Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE D ucati changed the Su- perbike racing game in the mid-1990s. Here in America Ducati ruled AMA Superbike with Doug Polen on the 888 in 1993 and Troy Corser the next year on the Ducati 955. In World Superbike the Italian maker was even more dominant with six- consecutive manufacturer championships from 1991 to 1996. It seemed for a time that the era of the inline-four engine configu- ration in Superbike racing was a thing of the past. The Japanese manufac- turers responded, namely Honda with its potent RC51, which was highly successful winning both the AMA and World Superbike Championships with Nicky Hayden and Colin Edwards. It's almost forgotten these days, but the first of the Japanese makers to respond to Ducati to produce their own V-Twin Superbike was Suzuki and its TL1000R released a couple of years earlier than the Honda. It was a little odd that Suzuki even produced the TL1000R. The company's sporting lineup was built on the back of the GSXR line and that lineage was well established and continued even when the TL1000R was released. Yoshimura Suzuki raced the TLR in AMA Superbike, but only for a single season, 1998, with riders Steve Crevier and Larry Pegram. The TLR had several strikes against it before it even turned a wheel in anger. It was launched at the very peak of AMA Superbike racing. At that point, there were 19 factory or factory-support Superbikes on the grid. So for a first-year, unde- veloped Superbike to make a dent in that kind of crowded field, was going to be tough to say the least. The other big issue was the GSX-R750. That was Suzuki's iconic sporting motorcycle. It was ridden by the team's leading riders Mat Mla- din and Aaron Yates, and that's where the focus of Yoshimura was going to be. The team actually expanded into two with one truck running Mladin and Yates on the GSX-R750 and the other the TLR camp with Crevier and Pegram. "We were sent off to our own little corner," Crevier quipped, reflecting the somewhat outcast feeling the TLR squad felt in the grand scheme. "Suzuki wasn't going to pour a lot of resources into developing the TLR. The GSXR was their legendary bike and it was almost like our little side of the team had to sink or swim on our own." On the other hand since the TLR was a side project for Suzuki, there was less pressure to produce results, but that didn't matter to Crevier. Already considered a 600 Supersport special- ist (he'd go on to win that title that season), he SUZUKI'S FORGOTTEN SUPERBIKE P130

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