Say that you’ll be true
And never leave me blue
My Susie Q
— Credence Clearwater Revival

First, let me say that yes I have heard the saying “Don’t count your eggs before they hatch” and I’m not yet talking about chickens. However, I am predicting that the folks at Suzuki may have a lot of poultry on their hands at the end of the year. Suzuki has consistently hired great riders and then given those riders great bikes. What makes this exciting is that Suzuki is the third largest of the four Japanese manufacturers and thus works with a budget that is probably half what Honda or Yamaha have available. Clearly they have something figured out both in how to make motorcycles and how to motivate riders to race under the Suzuki banner.

Where to start is easy…Ricky Carmichael. I have run out of cliches to use in describing what the guy has done to the 2005 Supercross field. I don’t think I’ve used annihilate yet, so that will have to do. I thought that Ricky’s win last week after crashing in Atlanta was going to be the highlight of the season but I think his annihilating the field at St. Louis has topped it. From the first practice until the waving of the checkered flag, RC was at least a second a lap faster than anyone else in the field. He has radically changed Supercross this season and is also changing the other riders. Chad Reed, a great Supercross racer, looked demolished on the podium at St. Louis. He had ridden a perfect race and was down *5* seconds after the first three laps. I don’t know if Reed has the stamina to keep picking up the shattered pieces of his self image after every race. Kevin Windham, on the other hand, looks like a guy on valium. He yet again got a 1-2 punch from Carmichael and Reed, this time finishing 20+ seconds down on RC and 14 seconds behind Reed. On the podium the guy seemed to be staring off into another world while describing how happy he is with his riding. The AMA better bring in a team of psychologists fast, while there are still some shreds of ego left to work with. What really highlights the job Carmichael has done with SX is to look further down the time sheets. Names like Tortelli, Vuillemin, Fonseca, Byrne, Short, Ferry, Preston, Larocco and even McGrath would be headline news just a few years ago. Now the best of them finishing more than 30 seconds behind the winner. With a 49 second lap time, most of them are being lapped. Carmichael has created a new sport which just happens to take place on a Supercross track and so far no one else can play. There are still seven races left in the season but I’m sure Suzuki’s PR department is already writing up the ads about their winning the AMA SX title for the first time in 20+ years.

Second on the excitement list has to be their start to the World Superbike series. After dominating the pre-season tests, the Alstare Suzuki team swept the season opener in Qatar by swapping 1-2 finishes. Now I’m not saying that the WSBK title is already being engraved with Suzuki’s name but surely their Marketing department is busy re-learning how to spell “World Superbike” since they haven’t even had the hope of doing well in that series this millennium.

Third would be returning to the domestic stage to talk about Mat Mladin and the rest of the Suzuki teams in AMA Superbike. 5 time AMA Superbike champ Mat Mladin gave some insight into his determination by running fast laps at the Daytona tire test, and the other pre-season tests in California. He has a new monsterously powerful GSXR1000 and was able to start pre-season testing earlier this season than last. Considering how well he raced last year, giving him even more testing time spells trouble for the other racers. Even if Suzuki doesn’t want to put all the proverbial eggs in one basket by hawking Mladin, just look at his team-mates at Yoshimura Suzuki. Until his disastrous 2004 season, Aaron Yates looked like one of the few men in the paddock who could run with Mladin. It remains to be seen if Yates can bounce back from last season’s troubles and return to form. Superbike rookie Ben Spies is the most exciting thing to happy to AMA Superbike racing since Nicky Hayden. The kid is unbelievably fast and after two seasons racing the GSXR in Formula Xtreme and Superstock, he is already comfortable with the bike. I think Spies has to be a title favorite in both Superbike and Superstock in 2005. That would certainly get the publicity hacks at Suzuki in a fervor.

That not enough for you? Okay, then imagine how much press Suzuki is going to generate in 2005 thanks to the Michael Jordan Suzuki team. Riders Jason Pridmore and Steve Rapp should be front runners in Superstock, if not Superbike. Rider Montez Stewart brings much needed ethnic diversity to the grid, which should bring in new fans, and he should rapidly improve his riding this season thanks to his two team-mates. If Montez can up his game, the press levels will ratchet up even higher. But most of all, just having Michael Jordan walk in the front gates of a race track will get Suzuki more street creed than anything else. He brings with him a flood of publicity from Nike to Sports Illustrated to ESPN to People magazine and that is guaranteed to bring more people into Suzuki dealerships all across the country.

If Suzuki really wants to brag, they can talk up their development agreement with Kawasaki. When this was first announced, I think a lot of us were disappointed as we were afraid we’d start seeing Ninja’s that looked a lot like GSXRs. What has happened is that both manufacturers have learned from each other and gone on to produce unique bikes that out perform those of Honda and Yamaha, both companies whose R&D budgets are bigger that the total company budget of either smaller brand. The result has been the new ZX-10 and GSXR1000 power houses, the KX and RM 125 and 250 four stroke motocrossers, the zx-6RR and GSXR-600 which lead the Supersport class in power. It has also resulted in Kawasaki and Suzuki dominating 125 Supercross races in both the East and West series. Kawasaki winning the ultra competitive AMA Supersport series. Suzuki ruling the AMA Superbike series. Suzuki has also dominated other forms of racing like the AMA Grand National Cross Country series and the ATV MX series. Kawasaki is also challenging for wins in AMA Superstock and Enduro series. Clearly Suzuki has a lot to be proud of in their cooperation with Kawasaki. Add that to the bullet points that Suzuki can use in their Marketing campaigns. In fact, it is only the MotoGP series that is giving Suzuki an ounce of humility at this point…

In 2003, Suzuki swept all but two of the AMA road racing championships with Superbike (Mladin), Superstock (Hayes) and Formula Xtreme (Spies). That year their Marketing and PR departments had the opportunity to go nuts. I’m predicting that 2005 may give them another chance.

[image from the Motoworld Racing web site.]

I did a blog posting earlier this week comparing the WSBK and MotoGP times from Qatar. Well, as I forecast, the times got quicker still on the third day of the MotoGP test. (The Camel Honda squad with Barros and Bayliss are sticking around for a fourth day of testing but everyone else called it quits after yesterday afternoon…or evening in the case of Tamada).

So the faster laps times, combined with this awesome photo of Tamada, motivated me to do a quick followup posting…

First, on his third and final day of testing at Qatar, Tamada knocked another second off this best lap time to finish with a fast lap of 1:56.6. I was pretty impressed on Tuesday when I wrote that the MotoGP guys were nearly three seconds faster than the WSBK bikes during their first two days of testing. The fact that the top MotoGP riders could knock another full second off their lap times shows just how much testing they are really doing as opposed to just running fast laps. I suspect they’ll knock another second off their lap times when they return to Qatar for their actual race in October. By then, they may well pick up even more time since Honda usually releases upgraded components to all the teams around the middle of the season.

Second, I think that I underestimated Tamada when I wrote my MotoGP rider review back in November. At the time, it seemed like Honda wasn’t really going to support Tamada and I wasn’t completely sure he’d even make the grid. I fully expected, if he was racing, that he would be aboard a “bitza bike” made from whatever hand-me-downs he could get out the back door of the factory. Instead, it looks like Honda has stepped up with a full customer bike (second tier behind the two Repsol bikes and maybe Gibernau’s bike, depending on what you read into the press releases about the Repsol-Movistar agreement) and it looks like Michelin is giving him their top tier tires. As a result, Tamada has been consistently fast at all of the pre-season tests. He left two of the Sepang tests as fastest guy and has backed that up by blitzing the Qatar test as well.

Clearly this guy is motivated. Whether that is enough to beat Rossi is another question but based on his attitude before the Motegi race last year, he certainly has the confidence to think he can. Something that Biaggi and Gibernau, both still pretty mentally battered after the past few season, may not have. I think its thrilling to see Tamada going so well. The Japanese have long hoped for a champ in the premier class of the GPs and their previous contenders like Okada, Itoh, Abe, Ukawa, Katoh and Haga have never quite achieved that lofty height. Perhaps Tamada has the skill, determination and mental strength to be a contender…

[image from the MCN web site.]

In addition to kicking off the road race season a few weeks early, having the World Superbike teams racing in Qatar this past weekend accomplished something else…it gave us race fans an early glimpse as to the difference between the current production based Superbikes and the current MotoGP dedicated race bikes. The March WSBK race weekend ended on Sunday and then on Tuesday some of the MotoGP teams showed up for some pre-season testing.

A true apples to apples comparison will never be possible and, because of freakish weather last weekend, is even less meaningful. However, its rare for both series to visit the same track so we’ll have to work with what we have. The times that have been released so far do back up the fact that there is a big difference between a production based series on spec tires and a “clean sheet” series with trick, unobtanium tires. During qualifying for last weekends WSBK race, held on a semi-wet track, the fastest time in Superpole was laid down by Ducati mounted Regis Laconi with a 2:01.5. The fastest time laid down by any of the riders during pre-Superpole qualifying was a 2:01.2 by Troy Corser in the first qualifying session. These times were presumably set using a qualifying tire or, if those are not in use, by the softest available race tire. The fastest race time, set by Yamaha mounted Sebastien Gimbert, was a 2:01.8.

Now fast forward 48 hours and the MotoGP teams hit the now dry Losail Circuit for some laps. At the end of the first day, Nicky Hayden and his Honda RC211V have turned a best lap of 1:58.3. After another 24 hours, Ducati’s Loris Capirossi has chopped off nearly another second with a 1:57.6. It isn’t known for sure (or at least not by arm-chair journalists like me) whether these guys were running qualifying tires or not but I’d say its highly likely. Even more likely in the case of Capirossi’s time since a) Bridgestone is known to have excellent qualifiers, b) Capirossi’s fast times from Sepang were using the Qs and c) everyone has to test for qualifying runs and race distance. All this after just two days at the track so times from tomorrow will likely be even lower.

So, a little quick math here (ummm…two point oh…errrrr…carry the one…convert to seconds…ah ha!) shows that the MotoGP bikes are lapping over three and a half seconds faster than the WSBK bikes. That’s pretty significant. Even more significant is that the slowest of the full factory bikes at the MotoGP test is 9th fastest Troy Bayliss with a 1:58.6, only a second slower than Capirossi. Rewind back to that first (and dry) WSBK qualifying session. Ninth was Nori Haga who turned a 2:02.6 aboard his Yamaha R1, almost a one and a half seconds slower than Corser’s 2:01.2. Clearly the further down the field you go, the bigger the gap.

So what does this mental masturbation and meaningless numerology really mean? Well, for one, it shows that the extra 40hp available on the purpose built MotoGP bikes has some real measurable benefit. Second, it shows that having major tire manufacturers fighting for lap times makes a better tire than having a single spec tire. Third, it shows that having a pre-season test on a dry track is better than having a race weekend with mixed conditions. Finally, it shows that the depth off the field in MotoGP, at least through the top ten, is closer than in WSBK.

Other than reaffirming what we already knew, there hasn’t been any real shock. Still, I think its freakin’ cool that you can watch some fantastic riders on unbelievably powerful bikes race around a world class track and then just a couple of days later see every factory MotoGP rider *smash* the previous weekend’s race times like they were made by novice racers. It makes me giggle like a school kid. Damn those MotoGP bikes are *cool*.

[image from the Nicky Hayden web site.]

The 2005 road race season started this past weekend with the WSBK opener in Losail, Qatar. Maybe its has been the long winter drought or maybe its the rules changes but it turned out to be a great race and has really whetted my appetite for more.

The big winner this past weekend was the Alstare Suzuki team, as their riders Troy Corser and Yukio Kagayama split the two victories. After Alstare Suzuki struggled for years with their underpowered GSXR-750 against the full might of Ducati, this past weekend had to be a long overdue compensation for all their hard work. What’s more, their rider’s battle with Ducati mounted Regis Laconi showed that the team’s GSXR-1000 has the power to hold off the Duc even giving it the benefit off the draft. That has to have Francis Batta and the entire Alstare Corona Suzuki team dancing in the streets. They have dominated pre-season testing and now swept the first race of the season.

This will also have filled the sails of Troy Corser. This first race win was the final reward for his four miserable seasons with the Foggy Petronas team. He has been saying for years that he had the talent and desire to win races but not the bike. He is certainly backing that statement up already aboard the Suzuki. It fact it was downright eerie to see how he immediately returned to his pre-Petronas style of jumping out early in the race, showing his trademark smooth riding and then turning quick consistent laps until taking the checkers for a win. He seemed on track for a repeat in race two but was slowed by a worn front tire.

Kagayama somehow managed to surprise even more than Corser. He took his maiden World Superbike win in only the second race of the season and looked untouchable for the second two thirds off race two. He was also a stark contrast to Corser. Where the Australian has always been deceptively smooth on the bike, always looking much slower than the stop watch actually reveals, Japanese rider Kagayama seemed to be on the ragged edge from the first corner till the finish line. He was visibly pushing the front tire into the faster corners and every corner exit was a near-highside with the bike violently bucking and weaving as the rear tire repeated broke loose. The British motorcycling press have long heralded Yukio’s wild riding and our first glimpse certainly backs that up. I think it will be impossible for Kagayama to maintain this for the entire season without a crash, like the one that put him out of the British Superbike Series title hunt, but has plenty of time to learn how to keep the speed and loose the recklessness. Haga had the same out of control look for most of his first Yamaha tour of duty which resulted in some spectacular accidents. Whether he crashes or not, its obvious from day one that Yukio will be one to watch this season.

What about the others? Well. Laconi showed he can dig deep and race for the win. I think he started last season overly confident and his missing the 2004 WSBK title seems to have given him focus. He was the only person anywhere near the pace of the two Suzukis. Toseland, on the second factory Ducati, fought hard but wasn’t quite on the same pace as the front three. The hoard of Yamahas also appeared fast but seemed to be just a little down on the leaders. Haga was surprising slow over the weekend while his teammate Pitt was surprisingly fast. Abe, one of the few riders with prior race experience on the circuit, made a better than expected showing while his teammate Gimbert turned a solid qualifying run into a dismal race results, again a surprise. Crowd favorite Chili continued his inconsistent record by having a mechanical failure in race one and then a fantastic fifth in race two. The 41 year old continues to stick it to the young guys. Honda’s only other notable finish for the weekend was Vermeulen’s forth in the same race. For those, like myself, who forecast that Vermeulen would fight for the title this year it wasn’t a particularly auspicious start. Hopefully the two Ten Kate riders are still recovering from last week’s flu. The biggest disappointment for Honda had to be Ben Bostrom. After crashing his only bike in practice he had to ride a near-stock bike in the races to a finish outside the points in race one and a DNF in race two. The Renegade team will have a lot of work to do before the next race weekend. Kawasaki also showed they still have a big step to make as their riders struggled to get into the top ten. Sounds like they need some of the same magic growth potion that they put into their MotoGP effort last season for their two WSBK teams this season. Finally, the Foggy Petronas boys of McCoy and Martin showed that they will be doing rain dances all season. On even a semi-dry track, they are so badly outclassed they were luck to qualify. Its going to be a long season in that pit.

The teams now have a month to learn from Losail and prepare for their next race at Phillip Island in April.

[image from the Team Suzuki Racing web site.]

Thus far this season, Ricky Carmichael and Chad Reed have made the rest of the AMA Supercross field look like novices. With the exception of the muddy first race of the season, won by Kevin Windham, these two riders have run away from everyone else during the Supercross season. The exclamation mark to this was the San Diego round where Carmichael and Reed lapped up to *3rd* place. That is just staggering…

But even with these two riders stomping the rest of the field, there is another person that is really showing up the rest of the riders…Mike Larocco. Supercross is a young man’s sport. Riders get started in their teens and have usually hung up their jersey by their mid-20s. The abuse the body goes through during a 30 minute moto requires physical conditioning that is usually restricted to folks whose bodies are still growing. The fact that McGrath has come back to the sport at the age of 33 years old is amazing and the fact that he is getting top ten results even more so. But that is nothing compared to Mike “The Rock” Larocco, also 33 years old.

While McGrath has been busy showing up the young guys with his top ten finishes, Larocco has been embarrassing them with consistent podiums. Heady stuff for someone with the “old man” label. He has been on the box with a second at Anaheim 1, a third at San Francisco and a third at San Diego. His worst finish was a 15th at Phoenix but if that is ignored for a moment, his next worse finish is a sixth at Anaheim II. He sits third in the AMA Supercross series points battle and second in the World Supercross points battle. That is a remarkable record for anyone, especially this season with two riders controlling the top two steps on the podium.

When one rider can finish in the top five at six of eight rounds, finish on the podium three times and then casually mention that he is 33 years old, it makes me think the younger riders aren’t really aware of just how focused they need to be to compete in this series. Maybe there are a lot of riders who don’t think they can run with Carmichael and Reed. Well, Larocco is showing they they can’t run with him either. With all the factory and semi-factory rides that are available, Larocco and McGrath are making a lot of riders look like chumps and probably have a lot of team managers casting a questioning eye at their rider lineup. These “old guys’ have a thing or two to teach everyone and the other riders better start learning fast. Otherwise guys like Jeff Ward and Doug Henry are gonna dust off their gear and come back from some of the glory (and money) as well…

[image from the Supercross 2005 web site.]

The agonizing choice has finally been made and the credit card has taken a big one for the team.

After much deliberation I decided to purchase the Garmin Quest from my buddies at Cycoactive. In addition to getting the GPS, they sell a nifty locking mount from Touratech, various Garmin software packages including European maps and a spiffy neoprene case to keep the GPS save when travelling.

Unfortunately, neither Touratech nor Garmin yet sell the vital DC power source. The Quest needs 5V DC for power so its not particularly easy to hack together my own solution. Both Touratech and Garmin claim they will have a 12V DC to 5V DC solution in the next few months. Probably not in time for my upcoming trip to Spain but it seems close enough to take the risk with the Quest.

In addition, the Quest is small enough to be more functional as a hand-help GPS for hiking and geocaching than the other models I was considering. The Quest also has a flip-out external antenna so it will hopefully have better reception than the other models. One downside to the Quest is that it doesn’t allow for memory expansion via plug-in cards but it does have 115MB of RAM which is enough to hold detailed road maps for a couple of states. The GPS comes with the American City Select package, I’m also getting the European City Select package and a topo/recreational package. That should give me maps for riding or hiking, both locally and when travelling.

I’ll try to post another blog update once I’ve actually has some time to play with the thing. In the meantime, I’m off to read the online manuals.

[image from the Cycoactive web site.]

My buddy Jeff today was complaining that no one had put out a combined road race calendar for 2005 (with race dates for AMA, WSBK and MotoGP). Since I keep all those dates anyway, as well as the dates for the MRA, our local road race series, that seemed like a good topic for today’s blog entry. Without further ado, the current road race calendar for 2005:

February:

26 - WSBK @ Losail Int’l Raceway; Doha, Qatar

March:

12 - AMA @ Daytona Int’l Speedway; Daytona, FL, USA

April:

3 - WSBK @ Phillip Island; Phillip Island, Australia
10 - MotoGP @ Circuito Permanente de Jerez; Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
17 - MotoGP @ Estoril Circuit; Estoril, Portugal
22 - AMA @ Barber Motorsports Park; Birmingham, AL, USA
24 - WSBK @ Comunitat Valenciana; Cheste, Spain

May:

1 - MotoGP @ Shanghai Circuit; Shanghai, China
1 - AMA @ California Speedway; Fontana, CA, USA
1 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO, USA
8 - WSBK @ Autodromo Nazionale Monza Circuit; Monza, Italy
15 - MotoGP @ Le Mans Circuit des 24 Heures; Le Mans, France
15 - AMA @ Infineon Raceway; Sonoma, CA, USA
15 - MRA @ Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway; Fountain, CO, USA
22 - AMA @ Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway; Fountain, CO, USA
29 - WSBK @ Silverstone Circuit; Silverstone, Northants, Great Britain

June:

5 - MotoGP @ Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello; Mugello, Italy
5 - AMA @ Road America; Elkhart Lake, WI, USA
5 - MRA @ Second Creek Raceway; Denver, CO, USA
12 - MotoGP @ Circuit de Catalunya; Barcelona, Spain
19 - MRA @ Continental Divide Raceway; Mead, CO, USA
25 - MotoGP @ TT Circuit Assen; Assen, Netherlands
26 - WSBK @ Autodromo di Santamonica; Misano, San Marino

July:

10 - MotoGP @ Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca; Monterey, CA, USA
10 - AMA @ Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca; Monterey, CA, USA
17 - WSBK @ Automotodrom Brno; Brno, Czech Republic
17 - MRA @ La Junta Motorsports Park; La Junta, CO, USA
24 - MotoGP @ Donington Park; Donington, Derby, Great Britain
24 - AMA @ Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course; Lexington, OH, USA
31 - MotoGP @ Sachsenring; Sachsenring, Germany

August:

7 - WSBK @ Brands Hatch; Fawkham, Kent, Great Britain
14 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO, USA
28 - MotoGP @ Automotodrom Brno; Brno, Czech Republic
28 - AMA @ Virginia Int’l Raceway; Alton, VA, USA

September:

4 - WSBK @ TT Circuit Assen; Assen, Netherlands
4 - AMA @ Road Atlanta; Braselton, GA, USA
4 - MRA @ Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway; Fountain, CO, USA
5 - MRA @ Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway; Fountain, CO, USA
11 - WSBK @ Lausitzring; Lausitz, Germany
18 - MotoGP @ Twin Ring Motegi; Motegi, Japan
25 - MotoGP @ Sepang Int’l Circuit; Sepang, Malaysia
25 - MRA @ Pueblo Motorsports Park; Pueblo, CO, USA

October:

1 - MotoGP @ Losail Int’l Raceway; Doha, Qatar
2 - WSBK @ Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferreri Imola; Imola, Italy
2 - MRA @ Second Creek Raceway; Denver, CO, USA
9 - WSBK @ Never Magny Cours Circuit; Magny Cours, France
16 - MotoGP @ Phillip Island; Phillip Island, Australia
23 - MotoGP @ Istanbul Circuit; Istanbul, Turkey

November:

6 - MotoGP @ Comunitat Valenciana; Cheste, Spain

Nothing beats watching a race in person. I’ll definitely be at the AMA Pikes Peak race in May and the combined MotoGP/AMA weekend at Laguna Seca in July. I’ll also make about half of the MRA races. I’ll also watch all the MotoGP, WSBK and AMA races that are televised and will probably give my views on each here on the blog. Our support can you all the support it can get, whether that is by buying tickets to see races live or tuning to watch the race on TV, so make sure to mark these dates on your calendar and watch some racing this year!

[image from the Motorcycle-USA web site.]

In 1992, the WERA roadrace organization had one of the coolest classes among any of the national level pro-roadrace clubs: Formula 3. The class was obstensively for 125cc GP bikes, mainly Honda RS125s and Yamaha TZ125s. However, to increase grid size and provide a race class for big four stroke singles, WERA also allowed thumpers up to 600cc in size to race against the 125s. This made for great racing since the two bike were so vastly different. The 125 GP bikes carried huge corner speed and had great drafting battles while the big singles relied on their prodigious torque to square off turns and get their heavier weight out of corners quickly. This made for interesting races, made all the better by the fantastic riders that were in the series at that time. Two unknown brothers named Tommy and Nicky Hayden were racing 125GP bikes, along with well known names like Keith Code, John Ulrich, Rodney Fee and the Himmelsbach family also on the little two smokes. The four stroke contingent included Allen Willis on a trick Woods Rotax, Eric Falt with a Honda VFR framed Rotax motor, Erich Fromm on a SRX 600 based bike and Bill Cardell on a RG framed SRX motor. This class was marvelous competition between true factory race bikes against do-it-yourself specials.

Into this race class waded a denizen of the rec.motorcycles.racing usenet newsgroup named Ray Hixon. Ray started with a stock ‘82 Honda FT500 Ascot which he slowly modified throughout the year to get more and more performance from the motor and to improve other major items like the brakes and suspension. Early that race season, I saw a posting from Ray on the newsgroup asking for pit help at an upcoming race. I had been regularly volunteering as a corner worker at the area tracks but decided to skip the weekend of the WERA national races and help Ray instead. I met up with Ray at the track and immediately got along well with him. I’d spent a few years rebuilding ’60s muscle cars with my friends Troy and Dave, so I knew a bit about spinning wrenches. This turned out to be a very useful skill, since racing a big production based single cylinder bike means a lot of trackside work is required. I enjoyed working with Ray that weekend and volunteered to join his friend John and his father as his pit crew for the rest of the summer.

Throughout the race season, his engine builder Joe Hutcheson continued to get more power by first overboring the motor to 540cc and then to 591cc. The suspension and brake problems were solved by moving Joe’s mega-motor into a Yamaha FZR400 frame with Honda Interceptor forks. The bike was proving to be one of the faster bikes in the class and Ray was riding the bike really well. Race results varied from being a front runner to struggling in the pits with niggling problems caused by the combination of the hodge-podge of parts used on the bike. In order to get extra track time to iron out some of the mechanical problems and to be more prepared for the Pro races Ray started to race the Clubman class in the WERA regional series.

One particular weekend, the whole crew drove down to Savannah, GA for one of the regional races at Roebling Road. Ray was fast in practice and the bike seemed to be coping well with the roughly 60hp 591cc motor. When the Clubman race rolled around, we were optimistic and Ray was ready to stick it to the more powerful bikes in the class despite being gridded in the back since he wasn’t a regular in the class (it was gridded by current points of which Ray had 0). When the green flag flew, Ray immediately started moving forward especially through the really fast turn one. In the pits, we watched the bikes run through the back section and towards the final turn which led the bikes onto the long front straight. The whole pit crew knew that Ray had to get a strong drive onto the straight to have any chance to staying in the draft of the faster bikes. Just as Ray started onto the straight during one of the early laps he suddenly shot directly off the track in a cloud of smoke. Uh-oh, definitely not good.

We pushed the bike back to the pits as Ray gave a baffled story of having near ESP give him the feeling something was going wrong in time to pull in the clutch, lock up the rear brake and slide the bike off the track. Once back in the pits, we could see small bits of aluminum dust in the exhaust, clearly a sign of Bad Things ™. As we disassembled the bike to see if we could get it back together in time for an afternoon race, we started finding more and more signs that something was seriously amiss inside the motor. More metal dust was in the airbox and every attempt to turn the crank indicated the motor was locked up.

Now aware that the bike wasn’t going to race again that day, we instead switched over to investigating the depth of the problem. Joe the enginer builder lived south in Florida while home was north in Atlanta. We had to determine which direction that engine was headed that afternoon. As we removed the valve cover, everything still appeared okay, but as we removed the head we finally realized just how catastrophic the failure had been and just how lucky Ray had been to sense it so quickly. The Wiseco piston had failed where the wrist pin went through one side. On an upstroke the piston twisted sideways coming completely loose from the wrist pin and then rotated a 1/4 turn all while being driven upward from the inertia of the crank rotation. The piston crown, no longer parallel to the head, was driven upwards *through* the exhaust valves where it was embedded into the head. The con rod, with the piston no longer attached, slammed around in the cylinder a few times before wedging against the cylinder liner which then locked up crankshaft. The motor was a complete write-off. Thankfully, Ray was unhurt and after another infusion of money and parts, the bike was back to race again…

Ray went on to race the bike for two more seasons in AHRMA Sound of Singles, WERA Formula 3, WERA Clubman and various other classes. The bike continued to evolve with ever larger engine displacements, amazing amounts of titanium to keep it all together at higher rpms and wilder bodywork to get better aerodynamics. The bike became less and less reliable and eventually faster bikes like the Ducati Supermono required larger financial investment than was rational to keep the Ascot “Megathumper” competitive. Last I heard Ray was enjoying the career of a real life rocket scientist with NASA.

I kept a small piece of the piston, found in the exhaust pipe, for my Box of Shame. The lesson from this one? Just that a heavily modified engine running at high rpm in race conditions contains a huge amount of barely contained energy. Just one little problem can unleash a tremendously destructive chain of events.

[image from my photo collection.]

This time last year, the motorcycle racing community was bemoaning the 2004 World Superbike series as the “Ducati Cup” thanks to the majority of the MSMA (Motorcycle Sport Manufacturers Association) having left the series over disagreements about the rules. The factory Ducati team, the dominant team in the series over the past decade, stuck around and were expected to sweep the title. Whether the MSMA members really left because of the rule or to offset the drain on their racing budget caused by the ultra-expensive four-stroke MotoGP series can be argued but the affect their leaving had on the WSBK series cannot.

Thankfully, Ten Kate Honda’s Chris Vermeulen kept everyone wondering what would have been had the Japanese factories stayed in the game. In fact, privateer Ducati riders like Nori Haga and Pierfrancesco Chili helped turn the season into one of the most exciting in recent history, despite the lack of manufacturer diversity on the grid, so although the factory Ducati riders finished on-two it wasn’t the sweep most predicted. What didn’t make any waves was the latest iteration of Team Foggy Petronas FP-1 and riders Chris Walker and Troy Corser. With such a seemingly weak grid, last year appeared to be the best chance for the underdog team to challenge for a championship but lack of engine performance once again held back the two great riders.

Fast forward to this year. The MSMA has reversed their ban of World Superbike and the factories, at least via heavily supported semi-privateer teams, are back in droves. Suzuki has a two rider team, Kawasaki has a two rider team, Yamaha has a two rider team and, most surprisingly, Honda has three teams totaling four riders. Honda rarely hands out back-door support so their strong presence for 2005 shows just how much they’ve changed their attitude and how much they want Hondas on the WSBK grid. There are even rumors off Aprilia, Bimoto and MV Agusta joining the fray. Having the manufacturers back in WSBK has marked a tremendous turn-around for the series. It kept its head above water last season due to close racing and a variety of possible race winners and looks to build on that this year with a new explosion of interest.

The WSBK grid probably contains the strongest collection of exciting personalities of any race series. MotoGP has unique characters in Rossi and Biaggi but the rest of the grid seems mostly bland. WSBK, on the other hand, has riders like Noriyuki “Nitro Nori” Haga, Pierfrancesco Chili, Ben Bostrom, Chris ‘Stalker” Walker, Giovanni Bussei and Norik Abe all of which seem to attract press like birds to a feeder. Any series on earth would be proud just to have the Australian contingent from WSBK, because they are such PR dreams: Garry “King of Slide” McCoy, Chris Vermeulen, Karl Muggeridge, Troy Corser, Steve Martin and Andrew Pitt. McCoy, for example, has gotten more press in the last two years despite a general lack of results than many of the podium regulars in MotoGP. Keeping him in the WSBK series for the press coverage alone has given a boost to the series.

And speaking of Australians, what about Troy Corser?!? Despite riding on the doggy FP-1, he’s always kept himself in the eyes of the race fans by periodically putting in near-miraculous qualifying or race performances. Despite being, along with Chili, one of the elders on the grid, he has continued to show that his talent and desire to win haven’t waned with age. Those memorable rides paid off because the second his four year contract with Foggy expired Suzuki was waiting in line to snatch him up. This puts him on what may be the most powerful bike in the paddock and he is already repaying Suzuki’s faith in him by topping the timing charts at both of the preseason tests. Clearly Corser wants to rise like a phoenix from the apparent ashes of his career. Chalk up another reason for motorcycle journalists and race fans to watch the series.

So time may not heal all wounds but it certainly appears to have stopped the bleeding for WSBK and put it back on the path to being a healthy and interesting world series. I can hardly wait for this coming weekend to watch the opening race!

[image from the Troy Corser web site.]