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RACE WATCH
DOOHAN, Kocinski lead early GP tests
Mick Doohan was, as usual, fastest at the first pre-season Grand Prix test session, held in mid-January at Australia’s Phillip Island racetrack. Atypically, new Suzuki signee Nobuatsu Aoki set second-best time, displacing the remaining works Honda riders.
Another surprise came the next week when Honda continued testing at Eastern Creek outside Sydney. For the first time in memory, Doohan was second fastest. He was pipped by 1997 World Superbike Champion John Kocinski, also aboard an NSR500, with Kocinski’s Movistar teammate Carlos Checa only .04-second slower and Doohan’s fellow Repsol rider Alex Criville right behind.
Doohan reportedly stormed off from the private tests in disgust-as well he might. He’d predicted new unleaded fuel would make for closer racing. Now, that statement seems too true for comfort for the four-time 500cc world champion.
At Phillip Island, Doohan was surprised at the loss of power and response of the new unleaded-fuel motor. “Usually after a three-month layoff, it takes time to get used to how fast the bike feels,” he said. “Not this year.”
The reason is simple. No-lead fuel has forced lower compression to avoid detonation. Gone with the compression is significant “snap.”
Doohan’s edge is his ability to control and exploit this snappiness. Superior throttle control allowed the Australian survivor from the Lawson/Rainey/Schwantz Golden Age to open the throttle sooner than his freshman rivals. In 1997, when some of them started catching on, he
switched back to the earlier “Screamer” motor, dropped in favor of the more rider-friendly “Big Bang” in 1992. The Screamer, with cylinder pairs firing evenly every 180 degrees of crankshaft rotation, is harder to ride, but beyond the psychological advantage (other Honda men tried it, but only scared themselves), the Screamer gave Doohan access to wheelspin on demand-an extra dimension of control that he can exploit better than anybody.
No longer, it would seem, with the new fuel knocking the peaks off the motor’s response. “The bike is so much easier to ride at the limit that I think we’re going to see much closer racing, and more different race winners,” he opined. Good for the spectators, anyway.
Doohan has long complained about HRC giving out his hard-gained setup data to the other Honda riders. He was reluctant to sign with Honda again unless some secrecy could be guaranteed. It appears, however, that HRC waited him out, until he had no option but to sign.
With the unleaded fuel, Doohan’s words gained greater relevance. “We’re not a football team. We’re supposed to be racing against each other,” he insists. This is especially true in the case of Kocinski, the former GP bad boy, who is making his return to the class with plenty to prove.
Phillip Island tests saw Criville third, Checa fourth, and only then Kocinski, followed by third Repsol rider Tadayuki Okada. Being an unknown quantity makes John Boy a bigger threat: Criville is fast, but Doohan has always retained the upper hand; Checa has not yet shown the substance to win regularly; and Okada lacks crucial experience.
Doohan may have another card to play, however, in one of the more intriguing pre-season mysteries. Forced by HRC’s computer network to reveal his secrets to all, one option would be to repeat last year’s ploy to ride a different bike. He could go back to an even earlier generation of the Honda V-Four, the “even screamier” motor, which preceded the 180-degree, and fired each piston singly at 90-degree intervals.
This original NSR had a fearsome warble to its exhaust, and tire-shredding throttle response. It took a Freddie Spencer to tame it. Or a Mick Doohan? With the power knocked back, and the benefit of today’s electronics, reviving this mean old mutha may offer restoration of instant and controllable wheelspin, so that Doohan can again make the most of his exceptional throttle control.
Doohan has no experience with this motor. He cut his teeth (and several other body parts) on the 180, but came too late for the first-generation V-Four. Will he risk it for 1998?
It is hard to believe that he won’t at least test it. HRC will only admit to two types of motor, Big Bang and Screamer. But there were heady rumors that it also had at least one 90-degree motor, and Doohan was talking about “other options” to test pre-season before deciding which package to race.
HRC has the most options, the biggest resources and the greatest number of riders, including Max Biaggi, charismatic four-time 250cc world champion, who is moving up to 500s on an Erv Kanemoto-prepared, Marlboro-backed Honda. Biaggi teethed on an NSR500 in a “secret” test one day after official testing ended at Phillip Island, faring very well (only a second off the track record) before crashing unhurt in the afternoon session.
Kocinski won’t be the only American to keep an eye on. Matt Wait has gone in at the deep end, piloting an NSR500V for the semi-private FCC Technical Sports team. Last year, the bike was ridden to third overall by Rookie of the Year Nobuatsu Aoki. At Phillip Island, the 21-year-old Wait was the fastest of the V-Twin pilots.
Aoki’s (there are three of them, remember) effort at Phillip Island brought considerable cheer to the relatively small Suzuki factory team, which lost sponsor Lucky Strike after two increasingly bad years, and also shed riders. Scott Russell was dropped after a promising 1997, Daryl Beattie was injured once too often and finally ran out of steam, and Anthony Gobert was dumped after failing a drug test.
Suzuki is back with an all-Japanese lineup for the first time since 1960, and Aoki’s test time showed things may finally be turning around. The team’s second rider, the personable young Katsuaki Fujiwara, is just learning, and posted seventh-best time at Phillip Island. Then came new-boy Wait, followed by Juan Borja and Garry McCoy on a pair of private V-Twin Hondas.
Suzuki’s success could be partially attributed to the leveling effect of the unleaded fuel. This will give hope to the Yamaha troops, absent from the group test at Phillip Island, but with Wayne Rainey’s factory squad led by Jean-Michel Bayle and Norifumi Abe due in a fortnight.
Other absentees: the second Yamaha squad (Red Bull), fielding class rookie Simon Crafar and rising Frenchman Regis Laconi; the new MZ team with rider Doriano Romboni; and, of course, Kenny Roberts’ Modenas team, which had yet to finalize riders and sponsors. A week later, they signed up ex-250cc GP star Ralf Waldmann to join Kenny Junior on the three-cylinder machine, in the process gaining at least some Marlboro backing.
Roberts managed to find some asyet-unidentified Malaysian money, quite an achievement given the simultaneous Southeast Asian economic melt-down. A week or two before, he had been uncertain of full-dollar support from Modenas themselves.
The region’s economic woes prompted cancellation of the Indonesian GP along with the Superbike event; the season-opening Malaysian race at Shah Alam is also off the calendar, replaced by the new venue of Johor Baru, taking Indonesia’s midApril date.
Aprilia missed the tests, and will miss the 500cc season, too, having abruptly pulled the plug on its nearly successful lightweight V-Twin project. It plans to develop a V-Four, at first using the same SwissAuto engine adopted by MZ (the same ex-Elf unit may also be used by some privateers during the year).
There were only five 250s at the tests, four of them Honda works riders fighting over just two prototypes of the new twin-crank NSRs.
These are early days, and tests are only tests. But Doohan’s motif for the year seems established: Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
-Michael Scott
SuperMac heads Supercross title chase
tleremy McGrath, who finished second in last year’s AMA 250cc Super-
cross series, is in full championship form so far in 1998. McGrath leads the series after seven of 16 rounds, having walked away with his fourthconsecutive win at the most recent race in Atlanta.
Defending champ Jeff Emig may end up watching other riders battle for his crown, as he has yet to win a main event, while former four-time champ McGrath has yet to finish off the podium.
Ezra Lusk, third in last year’s title chase, has looked faster than anyone on the track, and shares two wins with McGrath. But the Honda rider’s performances have been painfully inconsistant: At the season opener in L.A., he finished 16th after crashing. Four rounds later, in San Diego, he got caught up in a haybale cover, coming home 11th. Then, in Indy, he crashed and injured his hand. He was sixth in Atlanta.
Lusk, McGrath and Emig finished 1-2-3 at round two in Houston, and McGrath and Lusk traded 1-2 finishes over the next rounds in Tempe, Arizona, and Seattle, Washington, while Emig managed fourth and 14th.
Emig, aboard his factory Kawasaki, hasn’t seemed able to climb as easily through the tight fields as last year. Though the defending champ claimed he would not try to win the series in the first few races, it’s doubtful not winning any races is part of his defense strategy.
McGrath, meanwhile, is just flat getting the job done on his Chaparral
Yamaha. At press time, he had a 53point lead, garnering 164 points to second-place Kevin Windham’s 111. Jimmy Button is third with 107, followed by Lusk. The top-finishing Suzuki belongs to Mike LaRocco, who is currently tied for fifth in points.
With 9 rounds to go, anyone hoping to claim this year’s title should be wary of giving McGrath, the most experienced champion on the track, any sort of lead. -Paul Seredynski
Sound of Thunder series rolls on
Bored with Fours, but still craving that international racing flair? The Sound of Thunder World Series just might be your cup of tea. Best described as the alternative rock of roadracing, SoT has emerged from the former BEARS (British European American/Australasian Racing Series) as a venue for non-four-cylinder performance machinery.
The name change comes with a rule revision made last year allowing participation of “the quirkiest of” Japanese machinery-bikes such as Yamaha’s TRX850 and sporting Twins from Honda and Suzuki. Previously, Japanese bikes were excluded. You can’t argue with the variety: In what other racing series can you see Hondas, Yamahas, Suzukis, Triumphs, BMWs, Harleys, Ducatis, Moto Guzzis and Brittens trade paint?
The rules for equipment eligibility are pretty straightforward: no displacement limit, maximum of three cylinders for four-strokes, no twostrokes, two rotors for rotary engines, turbos and blowers for Singles only, >
no fuel injection for multi-cylinder, multi-valve desmos.
The beauty of this series is that it has attracted riders from every continent, plus a wealth of avant-garde machinery, hardly two of which are ever the same.
In 1998, SoT will run in conjunction with the Formula Twins World Series at nine venues, beginning with Daytona. -Alan Cathcart
World Superbike gets multi-faceted promoter
The FIM World Superbike Championship has a new owner. Octogon, part of global marketer Interpublic Group, has purchased 50 percent >
interest in the series. Formerly managed by the Rome, Italy-based Flammini Group, Flammini’s Motorsports Division has been absorbed by Octogon, a newly formed sports-marketing company. The new company will be headed by Maurizio Flammini, a former Formula One driver. The backing and promotion of WSB by such a large agency could prove extremely fruitful for its exposure and popularity.
Jerry McHale, 1940-1998
I am sorry to have to say that my friend Jerry “Speedy” McHale, a former roadrace referee for the AMA and later NASB, has died, aged 58.
I became acquainted with Jerry during my stint as an AMA tech inspector. I, and many others, learned to respect his blend of intelligence and critical good humor. In handling the inevitable transgressors, Jerry’s response was amused firmness. His voice on the track PA was pure New Jersey-he could say “absolutely” so you’d swear it was Sylvester Stallone talking. He was a reader with a keen interest in Western American history, and had a large collection of books in that area. Jerry drove from race to race rather than fly, because he wanted to see the country.
At the end of a long, sun-baked day at the races, he would open the back of his van, slide out the cooler that he had providently iced at 6 a.m., and say, “Care for a cocktail?” He had lived and worked in Asheville, North Carolina, after leaving the NASB, and apparently had no close family. I am sorry he’s gone. -Kevin Cameron
Drag racers hook-up and organize
Competitors in the NHRA/Winston Pro Stock Motorcycle Championship have created a new group, the 2Wheel Professional Racers Organization, to be tagged with the friendlier PR02 designation.
PR02 encompasses drag racing riders, engine builders and team owners, and hopes to streamline interaction between the sport’s participants, sanctioning body officials and the aftermarket community.
Steve Johnson, president of the new organization, says that PR02’s top priority “is the well-being of our membership. By working closely with the management team at NHRA we be>
lieve we’ll be able to not only improve racing conditions for our members, but expand our media and promotional opportunities as well. We also have nitty-gritty items like television exposure, purse structures, the rules under which we race and even how technical inspections are conducted.”
“This is definitely something that the Pro Stock bikes need,” says John Myers, three-time NHRA Champion. “It lets us speak as one, which more efficient.”
Non-active memberships will also be available to fans looking for the latest news and info on dragracing. For information call 205/970-9007.
Match Races return with three-event series
The Team Obsolete/Vanson TransAtlantic Match Race Series will run three U.S. vs. U.K. team events 1998, two in the U.S. Sort of an America’s Cup for classic roadracing, the two-races-over-two-days format slated to kick off at Laguna Seca April at the AMA Superbike weekend, and conclude at Daytona during Biketoberfest on October 18. The middle event will run as part of the Forgotten Era weekend at Caldwell Park in the U.K., July 25-26.
The series features some of the top riders of ’70s-era racing on period machinery, including BSAs, MVs, Ducatis and Triumphs. Original Match Race competitors Yvon Duhamel, John Long and Bob Heath will be among those competing for individual and team points, in hopes of capturing the Hailwood Cup. The Brits triumphed at the last outing, claiming the Cup, 333 to 319 points.
