Tdc

TDC

Nurburgring notebook

Kevin Cameron

THREE DROPS OF RAIN HIT ME BETWEEN the 250 GP race’s checkered flag and the last-grid call for the 500s. The previous day alternated between sun and heavy rain. Leather-clad German fans had crowded into the vast food-and-music arcade, eating and drinking, staying dry. Now they were covering the slopes above the Nurburgring’s chicane, waiting.

Grand prix roadracing is big business. Imron-painted semi-trailers were solidly ranked behind the long garage building, the cigarette logos obscured by fitted covers as required by German law. Several teams had more than one semi, like “Team Roberts City.”

Snaking power cables, water and air hoses covered the dark alleys between.

Mechanics pushed wheeled tire racks, giving a strange, garment-district flavor. Famous faces were scarce, keeping to their luxurious motorhomes (oddly, many with Texas plates). Journalists with hopeful expressions and open notebooks faced a line of closed, windowless garage doors, working up their courage. Taut faces transmitted the message, “Not now,

I’m busy.” In this tense atmosphere, it’s soothing to be busy.

Erv Kanemoto’s semi is one-third office, two-thirds equipment-much of which was now in the pitside garage.

The office conducts business face-toface and electronically. All day long, people are in and out. Conferences with tire people, suspension engineers and others take place here. Fax, phone, copier and computer are ready. When practice is running, the team jams into the garage, watching the TV monitor, getting info updates, ready for the rider’s return. Bikes move out, their two-stroke engines pulling from very low revs with unreal smoothness. Tires warm in their electric blankets, exhausted mechanics rest, their faces blank. A spare NSR500 Honda is ready to go, configured as one more in the endless series of questions that practice must answer. Which fork?

Which setting? How many detonation counts per lap? Above all, which tire?

As always, the questions swamp the time available, and a combination must finally be chosen, an informed gamble.

All up and down pit lane, the combinations are in place now, and these most complicated of dice-part physics, part engineering, part psychology-are about to be rolled. Erv’s rider, Luca Cadalora, is third in points behind the dominant Honda factory team of Mick Doohan and Alex Criville. Luca has won one race this season, but there has been a long dry spell. The Kanemoto bikes’ fairings are almost plain white, for sponsors are lying low. A smoky fire seems to burn behind Cadalora’s eyes. His style depends on corner speed, and on a hard-accelerating 500, that means generating grip at the front with almost no weight on the tire. That calls for near-impossible suppleness in fork action-and the rider’s inclination to trust it. There is a forest of forks in the transporter, and what has been tried would fill books. Yet this course, the new Nurburgring, is Luca’s kind of track-no stop-point-&-shoot corners where he is at a disadvantage.

On Thursday night, we journalists were admitted to the Okada-Itoh garage, to see Honda’s new 500cc VTwin GP bike, production versions to be sold next year for $98,000. Romantics want it to be a less-is-more breakthrough but, sadly, it is just a rules anomaly, given a 66-pound lower weight limit than the Fours by the FIM. Lighter Fours would be faster, too. Like a 250, a 100-kg Twin’s advantage lies in its higher corner speed. Aprilia, which has built a 410cc Twin for the class, conceived it as a 250 with 20 percent more power. Honda, Erv believes, has aimed its design at making a better power spread. Both Twins have shown promise, neither has won a race. As Erv points out, when tires go off, Twins lose their corner-speed advantage, but the Fours can still accelerate as hard as before. Unless a Twin gets clean away at the start of a race, this problem will be hard to solve.

To our questions about the Twin’s power, range and weight, the attending Japanese engineer patiently replied, “I cannot say.” So we looked the numbers up in the brochure. We breathed deep of the rich fuel fumes in the garage, technicians covered up the bikes, and we went away. The production Honda 500 V-Twin will have aluminum cases, while Okada’s ’96 bike, 13 pounds lighter, has magnesium. A Twin’s bigger bore makes pistons run hot, even sag or break. High revs caused Okada some piston breakages, but new cylinders rev less, and pistons last now.

One group of romantics imagines GP racing on the skids, with World Superbike soon to topple it from manufacturer and public favor. Could be, but don’t hold your breath. GP racing has recovered from worse doldrums than the present. Race what you sell has a nice ring to it, but Superbike development means changing your entire production line and seeking new homologation every time you have a fresh idea. That’s expensive. At today’s prices, race what you sell could quickly turn into race what you have.

I took up my station near the chicane as the 500s were gridded. A start, a red flag, a restart, then the plain-white fairing streaks out to an amazing lead, Doohan and Criville following. I try to watch dispassionately, for when I let myself root for a rider, he always tips over. The laps go by and Cadalora is slowly overhauled by Doohan, then passed. Another day, another Doohan? But no, Cadalora repasses, Team Plain White Fairing isn’t beaten yet. To keep the tension down in the final laps, I talk with a Dutch friend about marine diesels. Then he shouts, “He’s won! He’s won it!” And Cadalora has, by a quarter-second.

Later, in the transporter, Erv seems tired and detached. Everyone is congratulating him in a variety of accents. When a break comes, he says, “Well, I better call my dad,” and reaches for the phone.