Meanest Green

MEANEST GREEN

Sheer terror on Kawasaki’s ZX-RR MotoGP racer

THERE HAS GOT TO BE AN EASIER WAY TO LEARN A RACEtrack,” I thought to myself as I rocketed down the front straightaway at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain, last November. Steed for my first-ever stint on the 2.48-mile, 14-turn track wasn’t just some psychotically fast sportbike, but one of the most psychotically fast racebikes on this green earth: the Kawasaki ZX-RR.

Unlike Valentino Rossi’s MotoGP championship-winning Yamaha YZR-M1 that I would ride 24 hours later (“Doctor for a Day,” CW, February), the Kawasaki’s 990cc inlineFour doesn’t make use of a traction-enhancing, big-bang firing order. No, it’s the last of what is lovingly referred to as the “screamer” engines, and scream it does! Peak output at the 15,200-rpm redline is said to be “in excess of 220 horsepower,” but after riding the bike, I suspect it’s a lot in excess! Going through the gears on Valencia’s half-milelong front straightaway was an exercise in sheer terror as I wheelied past the pit lane at 150 mph-plus, the engine ripping through the rev range so quickly that the sequential shift lights seemed to illuminate all at once!

Kawasaki, along with Suzuki, was the laughing stock of the MotoGP paddock when it entered the series full-time at the start of the 2003 season. Original team riders Garry McCoy and Andrew Pitt struggled that season, and it took most of last season before new riders Shinya Nakano and Alex Hofmann (who had five wild-card rides in 2003) started posting respectable results. It didn’t help that Nakano crashed at 200 mph when his rear Bridgestone slick came apart at Mugello, Italy! Fortunately, only his confidence was hurt.

Things started to turn around at Nakano’s home GP in Motegi, Japan, where a multi-rider pile-up in the first turn helped him give Kawasaki its first podium finish since German Toni Mang last did so in 1982. But there was another reason, as well: a new engine-management system, the team having switched from Japanese Mitsubishi to Italian Magnetti-Marelli components, same as that used by the Ducati and Yamaha teams. This gave the ZX-RR launchcontrol, anti-spin and anti-wheelie systems, making it what CW Technical Editor Kevin Cameron likes to call a “gadget bike.”

Thing is, it works. Testers who rode the 2003 ZX-RR said that the 2004 version is the most improved bike in the MotoGP paddock. Though it sounds like a wailing banshee, and its front end snaps up a lot quicker than you’d think it would with “wheelie-control,” it’s actually fairly ridable.

Or would have been, if I’d ridden Nakano’s bike instead of Hofmann’s. Whereas his more experienced teammate’s bike was set up fairly conservatively, the German rookie’s tail-sliding riding style necessitates a “stinkbug” attitude. Thus the rear end was jacked up so high that the chassis was borderline unstable, which required tightening the steering damper to the point that the front end barely turned, which made the front tire feel like it was going to fold under entering comers. Far from neutral handling, the only possible way to tighten your line mid-comer would be to steer with the rear, and I was not going to do that!

It was a hairy five laps, but I returned unscathed with a newfound appreciation for what Hofmann, Nakano, et al do on Sundays. You’d think that riding a MotoGP bike would you a good idea of what it would be like to race one, but knowing what these guys have to cope with, I

can't even imagine.

Brian Catterson