as well though not all of them liked them. It was in the second race that McCoy backed up the promise he'd shown in South Africa - by finishing on the rostrum again in third place. It seems McCoy is the only true practitioner of the old-time religion - not surprising, really, since he is the only one with a real speedway or dirt track background. Even Kenny Roberts Jr. is more of a tarmac man, though he's spent plenty of time playing on the oval tracks, he's never actually raced on them very seriously. McCoy has one other asset, to go hand in hand with his early opening of the throttle. As the lightest rider on a V-four, his acceleration is excellent and his top speed figures are almost always the highest. Does this make him the new Mick Doohan? McCoy laughs - as he does often, and very readily. "I think I'm a bit more easy-going than Mick. And it'd be pretty hard for anyone else to beat what he's done. It's early days for me, anyway - a bit early to start thinking about the championship. There's some tracks this year where I haven't even ridden a V-four y~." ~ Anyone can ride like Garry McCoy. Just follow these three simple steps. And if you want to practice the technique, it's also a good idea to do what he does. "I ride a 250cc motocrosser with a tuned 500cc engine - one of my hyperbikes, on knobby tires on the bitumen. Once you've been sliding a bit the tires go like jelly, and you can really get the feel of the bike moving around." 1 - Comer Entry "Get back off the gas and brake. so the rear end is washing. I'm hard on the front, but I use both brakes - you have two. SO use them both. If the back's too far out you can bring it back by easing off the rear brake. Sometimes I go in with the back out and get on the gas and keep it out all the way round. That's a good feeling. 2 . Mid-Comer "Lay the bike on its side. I don't weight the footrests much unless there's a grip problem. As soon as it's on its side, before the apex, I open the gas to pick up the comer speed and start the rear spinning. I don't use the rear brake to control the spin - I tried it, but it didn't work for me. 3 • Comer Exit "Get hard on the gas, and get it into the slide. The amount of throttle depends on how the bike is facing. If it looks like you're going to run off the edge of the track, keep it nailed. If you're going too tight, then you can back off a bit and weight the outside peg to stop it sliding so much, and made your line wider. It's just like speedway - go in fiat out, keep it sideways, then play with the throttle." cue I e n e _ S • APRIL 19. 2000 21

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