Up Front
UP FRONT
Team Cycle World
David Edwards
IT HAD NOT BEEN THE BEST OF SUNDAY mornings. Our project Yamaha YZF Superbike, more than six months in the making, thrasher of more magazine money than I cared to tote up, was dead in the water. The start of the Daytona 200, the world’s premier four-stroke roadrace, was less than three hours away, and we needed a complete new swingarm assembly.
We’d expected problems during Bike Week. In practice, handling woes had been addressed, oil leaks checked, brake problems rectified. Crew chief Richard Stanboli, owner of Attack Performance and fabricator of most of the bike, said earlier in the week, “I feel like that little Dutch boy-the dike keeps springing leaks and we keep sticking our fingers in.”
After Sunday’s practice session, we were fast running out of fingers.
A critical component of our YZF’s prototype quick-detach rear-wheel assembly had failed. In the flog to get the bike ready for the cross-country drive to Florida, there had been no time to machine a spare. Without it, Attack’s formidably braced, box-aluminum swingarm couldn’t be used. A quick scour of the pits revealed that no Yamaha team-from Vance & Hines to the lowliest YZF privateer-had a spare swingarm.
Faced with bleak options, we did what any self-respecting race team would do: We shanghaied a street YZF from the paddock parking lot and cannibalized it.
Road Test Editor Don Canet viewed these proceedings with some concern. The stock swingarm looked decidedly spindly next to Stanboli’s piece. Worse, there was no way to mate our lightweight, 6.25-inch-wide Marchesini rear rims to the arm. Stock rims, heavier and three-quarters of an inch narrower, would have to be used. Don would be riding this untried combination at speeds up to 170 mph.
“Look, in a field with 14 factory bikes, we’re gridded 20th,” I told Don. “We’ve got a story; just go racing.”
Anytime journalists trade word processors for wrenches, dictionaries for duct tape, and go racing, it comes down to this. Racing doesn’t care about blank magazine pages that need filling; racing doesn’t care about deadlines. Racing is racing.
Gordon Jennings knew this back in 1965. Then Cycle World's, Technical Editor (he went on to become editor of Cycle and Car and Driver), Jennings was one of the first staffers to race under the Team Cycle World banner, entering a 250 Yamaha TD-1B in Daytona’s 100-mile Lightweight race. In practice, a piston failed. That could be fixed. What couldn’t was a fairing that grounded in turns and an expansion chamber that blew apart in the race. Jennings expounded:
A problem with the big drop in power was a big increase in noise. I had in effect a long, large megaphone with its end just ahead of my right foot, and the fairing carried the sound right up to my head...Then, the noise seemed to abate somewhat, and at half-distance, it was no louder than before the chamber broke; although there was no recovery of power. What l did not realize was that I was going deaf. At the end of the race, after shutting down the engine, I found that I could hear nothing but a non-existent surf, booming in my ears. Fortunately, there was a noticeable improvement within a few hours and full recovery after a couple of days.
The only thing from which I did not recover was a feeling of frustration over finishing 34th with a motorcycle that was fully capable (even under my not entirely expert piloting) of placing me up among the first 10. Breaks of the game and all that....
Team Cycle World's next great practitioner of participatory journalism was John Ulrich, now editor of a competition-dedicated newspaper called Roadracing World and captain of Team Suzuki Endurance, winner of umpteen WERA national titles. During his stint as Executive Editor at CW, Ulrich rode everything from hillclimbers to roadrace sidehacks to Top Fuel dragsters, but his most memorable story, “Doing It the Hard Way,” came about when he tangled with Ray Worth’s evil, nitrousoxide-injected, 150-mph Pro Stock Sportster in the October, 1983, issue. Usually ridden by Joe Yeager, the Harley dragbike was on its way to an 8-second quarter-mile run with Ulrich at the controls-until disaster struck. Nearing the timing lights, Ulrich ran into a speed wobble so savage it summarily spit him off and sent the Harley cartwheeling down the track. He wrote:
The slide stops and silence, a blanket, descends. My J'aceshield is coated with oil and grit. In the distance I hear a pit bike start, rev madly through the gears, and head toward me, its engine screaming.
I lie on the track, moving an arm, an ankle, a knee, toes, a leg, feeling for damage. I find it in my left collarbone, twice broken last year, in the form of a new wobble, a joint where there’s not supposed to be one.
The pit bike ’s rabid drone is near, and Worth skids to a halt, shouting, “Are you all right? Are you all right? ’’
“Sorry about your bike, Ray.’’ It’s all I can say...
We find the bike another 300 feet down the track, in the grass, the front wheel gone, the fork locks snapped on both sides from the violent shaking...
Yeager drives up in Worth s van. He looks at the bike, and at me.
“You went through the traps at 139 mph, turned a 10.20,“ he says.
Not bad for a man without a bike....
As far as the fortunes of Team Cycle World at Daytona 1994, I’m happy to report that Don Canet still has full hearing and at no time did he part company with the bike. But as you can read starting on page 36, well, let’s just say that racing doesn’t care about storybook endings.
The next Team Cycle World adventure? Let’s also just say that “Assault on Daytona II” has a nice ring to it. E3
