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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VOL. 54 ISSUE 22 JUNE 6, 2017 P141 milestone for Suzuki, in that the TLR was the first fuel- injected sport bike for the company. The TLR was also a big stepping stone of knowl- edge gain for Sahara. "I learned many things from that bike, but also it was very difficult, a very hard job" Sa- hara admits. "The most important thing I learned from that project was setting up fuel injection for superbike racing." From there he came to work with Yoshimura Suzuki in the AMA Superbike Championship during the 1998 season when the squad was busy fielding four super- bikes, two TLRs and two GSXRs. Again, following a logical progression, Sahara's next assignment was two years (1999-2000) in world superbike with riders "Frankie" Chili and Katsuaki Fujiwara. Then a really big step for Sahara came with Suzuki when he was asked to design the four-stroke MotoGP engine for Suzuki. "Designing or drawing was not my specialty at that time, but I try," Sahara said. "And I designed the first generation of Suzuki's MotoGP engine. It was very dif- ficult, but I did it." It was perhaps busiest time of his career for Sahara who now, in his mid-30s, was really hitting his stride inside Suzuki. He was not only entrusted with the design of the MotoGP engine, he was also still project leader for Suzuki's superbike racing efforts. Needless to say, Sahara did not have a lot of free time during this period. "I had a lot of traveling. It was very hard, but I en- joyed it," he says. In 2002 Sahara became technical manager of Suzuki's MotoGP team. He traveled the world for a decade with the MotoGP squad through 2011 when Suzuki discontinued its MotoGP efforts. "That's a story in itself," Sahara says. After working in Suzuki's racing side for 16 years, Sahara found himself back in Japan full time, engi- neering production motorcycles. It was a change of pace for sure, but one that ultimately led to Suzuki calling on Sahara's now considerable experience to revive the GSX-R1000. The global financial crisis of 2008 resulted in a nosedive for motorcycle sales in general, but the cuts were especially felt in the sport bike segment of the market. The end result was the venerable GSX-R missed a design cycle and was largely unchanged since 2009. The long time-frame between generations of the GSX-R1000 was a blessing and a curse. Suzuki and Sahara could begin with a clean sheet of paper, but a lot was riding on the redesign. Sahara said the most important thing to him was to have solid fun- damentals to begin with, one that would not have to rely so much on electronic aids to get the most out of the machine. That was the philosophy he gave to his team on designing the newest generation. We think of state-of-the-art computer design taking out all of the guesswork with what might be the weaknesses of a new engine, but Sahara says testing prototypes still provides many answers the computers could not calculate. "Most things can be analyzed by computer now," Sahara says. "Some data are precise, some are not so. But nobody knows what would happen in actual engine until we build it, not only the engine, but the entire package of the bike." Does Sahara have shop talk with fellow engineers from the other motorcycle companies? "Yes, we know each other," he says. "Sometimes we will get together for coffee or for alcohol and secret is secret, I cannot say anything, but they give me sometimes, some indication of a new technol- ogy and I make note." (Sahara grins wide.) Fortunately for Sahara his racing background gives him the ability to throw a leg over on his latest creation at the track and enjoy firsthand the fruits of his and his team's labors. At the recent GSX-R1000 press intro the day after the MotoGP race at COTA, Sahara was there on the track with Kevin Schwantz, Kenny Rob- erts Jr. and the riding journalists, hustling the iconic Suzuki sport bike around the amazing circuit. As the saying goes—it's a tough job, but some- one's got to do it. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives