Go Show!
GO SHOW!
Kicked out of GPs, Aussie Anthony Gobert comes to America and wins
KEVIN CAMERON
CALCULATING WILD MAN Anthony Gobert won the first Superbike race of the 1998 AMA season, at Phoenix, on a Vance & Hines Ducati. Fellow Australian Mat Mladin, on a Yoshimura Suzuki GSXR750, was second in a race decided by tires and traffic. Race-season openers are scrutinized as New Hampshire is in presidential elections, as a guide to the ultimate outcome. My prediction? Hard to say. With 10 turns in a little more than a mile, the Phoenix mini tri-oval tests turning ability, front-tire sense and rider tolerance for concrete up close. At Daytona in three weeks, everything will be completely different.
Predictive value aside, consider the demographics. Of the top-10 finishers, five were foreign-bom. Of the top five, three. Why?
First reason is the importance of the U.S. series. American teams are hiring the best and most consistent riders they can, because the weakness of Asian economies has given our mar-
ket new importance. This series, with its huge depth of talent and factory equipment, now deserves equal billing with either World Superbike or Grand Prix racing. Men with top GP experience are found in all three of these series. GP racing still represents an extreme peak of equipment and talent-but it’s a narrow, singlebrand peak. World Superbike has talent depth, yet we almost always know who’s going to the front. Here in the U.S., we have three or four solid rows of factory riders on top equipment.
The second reason? I blame the 1980s. When today’s riders were young and impressionable, all media preached that life’s important goals were to have a Volvo turbo wagon and buttoned-down personal financial security-assuming that you didn’t go straight into mergers and acquisitions. That picture emphatically did not include leaving two black lines through comers on a racing motorcycle. Evidently, the Australians and the Canadians didn’t see it that way. Hats off to Americans of independent viewpoint, like Aaron Yates, who still appreciate black lines.
IN PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING, THE SOUND CRAFTSMANship of Doug Chandler kept him in the top group with Gobert, Yates and Mladin. Mladin took pole on record time, with Chandler second, Gobert third, young hotshot Jamie Hacking fourth, Yates fifth. That’s four brands in the top five, just for starters.
Hacking got the holeshot on his Yamaha, only to be shouldered aside by Gobert in Turn 3. Gobert then pulled many bikelengths out on the mini-bowl. But as he would later say in the post-race interview, he believed he had chosen too hard a rear tire. Mladin pulled away from the pack, and by lap three had closed on Gobert. With both men having the skill to lead, it was Gobert’s tire against Mladin’s, and Mladin’s softer tire was doing the job.
As currently configured, the Suzuki 750s are rearsteer motorcycles, as are the Honda RC45s. From his Ducati, Gobert watched how Mladin’s tire was acting and decided his own chances were improving. By lap /
11, Gobert had the lead back. His harder tire was now “coming good,” as Mladin’s was suffering under the
spin required to steer.
Traffic would decide the day. Backmarkers came into play early, but the first lappers knew they weren’t racing and let everyone through. By lap 18, traffic was heavy and the lappers weren’t giving way. Gobert, crediting his Supercross experience, was ruthless, waiting ’til the last instant, snapping past, leaving the way forward blocked to Mladin. The Suzuki pilot fell back once or twice, but always fought even again-until eight laps from the end. Then it became clear that Mladin’s rear tire had succumbed to Suzuki Syndrome.
The two Yamahas of Hacking and Rich Oliver ran second and third for several laps, but Oliver dropped back while Chandler and Thomas Stevens on the number-two V&H Ducati came forward. Miguel Duhamel historically qualifies poorly, then moves up fast in the race, but today sixth was all he
could manage, after qualifying 14th.
What’s different on the Hondas, now in plain red with the banishment of the evil Smokin’ Joe? “A couple more revs and four more horsepower,” Team Manager Gary Mathers said. After the race, the team said they’d never succeeded in making the RCs hook up. This is not an easy motorcycle to ride or to dial-in.
On this tight track, the two Australians had the race to themselves, with GSX-R man Yates 25 seconds back at the end, himself several seconds ahead of Chandler. This Phoenix National was almost a second a lap faster than last year’s. Reasons? Gobert and his ex-factory 1997 WSB Ducati, for starters. For another, the Suzukis are that much closer to maturity now.
GOBERT IS FRESH AIR. YES, HE REPUTEDly did show up hours late for Thursday practice, saying that he needed time to get his hair color right. He’s cool and he’s not fond of authority (any of it-society as a whole, team managers, you name it), but I’m not the only one who finds some recent U.S. riders too well-behaved. Yes, they have to be serious about contracts and making sure all their investments are secure. All their lives, they’ve heard John Ulrich preaching, “Ask not what your sponsor can do for you...,” so on the podium they obediently regurgitate their long lists of acknowledgements. Our eyes glaze as the makers of gloves, brake pads and wrist-pin clips are recited. Where’s the personality? Are these dashing young men in an exciting profession, or are they corporate robots? I am delighted when Duhamel or Steve Crevier cracks wise, and Gobert’s fiery hair and in-yourface manner are welcome additions. Long may it wave.
What’s new? Suzuki’s TL1000R V-Twins were the major novelty. Their long, angled mufflers made them look like wheelbarrows, but the bikes did well, Crevier pushing his into eighth.
Rob Muzzy responded with his famous shrug to my questions. Same steel valves, same steel connecting rods, same gear-cam drive. Only recently has the new, shorter-stroke engine equaled the power of the previous design. He continued, “This Raptor thing (Muzzy’s for-sale turnkey racebike) has taken us into a whole new operation.” He then listed numerous parts now being made in his on-site CNC shop, at prices significantly cheaper than they can be bought from Japan.
I asked about port sizes in race heads, and was told to look at the latest Kawasaki 900 for the trend of design. Smaller-than-stock ports act as a kinetic energy storehouse that keeps intake flow going after bottom center. When this fastmoving air is rammed to a stop in the cylinder, its kinetic energy is converted into pressure. It’s a velocity-squared effect-if the intake velocity is 200 feet per second at BDC, the pressure gain is 2 percent; but if it’s 400 fps, the gain is 9 percent. A well-developed un-supercharged four-stroke can fill its cylinders to about 20 percent above atmospheric pressure; of that, some comes from intake wave action, but the rest must come from the above velocity effect. That means small ports, not big ones.
RACING IS A LOT LESS ABOUT POWER than it used to be. I watched Yates in practice, getting through the last righthander in a steady series of deliberate slides and corrections. Bikes have to be steered, and if the front wheel won’t do it, the throttle must. Somehow, the Honda RC45s have managed to get through whole races in this way, but the Suzukis are just arriving. In the Honda’s case, the engine’s weight is higher and more to the rear than in competing inline-Fours, so acceleration pulls a bit more weight off the front tire. Everyone who’s ridden the
45 has started out trying to make it handle like something else, but it isn’t. Rear-steer is the only way, and at a time when tires are developed for front-steer bikes, it can be hard.
Honda management points with pride to John Kocinski’s World Superbike Championship in 1997 (see “Ultimate Interceptor,” this issue), but to insiders, one success after years of trying looks thin. The 45 was years late when it arrived, then spent too many years winless before coming up golden once. There is an easier way, and I’m not the only one who has dreamed of the unseen 750 from which Honda’s CBR900RR was hatched.
Honda manager Mathers enjoys the rear-wheel speed-sensor joke. There have been a million rumors about the mystery box under the RC45’s seat, and one conclusion is that it is a Formula One-like traction-control device. When traction control senses an abnormally rapid rise in rear-wheel speed, it retards the ignition, reducing torque and preventing an uncontrollable slide.
Systems like this are available on many production cars and some motorcycles. Since such electronic driver aids are now banned in F-l car racing, similar concerns have taken root elsewhere.
The idea behind such a ban is democratic-to prevent a technology have/have not situation between big and small teams. The AMA has asked its Superbike teams not to use rear-wheel speed-sensors (the toothed wheels like those used on ABS bikes, to report wheel speed), in the apparent belief that this prevents the use of traction control. Of course, Mathers chuckles, every bike has a tachometer, and with a few lines of code and a shift-drum position indicator, the onboard computer can instantly compute wheel speed...
Why is Suzuki in the same rear-steer boat? Outwardly, its transverse inlineFour GSX-R is configured just like the more-successful Kawasaki ZX-7R. As one team manager put it at Phoenix, “Just about every bike here has the power to win races. It’s the handling that’s hard to get.” Suzuki had years on the Superbike sidelines, and now that it has a fully competitive engine, it’s having to catch up in areas that control how much load remains on the front tire during acceleration. More on this later this season.
Brakes are on the move. In recent years, the popular Superbike front caliper has been the Brembo four-piston, which has also been a top choice in GP racing. As I walked through the Phoenix garage area, though, I was seeing AP sixes. I spoke to Harley manager Steve Scheibe, who said, “We just got these less than a week ago, and already the riders like them.” I learned from Ray Bailey, the AP rep, that this caliper is machined from a single piece, with the piston boreholes plugged by screwcaps. He says this construction gives useful extra rigidity, even at the lower line pressures usual on motorcycles (350-400 psi for bikes, and more like 1000 psi for cars).
HARLEY HAS UNDERGONE YET ANOTHER organizational change. Last time, it was the move out of the old brick race department back of the railroad tracks into a new facility nearer Capitol Drive, with engine development handed over to the Gemini organization. Now, it is a depart-
mental shift from engineering to sales and promotion, with new faces in the trackside tent. One of the new faces is long-time Supersport builder and crew chief of the late Kinko’s Team, Scotty Beach. Aside from being an experienced trackside engineer, he is implementing standardization; as Scheibe sees it, previously they were in prototype mode, and parts were hand-finished or customized to a particular bike. Now, everything is being made on jigs to fit instantly on any of the bikes. Another new face is that of suspension consultant Dale Rathwell, the man of a thousand shirts (that is, he has worked for most of the teams now). Any time I go out to watch bikes on the circuit, if I look around I’m likely to see Rathwell engaged in the same pursuit
nearby, always looking for something specific. Right now, he’s in “informationgathering mode.”
Sunday at Phoenix wasn’t H-D’s day, as at least one of their team bikes was lapped, with the other not far ahead. This surprised me because often, where Suzukis have done well (Sears Point, Loudon), Harleys have at least qualified well.
Another new Harley VR detail was an AP carbon-carbon clutch. Carbon-carbon is carbon-fiber impregnated solidly with non-crystalline amorphous carbon. This is a material that can go on absorbing heat and generating friction at temperatures that liquefy metals. The plates are about five inches in diameter and quite thick. The driver teeth are carefully radiused, not square. This new clutch, Scheibe says, banishes the off-the-line troubles they have had in the past. Improvement this year is in a multitude of details. He also seemed to be saying that the days of the team’s idea isolation are at an end. Outside rumors suggest VR heads have been looked at by heavy lookers, and reportedly some computer fluid-dynamics analysis has taken place. Will there be an early result?
OVER AT YAMAHA, THERE WAS A NEW energy at work. Riders and crew were clustered around the computer, evaluating practice data, and the same old bikes were quick in practice. With the release of the YZF-R1, Yamaha is again aiming at the sportbike market, and a 750 (and 600) with the same technology as the 1000 can’t be long in coming. Can it?
I stood behind one of the Suzuki Twins as it warmed up. Where the Harleys are started by a hand-held unit whose snout sticks into the left-hand side of the engine, the TLs are started Ferracci-style by a Briggs & Strattonpowered rubber wheel pressed against the rear tire. I was enjoying the complex mixture of unbumed hydrocarbons coming from the cold engine when I noticed little sparkles in the air. This was fiberglass from the brand-new muffler packing. Definitely a low-hours engine! The tremendous silencer length softens the sound pulses until they are like a bass drum hit with a fleece-covered stick. And, yes, these bikes do have rotary rear dampers, although everything connected with them is milled from solid. The TLs are fuel-injected, but both carbureted and EFI GSXR750s are being run.
Rob Muzzy expects to have something new in the way of engine setup “by Daytona or shortly after,” but didn’t elaborate. “We have new cams. We always have new cams. What’s new about them? They have more duration and more lift. What else is new in 50 years?”
This man is detectably impatient that Kawasaki has not been the ones to step up first with pneumatic valves. Who will do it? I can’t, at this point, regard pneumatic valves as anything other than sensible technology. The papers have been published, so everyone knows how it’s done, and Dell West now offers a design service for those who don’t want to design their own. Pneumatic valves are like active suspension-we all know they are inevitable developments, but their introduction to motorcycle racing may be punctuated with a period of banning and arguing.
Unlike metal valve springs, air doesn’t have to be replaced, magnafluxed, shot-peened or X-ray inspected. As long as we have a displacement-based engine formula (rather than weight-based, fuel consumption-based, retail price-based, etc.), the path to power leads up the rpm scale. Because it’s been this way so long, we take it for granted: “Oh, of course, my streetbike is redlined at 13,000, and the race version goes to 15.” Okay, let’s get on with it. How about titanium springs as a toe in the water? They are routine in NASCAR. Not only is a titanium spring lighter than a same-design steel one, but because the metal can be operated at a higher percentage of its yield strength, you don’t have to use as much of it. Air is better yet.
TERRY VANCE WAS PLEASED WITH Gobert’s win and pleased with Gobert.
As to the new team, he indicated that Texas Pacific Group (the new money behind Ducati) has been good to work with-spreading one hand toward his glossy red transporter complete with carbon-fiber mirror fairings.
While the V&H organization learns the ropes from two resident Ducati technicians, they will run the ex-factory bike for Gobert and a production bike for Thomas Stevens. When they’ve learned enough to develop their own products, that will be the next step. The highly developed red Twins are comparatively easy on tires, their power is everywhere and they have existed so long that everything is known about them. Not a bad combo.
At the end of the day, Gobert sat on his way-cool Italjet hub-steering scooter (red, naturally), wearing top-stitched black-denim baggies, a chrome belt and bulb-toed clown shoes. Admirers were beholding the hair and asking about World Superbike riders.
It was a serious, factual conversation.
