Surprise, Surprise
Surprise, surprise
Daytona's 250 race featured The Kid, new Kawasakis and Kenny Jr.
KEVIN CAMERON
ACTION IN THE 250CC CLASS AT
Daytona was hot. Four brands
finished in the top nine, and pre-
dictions were upset right and left. The win, at record pace, went to young Texas prodigy Colin Edwards, with his Southwest Motorsports Yamaha teammate Chris D’Aluisio only 1.2 seconds behind. Race laps dipped into the high 1:56s, times that would have qualified in the top 20 of the Superbike race.
Upset number one was that Aprilia, which finished 1-2 here last year, failed to return in strength. Highestfinishing rider of the Italian brand was Californian AI Salaverria, in ninth. The cause? Yamahas are faster this year, and there are no 1992 Aprilias in the hands of top rider/tuner combinations.
Upset number two was a disappointing DNF for 1991 series champion Jimmy Filice. Now on a Commonwealth-sponsored Honda RS250, Filice rode harder than anyone else through practice, but his machine could not match the Yamahas. Honda certainly has the technology to match the TZ250Cs, but has somehow determined that the U.S. is the wrong place to use it. Filice and tuner Bruce Maus did wonders to qualify late 1987-level technology fourth on the grid. In the race, the bike suffered another of its mysterious problems and Filice was out. Everyone is delighted to have Honda back on the U.S. 250 scene after a five-year drought, but they also want to see Filice’s skilled hard riding have its reward. Also present was that crafty (now retired) GP veteran, Kork Ballington, who hopes soon to manage a green GP team in Europe. A great show of secrecy was made, with each machine wearing a little coat, under which the > mechanics had to work. Snoopers were chased away. Ballington joked that, “Actually, no one’s ever seen these bikes; they’re assembled in unlighted rooms by blindfolded mechanics.”
Upset number three is more complicated. Kenny Roberts backed AMA 250 racing in a big way through three years with John Kocinski as rider, and with experienced veteran Bud Aksland as tuner. Then he withdrew his bikes and riders during the great “AMA/Roberts sticker war.” Now, he is back, but the team is presently called Wayne Rainey Racing, and the riders are Rich Oliver and Kenny Roberts Jr. Oliver qualified his Yamaha on the pole, three-tenths of a second ahead of Edwards, only to discover that, as Bud Aksland dryly put it, “his engine didn’t like the air, on race day.” While trying to make it run cleanly, Oliver ran off-track, crashed, restarted and finished far down. Kenny Jr. had better luck, and finished a creditable third after a racelong battle with four other riders.
The surprise of the event was the return of Kawasaki to 250 racing. The company’s last design-the inline-Twin KR250-first appeared in 1975 and went on to win numerous 250 and 350cc world championships. Recently, the company has evaluated several prototype 250s, the latest of which was at Daytona. Mr. Kazuhito Yoshida, who was Kawasaki’s race technician back in the old three-cylinder, air-cooled days, was busily at work with a small staff, fettling the pair of one-month-old and very experimental X-09 inverted V-Twins: The right cylinder points down and forward, the left one down and backward, with sinuously curved exhaust pipes to match. Case reeds are used, served by a single downdraft, two-throat carburetor with very elongated, oval bores that align with the long axes of the reed
cages. Intake flow must, apparently, pass through the flywheel separationsan intake scheme found by another maker to entail a penalty of 1 to 3 horsepower per cylinder.
But all that was necessary was to wait patiently at the other end of the Kawasaki garage, where the team parts washer was situated. Sooner or later, the interesting parts had to arrive here, where a snooping reporter could see them. The X-09 cylinders have “mumps:” resonator chambers that lower the exhaust pipes’ operating frequency, rather like the ATAC system used by Honda.
These interesting bikes were slightly down on top speed, being about equal with Filice’s Honda, but accelerated and handled well. Riders Trevor Crookes and Aaron Slight ran them hard into corners, searching for every scrap of performance, and both crashed on the cold, righthand sides of their tires in timed qualifying. As always with crashed factory equipment, both machines looked perfect shortly after. Crookes brought his machine home a fine sixth, after being as high as fourth in the long battle among the thirdthrough sixth-place riders, which was decided after a big scramble on the last lap.
Arguably the best-placed true privateers were Robbie Petersen,fourth on the Del Amo Yamaha, and the straight-talking Canadian Jon Cornwell on an Alex Mayes-tuned Yamaha, who finished fifth.
A lot is in prospect for the rest of the season. Does 18-year-old Colin Edwards have the riding maturity to deal with his teammate and other strong, experienced campaigners on rider’s tracks? Will Honda re-arm Filice and Two Brothers Honda rider Rick Kirk with parts to let them race even-steven with the Yamahas? And will KR Jr. and Rich Oliver, with able tuning by Bud Aksland, prove to be an Irresistible Force?
Watch the race results. □
