The Turnaround

The Turnaround

Year of the GSX-R

On board Yoshimura's Superbike, a two-time title winner back from the dead

NICK IENATSCH

TWO YEARS AGO WE MAY NOT HAVE CLAMORED AT THE chance to ride Mat Mladin's Yoshimura Superbike. The hard-charging Aussie fought his way to third in the 1998 championship, but everyone knew that the GSX-R750 was past its prime and hopelessly outgunned. Only Mladin's super-hero efforts kept it near the front. Then again, he did win the final race of '98...

That Las Vegas win portended astounding things, as the Yoshimura team ended a 10-year drought by capturing the 1999 AMA Superbike title and repeated the feat in 2000. When Yosh asked if I'd like to sample Mladin's 2000 bike, I had my helmet in hand before cradling the phone. How did this thing get so good?

Miadin's XRO91 "A" bike arrived at Willow with two sets of tires and plenty of gas. Too bad the weather didn't coop erate. . .my ride ended just after lunch when the rain fmally came down, adding wetness to an already freezing-cold `~ day. But the morning session was eye-opening. It took five minutes of revving for the high-strung 750 to get enough heat (70 degrees C) in it for lapping, despite four strips of tape across the gigantic works radiator. As the tire warm ers came oft~ I snicked the bike into first gear with the smoothest action imaginable and the bike flowed out of the pits.

At 355 pounds and 170 horsepower, obviously Mladin’s bike is fast, but the amount of work Ammar Bazzaz and crew have spent on power delivery and power “quality” was immediately apparent. Mladin’s been on the fuel-injected machine since the beginning of ’99, and the powerband down low was impressivel strong and stutter-free. I remember thinking how smoothly the bike revved and it truly felt addicting accelerating off Turn 2 in third gear. On the front straight a little blue shift light above the tach cued my toe as the bike ate up gears as quickly as the tach needle could move. The Yosh crew favors very light crankshaft assemblies and that was apparent as this bike flitted through the gearbox. Willow Springs became surprisingly short.

Halfway through the third lap, Mladin’s bike crested Turn 6 beautifully and then wanted to wheelie all the way toward 7! I’ve wheelied here before, but never in fourth gear and never without trying. Two gears later, too suddenly, Turn 8 warped into view, but my body and bike were in the wrong position for this long right-hand sweeper.

Panic is too strong a word, but let’s say the situation got all my attention-my brain just wasn’t ready for that much entrance speed on such a graceful motorcycle. I’ve launched big-bore turbos down the backstraight at Willow, but Mladin’s bike fired into 8 without a wobble, weave or warning. It just arrived. My intoxication with the throttle was augmented by a deep respect for a modem Superbike’s chassis. I survived the initial laps and pitted for a moment of oxygenation.

To better understand this Yoshimura Suzuki, let’s examine it from two different perspectives. Seen from the grandstands, Mladin rides with an anger, a tangible aggressiveness that oozes through his leathers and sprouts from his helmet. The GSX-R wriggles and writhes beneath him, slamming off the rev limiter, lifting the rear tire at comer entrances and careening around America’s racetracks on the edge of control, traction and sanity.

But watching Mladin’s laps on a computer screen tells an entirely different story. Huddle with crew chief Bazzaz over the Pi dataacquisition laptop and Mladin’s consistency of control operation, braking points, rpm at track-outs and split times march forward in consistent sequences that belie the spinning, undulating GSX-R circulating the track. Mladin lays down laps like a machine, and Bazzaz tells us that his rider has an extra 5 percent safety margin inhand. That might sound pompous until you factor in this remarkable fact: Mat Mladin hasn’t crashed his Superbike in two years of AMA competition, two years at championship-winning speed. Mladin might be a raging storm on top of the motorcycle, but where the body meets the controls, he’s computer-precise.

For me, a guest rider on a $385,000 machine, these two perspectives added confidence. After my initial laps the Suzuki felt so planted, so utterly unperturbed that I realized how high the limits of the bike were. In fact, every time I got on the bike it circulated quicker and as the lap times dropped, the bike came clearly into focus.

Here’s a revelation: This bike isn’t setup to be manhandled. Surprised? After watching Mladin’s intense style, you automatically think he’s forcing the bike to do his will, but the data proves his smoothness. So do the throttle and brakes. Both are immediate and touchy, more digital than analog. By my third stint, I began leaving the twistgrip closed longer into the apexes because initial throttle application would produce such significant acceleration that I was having trouble hitting my turning points. This is a lesson I learned two months ago on Kenny Roberts Jr.’s Suzuki RGV500, and the family resemblance was incredible. Like Kenny’s bike, Mat’s GSX-R wanted to get off the comer as the throttle slid open. (It’s also significant that when Mladin rode Roberts’ RGV at Phillip Island in ’99 he was only about 1 second off the pace.)

Mladin’s style of hanging far off the bike allows the Aussie to use his body weight to help hold the bike down in turns, especially at tracks like Willow that stress stability over turn-in quickness. The GSX-R steered off-center easily, but didn’t drop into comers with the same light linearity. In fact, I had trouble getting the bike into apexes initially because steering gets heavier as the bike rolls up onto the edge of that wide 16.5-inch rear Dunlop. And despite my experience racing flickable 250s, Bazzaz showed me that Mladin uses considerably more lean angle, but off-throttle, to point the bike before standing it up under acceleration. Just a touch of throttle picks the bike up, and I didn’t get the hang of it for quite a few laps. Amazingly enough, I left the throttle closed longer and went quicker. Now if I could only trust the front tire like Mat...

Coming down into Turn 5, an off-camber left-hander at the bottom of the Budweiser Balcony, I was a bit late get ting my body from the right side of the bike to the left. Braking lightly and scram bling across the seat pad, I accidentally allowed my right index finger to dab the brake lever. On a "normal bike," this dab would have no affect, but Mladin's setup bounced the front Showa fork pretty hard-it was probably the closest I came to crashing all morning. Interestingly, Mladin likes his brake lever to give immediate results, yet the travel is relatively long and mushy. "We've had peo ple grab Mat's brake lever and ask what's wrong with it," Bazzaz laughed, "but he really likes the feel it gives him while trail-braking."

While the throttle charac teristics reminded me of Kenny's Gamma, Miadin's Brembo brakes were signifi cantly touchier than Roberts' radially mounted carbon units. The Superbike runs conventionally mounted Brembo calipers squeezing iron rotors, and the very first eighth-inch of lever travel really has an affect. When you watch Mladin clawing around a racetrack and then realize how smoothly he picks up his brake lever, it suggests the image of a bull in ballet slippers-rough and aggressive, but possessed of an amazing feel.

Comparing Suzuki's Superbike to its GP bike isn't false praise. Manufacturers spend a huge amount of money to com pete in the AMA Superbike Championship and the bike I rode at Willow was a full factory machine looked after by ingenious 4 men that don't miss a trick. "This bike changes so much during the season," Bazzaz said. "If you were to look at the rake and trail numbers we've used at different tracks, your eyes would pop out of your head; they're that different. It's our goal to arrive at the racetrack with a bike that's close, then fine tune for the weekend."

In our all-too-brief morn ing of riding the Number One Superbike in America, Yoshimura presented a motorcycle that could do no wrong. And for the last two years, it hasn't.