Opposed Twins
RACE WATCH
OPPOSED TWINS
BRIAN CATTERSON
JIMMY LEWIS
Team Cycle World takes to the Daytona high-banks in the BMW BoxerCup
THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING. I'M SITTING on the 11th row of the starting grid at Daytona International Speedway, in the 43rd position, and Jimmy Lewis is just to my left. What this means-and prompting the endless ribbing I've had to endure over the past couple of days-is that Cycle World's Off-Road Editor has out-qualified me, a supposed roadracer, for the inaugural American round of the BMW Motorrad BoxerCup Series. Wasn't this, the taunting continued, the first time Jimmy's ever roadraced?
Uh, yes it is, was the answer, and as much as I sucked it up and told everyone who asked that Jimmy’s an awesome motorcycle rider, and that he’s in tune with BMW Boxers, having twice raced one in the grueling Paris-toDakar Rally, and that it was never going to take him long to figure out this roadracing thing, and anyway he only went fractions of a second quicker than I did, deep down I knew that I’d blown it. And I had only myself to blame.
Talk about a spoiled brat: If someone offered you the chance to race around the (insert catchy adjective here) highbanks of Daytona on a factory bike, wouldn’t you jump at the chance? Don’t think I deserve it? Well then, I’ll see you at the finish ofDakar! Remember, it was BMW that called, and my old team manager Bertie Hauser now runs the BoxerCup show. Sometimes, it really is who you know!
Because the BoxerCup is an international series, I needed to get an FIM roadrace license. Not an easy thing to do when you’ve never roadraced. But I already had an AMA motocross license, which before a policy change a few years ago would have qualified me for an AMA roadrace license, too. And thanks to magazine testing, I had a fair bit of track time under my leathers.
With help from former CW ad guy Andy Leisner, I eventually convinced AMA Roadracing Manager Ron Barrick to grant me a “provisional” license—the provision being that I had to promise not to roadrace again after Daytona!
Now in its fifth year, the BMW BoxerCup Series was expanded this season to include Daytona, the first time a round has been held outside of Europe. This year marks BMW’s 80th anniversary, and to celebrate that fact the company pulled out all the stops, setting up a massive tent village in the Daytona infield and hanging signage seemingly everywhere you looked. Banners on International Speedway Boulevard proclaimed “BMW Bike Week,” a real statement in a town temporarily populated by a few hundred thousand Harley riders.
No fewer than 48 competitors attempted to qualify for the BoxerCup final at Daytona, 32 of whom were Europeans planning on doing the entire nine-race series. With the 2003 champ taking home a BMW M3 coupe, the runner-up a Mini Cooper S and the third-place points man a BMW RI 150RT, competition is predictably fierce. Tops the last two years running was former World Endurance Champion Stephane Mertens, and the Daytona grid included a number of former Grand Prix and World Superbike competitors, plus a slew of fast moto-journalists.
In theory, the R1 lOOSs that competitors race are stock, the rules allowing very few modifications. All the street equipment can be removed, a solo seat and chin cowl fitted and the gear change switched to a race-style, up-for-first pattern. Performance mods are limited to race-compound Metzeler tires, a spec Remus exhaust and BMW accessory shocks, the rear slightly longer than stock for increased cornering clearance. The big cylinders jutting out on both sides wear carbon-fiber guards with titanium inserts to prevent them from wearing through.
Like in any form of Supersport racing, however, there are tuners who push the rules to the limit, and there were whispers of 100-plus rear-wheel horsepower at Daytona, a significant increase from a Stocker’s 90 or so.
My number-32 ride, one of four “VIP” machines loaned out to journalists and famous racers such as series ambassador Randy Mamola, also had the new 2Spark cylinder heads, though the alleged improvement in low-speed performance wasn’t apparent at high-speed Daytona.
Lewis was part of “Team Stars & Stripes,” an effort put together by BMW of North America, with team bikes painted in red/white/blue American-flag livery. Personally, I liked my plain-wrap blue/white/black bike better, but only because my name was lettered on the fairing sides!
My first taste of what I was getting myself into came during our May issue ’s middleweight sportbike comparison at California Speedway. Borrowing a standard BMW BoxerCup Replica, I took to the road course to see if I could even stay on the same guys on the 600s. Surprisingly could, and after about 300 miles and a set of roached Metzelers, I knew what it felt like to drag toe, knee and cylinder head. I even managed to smoke off one unnamed staffer or 500-pound Twin while he was on a much more capable sportbike. I was ready for Daytona!
Like Lewis, I did a BoxerCup Replica, and found that it worked pretty well at Laguna Seca. Daytona, however, was another story: All through Wednesday afternoon’s first practice session, I struggled to keep my bike’s rear wheel from hopping up and down under braking.
At first I suspected the chassis, but after running the gamut of suspension settings, a conversation with slow-talking, fast-riding Georgian Tripp Nobles confirmed something I had already begun to suspect: The real culprit was engine braking, and if I simply downshifted at lower rpm, the bike wouldn’t misbehave.
First practice on Wednesday, and it was a lot to take in! You don’t walk the track like in motocross, yet you ’re expected to know every inch of it while you’re out there. And with a pack of horny-for-speed Euro-maniacs passing me on all sides, the session was a blur. I didn’t go too fast, but I wasn ’t as slow as I thought Fd be, either. With everyone on identical bikes, I knew that if someone was going faster, I was doing something wrong. The learning had to be fast!
Thursday, qualifying day, and things were really buzzing. I got great advice from everyone I talked to; the only thing was, they all contradicted each other! The one thing I knew for certain was that the draft was make-or-break on the 31-degree Daytona banking, and Id never been in one before. So, during morning practice, I hooked up with my good buddy Brian, who’s always the most helpful guy at magazine track days. Only this time he didn’t look back and point to his rear fender...
Anyway, we sling off the back straight heading into the chicane and
I’ve got the draft. “Ah, this is what it feels like,’’ I think as I shoot past him like he’s standing still. I pop up at my usual braking point and suddenly realize I’m going, oh, about a million mph faster than usual! I try to bend it in, but no luck. I take aim for the grass, figuring that’s better than hitting the wall or haybales, but it isn’t grass, it ’s water with grass poking up through the top. No problem, Iride dirtbikes, but not on tires like these and, woo, when that cylinder head digs in, the bike sure does flip up high in the air! Thanks, Brian, for the lesson in drafting...
Off-Road Editor, indeed! I’d warned Jimmy to mind the draft going into Turn 1 and the chicane, especially on the first lap of the race when there would be more than 40 of us headed in there en masse. But saying, “I told you so,” wasn’t going to help much now.
Although Jimmy was unhurt, the > number-17 bike was tweaked, the mounting lugs for the rear subframe snapped clean off the main frame. It was questionable whether he’d even be able to get it ready for the afternoon qualifying session. But the BMW mechanics got to work, grinding off what was left of the lugs, fitting a massive jig, then drilling, tapping and screwing in some replacements.
A little panicked because my bike was nowhere to be found, I went to look for it only to find it out behind the pits with a broken subframe. My team didn’t have the time to fix it, because my younger, faster teammate Jason Perez had copied my move and destroyed his bike as well. But the international “VIP” team had one of my old Dakar mechanics, Thomas Wolf running the show. He looked at my bike and said, “We make a fix for that.” So I broke out some tools and, with the help of Catterson and some mechanics who were finished with their riders ’bikes, got itfixed with about 2 minutes left ’til qualifying.
While we were busy repairing Jimmy’s bike, my mechanic “Ziggy” readied my mount for the 30-minute qualifying session. With new tires and brake pads, I took it easy for the first few laps, and then went looking for “dance partners.” I found them in the form of Greg White from Speed Channel and Guido Stosser from Germany’s Motorrad magazine, ironically the only two riders in the field who were bigger and less aerodynamic than me. Not only were we down on top speed on the banking, Gui> do had his race face on, repeatedly stuffing past me on the brakes in the infield, only to mess us both up for the following corner! Noting that the lap times on my on-board display were 3 seconds slower than I’d gone in practice that morning, I bid aufwiedersehen to my two large companions and went looking for some smaller, faster guys to draft.
I found them a few laps later, Californian Brian Parriott leading a four-rider freight train toward the tri-oval. But no sooner had I tucked in behind them than the checkered flag ended the session. Dummkopf! When rain fell on Friday afternoon’s final qualifying session, I was doomed to start from the rear of the grid.
I didn’t expect much from qualifying as I was a little tentative about crashing, and still trying to understand that drafting thing. So imagine my surprise when I beat out my buddy Brian for a spot near the
back of the grid! He said something about not catching a draft, but I didn’t even know how to use one without crashing...
Race day dawned cloudy and damp, but the rain stayed away long enough for our race to be run. We were slated to go 12 laps, 43.8 miles around the 3.65-mile road course. Lewis and I lined up on the second-to-last row, seemingly miles from the front of the grid. We could barely see the starting lights from where we were, but when the red lights went dark, I launched hard and immediately started slaloming through bikes-a number of Americans were apparently waiting for the green lights to illuminate. This ain’t drag racing, guys! Telling myself, “I’m going to the front,” I got busy slashing through as many riders as I could.
Of course, the problem with starting at the back, as my buddy John Bums once observed, is that by the time you get to the front, it’s the middle. Running at the head of the third pack of riders in 33rd place, I could just make out dirt-track legend Jay Springsteen at the rear of the second pack, but every time we climbed the banking, his group pulled farther away. Frustrating!
I suspected my short-lived staff triumph wouldn’t last come race time, and it didn ’t. I thought I might be able to follow Brian as he pulled away from me off the line, but he hooked up with a faster group and was gone. Ijust concentrated on avoiding bikes with riders, bikes without riders, riders alone on the track... And then there was this Italian girl, Rosana Soleri, who was small, fast and knew how to draft. I couldn’t get beat by a girl! TV guy Greg White ’s bike was all decked out with cameras, and so I made a point of passing Rosana and him at the same time, so everyone would see that I beat the girl! Never mind I was in like 40th place...
Relief came in the form of a red flag on lap eight. Backing up the results to the previous lap set up a five-lap sprint to the finish, which I would start from the inside of the ninth row in the 33rd position. Determined not to let the second group get away this time, I got another flyer of a start, and did indeed manage to keep up. This group was much more international, worldly even, with a number of hard-riding BoxerCup regulars in the mix. The rubbin’ and bumpin’ on the bankin’ more closely resembled NASCAR truck racing than any two-wheeled motorsport. And the sound of all those flat-Twins droning around, combined with the feeling of impending doom, conjured images of a WWII bomber squadron.
With something like a dozen riders in our pack, the draft was intense, and so I went from 33rd to 23rd back to 33rd, then got through the infield really well and got a helluva tow to cross the stripe in 18th to begin the second-tolast lap. Where before my tach needle was registering comfortably below redline, it now was deep into the red zone, my shift light flashing and the rev-limiter cutting in. My on-board lap-timer showed a 2:07 and change on that go-round, 7 seconds quicker than I’d qualified and just 3 seconds off pole. But no sooner had I begun to think a top-20 finish was possible than a foreign rider (sorry, I was too busy soiling my shorts to get his name) came slashing across my front tire entering Turn 1, impossibly hot. I turned in underneath him, but as I did, second-year roadracer Nate Kern from New Jersey stuffed underneath me and proceeded to push me wide into the Euro-guy. Nate apologized later, and I might have gotten angry with him if he didn’t already have a black eye and stitches from a previous crash!
Anyway, with my left knee and cylinder head already on the ground and nowhere to go, I had little option but to squeeze the front brake lever to avoid a collision. With predictable consequences: The front tire folded under and I went slithering the asphalt, my bike sliding off into the grass and barrel-rolling once after the left cylinder dug in. Seeing as how it didn’t appear too badly damaged, I trotted over to see if I might be able to rejoin the race. No such luck: The ignition key was missing, and it wasn’t until after Ed ridden back to the pits in the crash truck that I discovered the key was stuck through the windscreen! The mechanics all agreed they’d never seen that before.
By the restart, I’d finally gotten a grasp on this roadracing thing. My fun-meter had slowly become unpegged from the horrifying kind of fun and moved into the regular, good oV fun zone. So when we took back off I tagged along with a faster group and started moving up. I was doing that drafting thing and making it work. In fact, I was turning lap times 4 seconds quicker than I’d qualified! And wouldn’t you know it, as I’m riding around Turn 1, I see a bike doing a nose wheelie (not the good kind) and Brian hopping up from a slide to jog off the track. I was going to beat him in the race, too! Never mind his side of the story, just check the results and I think you ’ll see my name just a little higher. Thirtieth place may not mean much to him, but to me, it’s victory!
Now, I have a bitchin ’ set of leathers and they even have my name on them. Am I going roadracing full-time? Well, I need a lot of practice-some dreaming might help, too-but I’ve been infected with the disease. And though Daytona probably wasn’t the best place to start, the BMW BoxerCup was a great way to do it on a friendly machine that didn’t exceed my limits. Would I do it again? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Brian is signing us both up for next year.
Did I mention he got beat by a girl?
