Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Cycle News 1993 01 06

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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got 25 test days scheduled and I'll be able to find out any problems with the new bike early. We'll have some time to get things sorted out. I've seen the blueprints on the new bike and everything has changed, the chassis, the engine and the suspension. It's the most drastic changes I've seen since I've been with Yamaha. Now we just have to bring it out and see if it works. Michael Doohan started the season by winning, ala. Wayne Rainey in previous years. How important is a good start to the season? The beginning of the season is really important. If you fall behind in the beginning it's really hard to catch up with the way the points are. Doohan went out and won the first four races and I fell down again in the fifth race. You've just got to hang in there tough the whole way. I learned a lot last year and the main thing I learned was to never give up. There were times when I was pretty depressed, but the team kept me going. They never got down and they never stopped working towards giving me a better motorcycle to race. Is there a race you could classify as being the best for you this year? Barcelona was definitely the best race of the year for me and one of the best of my career. I beat Doohan in the last couple of laps when he was really on a roll. Only a few people, like Kenny Ro~~ts and Dean Miller, know what we were going through to get back to the point of beating him. But then I busted my ass again in the next race in Germany. I'll tell ya, this year had a lot of high and low peaks. We just regrouped and did the best we could and it all started to come around. What are your feelings in regards to the new "Big Bang" engines vs. the old style engines with the regular firing order? I thin)< the big bang is the way to go. We (Yamaha) were the last to run it. I tested it and it didn't feel good, but we took two teeth off the rear sprocket and it was instantly better. It's just got a lot more low-end torque. It's like an open class motocross bike - you shift it at a lot lower rpm. But it took us a race to figure it out. I think having just the one power pulse rather than two is good. It makes it easier to predict tire spin, and it makes for a smoother power band. When you 7

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