Hayden Beats the Heat

HAYDEN BEATS THE HEAT

RACE WATCH

Hot times at Laguna Seca

KEVIN CAMERON

NICKY HAYDEN DID IT AGAIN, WINNING HIS SECOND SUCCESSIVE Red Bull United States Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. This victory, the third of his four-year MotoGP career, required him to attack continuously while conserving tires in extreme conditions. Early leader Kenny Roberts Jr. had said, “The person who holds his line and stays with it will win,” and that’s how it turned out. In winning, Hayden overcame fresh challengers, continuing this season’s pattern of stellar performances by newcomers. The polesitter, Australian Chris Vermeulen, led 16 of the 32 laps on a Bridgestone-shod Suzuki that set the top trap speed of the event. He held on for fifth at the end. Veteran KRJR defended second place against Hayden for eight laps on his dad’s new Honda V-Five-powered KR21IV, finishing fourth.

Also impressive were tiny Spanish rookie Dani Pedrosa (112 pounds!) and equally small Casey Stoner, both on Hondas. Pedrosa advanced from fourth quickest in qualifying to finish second. Stoner, also new to Laguna, several times led the first practice. In the race, the 20-year-old Australian doggedly led Pedrosa in an intense private battle before sliding out of the race on lap 15.

Yamaha men Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards were frustrated. Third and second to Hayden at Laguna last year, they were stymied by the track’s new surface. Despite this, Rossi looked set for a pointsearning fourth place, but his bike overheated, coughed blue smoke and died. Edwards finished ninth. Marco Melandri, also Honda-mounted, rode a well-judged and conservative race into third.

Extreme conditions? A new surface? As riders requested last year, increased runoff in certain comers had been provided. Don’t dismiss this as whining on the part of the riders. MotoGP is major sport

in Europe and commands the best in facilities. For years, U.S. racers had to accept whatever track owners would give them, and when world professionals see what we’ve had to work with, they are understandably surprised. It is not whining to expect to live through the event.

From the first practice, it was clear something was wrong. Bikes were thrown in the air by a brand-new set of ripples just past the bottom of the Corkscrew. And there were other bumps. Edwards noted, “Change your line 4 inches and you find new bumps.” Riders then tried different lines, but this cost them time. High-speed compression-damping cuts later softened the effect, but the whoopde-doos remained. Rossi described it as though a tree root was growing under the pavement. Another rider said, “If Laguna was a 10 before, now it’s a 3.”

It was 107 degrees during Saturday qualifying-a temperature not seen here before during a race weekend. Normally, the Pacific Ocean’s mighty proximity keeps

the days bearable. Track temperature was 133, of which Hayden said, “That’s worse than Malaysia, worse than Qatar.” Another view? “That’s just morning in Malaysia,” Roberts said.

KRJR was the top rider at the end of two practice sessions. How could the KR team get its new bike working so k quickly? Turns out, the little shop in Banbury, England, has run through jl just as many frame designs this year as Honda-about six. Why is Honda providing engines? Maybe Honm da is curious as to how such imW pressive results can come from so small a group. Roberts Sr. had given ^ up signing autographs last year (“I’m nobody; you don’t want my autograph”), but this year, deservedly, he’s back in production. Roberts Jr. has a lot of development experience and doesn’t need

to “get in the mood” during testing. He goes fast from lap one.

The big lesson of this season is that MotoGP bikes are the finest high-power motorcycles the world has ever seen. They are so easy to ride fast that first-year men like Pedrosa, Stoner and Vermeulen ran up front instantly, needing almost no transition time. When Ducati man Loris Capirossi, a seven-time winner on the old two-stroke 500s, was asked, “Easy to ride? Or just easy considering how violently fast these bikes are?” He replied, “No, much easier.” As a result, there are now 10 riders who can win on any given weekend instead of the one or two who could win in past eras (Agostini, Hailwood, Roberts, Doohan). More competition means closer, more exciting racing-as we saw at Laguna. That’s good business, both as entertainment and for the motorcycle industry. Corny as it sounds, racing has improved the breed. MotoGP’s ultra-smooth power and effective traction control is tomorrow’s standard production. We have the technology.

Hayden’s crew chief, Pete Benson, now in his second season with the Kentuckian, is a no-nonsense Kiwi who addresses problems and gets on with practical, immediate solutions. As Hayden said in the post-race briefing, “My boys are for real, and our team is really strong.” The Honda remains what it has been all along-the

best overall package-but it’s up to riders and teams to make the motorcycle work on a given circuit.

Yamaha and Ducati both failed to make their bikes hook tip off lower-gear cor-

ners, Rider JamdtfEIlison connected this withiS^mmaha’s unusually low center of gravity, the beginnings of which I saw four years ago at Motegi. While Honda had given its bike increased resistance to wheelies and stoppies with a longish, 573/4inch wheelbase, Yamaha had tried to re-

tain its traditionally high agility (a big word around the paddock these days) with a quicker-steering shorter wheelbase by stuffing much of the fuel mass down low, under the seat. In a sense, both teams were trying for a dragster’s wheelie resistance that would translate into higher acceleration. Ducati team manager Livio Suppo, a deep-toned, authoritative figure, said they are preparing a chassis for what he

called “medium-grip circuits, like this one.” This makes perfect sense. Dragsters must be longer or lower to exploit higher grip but shorter or higher to avoid wheelspin when grip is lower.

I asked Edwards why he and Troy Bayliss have never really “moved in” and been comfortable in MotoGP (Bayliss is back in World Superbike, winning

races). Edwards nodded and said, “A big, heavy old Superbike.. .you brake and it transfers weight to the front. You turn the throttle and it transfers to the back.

But this...we don’t have a baseline! In England,

Valentino (his Yamaha teammate) used the hardest rear spring on record. Then at the next race in Germany, he was hard on the front and had the softest spring on the back.”

And at Ducati? Paddock chat says Ducati’s baseline is so firm it hardly changes. Suppo confirmed this. But Capirossi blew this into confetti. He said the baseline is not stable. “We changed

everything this weekend.” (Capirossi and teammate Sete Gibernau finished a lowly eighth and 10th at Laguna.) Even their tire choice-normally, they use the same Bridgestone front as the Suzukis-had to be different here. The Ducati men are eager to get back to more “flowing” circuits-that is, circuits requiring less acceleration.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “But why don’t they try...?” Years ago, Suzuki crew chief Stuart Shenton took me aside for a lecture. He said, “To get around a comer, you need four separate motorcycles.” These are the “brakester,” the quick turn-in bike, the mid-comer bike and the dragster. Because their properties are mutually exclusive, obvious “solutions” can’t work. This has made the low-cg Yamaha extremely sensitive to tiny setup changes.

Honda looked good at Laguna, filling the podium, but chief engineer Kyoichi

Ducati pilots Sete Gibernau (15) and Loris Capirossi (65) searched in vain for grip all weekend. Overcome during qualifying by the oppressive heat, Capirossi vomited in his helmet.

Yoshii revealed how tenuous success is. As the season opened, Yamaha appeared strong and well-prepared, as Edwards won the IRTA prize BMW car for being quick est in final testing. Honda had problems with-you guessed it!-chatter. Honda has large resources and was by degrees able to tame this. Then, at the first race, the chatter switched sides, crippling Rossi's early races.

Why should this be? Each team choos es a chassis direction. But because a vig orous tire war is raging between Michelin (Honda, KR and Yamaha) and Bridges tone (Suzuki, Ducati and Kawasaki), tire evolution is galloping. Last year, a new "big" Michelin rear suited the Yamaha but upset the Hondas. This year, an even larger-section new Michelin is working on the Hondas but not on the Yamahas. In all this are echoes of what the late Dick O'Brien, long head of Harley-Da vidson racing, told me years ago: "Just when we get our chassis working, here come the #&*$ tire people with some new thing with more #$%* grip that bends the frame and nothing works anymore."

Why did the tire suit the Honda? Ros si's engineer, Jeremy Burgess, said Hon da finished 2005 "out of traction," so they asked for more and Michelin ea gerly supplied it. The Yamaha, on the other hand, derives much of its laptime from high agility (there's that word again!),)

and bigger tires were negatives in that department. A big rear acts like a locked axle in a race car-an agility negative. Add to that the agility loss of the biggersection ’06 front and Yamaha has lost a lot of its advantage.

On agility, Roberts Sr. said, “That’s up to the rider.” Hayden agreed, wanting all the grip he can get. “I can handle it,” he said. Dirt-track competition has made him strong. Hayden ran both the largersection front and the big rear in the race. Rossi and Edwards, on the very same rear, couldn’t find grip. Ducati’s problem was the same but with Bridgestones. Practice is a desperate sprint to try A, B and C in hope of getting it right enough to work

in the race.

And Suzuki’s newfound speed? After being the sick man of MotoGP for so many years, the Suzukis of Vermeulen and Hopkins are suddenly fast. Vermeulen’s bike set the top trap speed Sunday morning at almost 160 mph, 7 mph faster than Rossi’s Yamaha and 9 mph faster than Pedrosa’s Honda. This Suzuki has pneumatic valves, making possible higher lifts at high rpm. Most experience with pneumatics comes from Formula One, where violent powerbands are tamed by giant tires. As Suzuki tailors pneumatics to its application, expect it to achieve>

Valentino Rossi once again strug gled In qualifying, then raced toward the front. His Yamaha teammate, Cohn Edwards, broke Laguna into two sections-the portion leading from start/finish to the Corkscrew and from there back to start/finish. "The first haif Is okay," he said. "The second haif is a disaster."

longer tire life and smoother power. It’s not bad now! “It’s crazy,” Shenton quipped. “We’re moaning about being fifth and sixth today, but a year ago we’d have thrown a party.”

Pedrosa’s low top speed is no surprise. Getting his tire to hook up at Laguna required a “flat-top haircut” for the torque curve, planing it down smooth enough to keep the tire gripping. This applies also to Capirossi’s powerful Ducati, which also recorded one of the slowest top speeds.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t traction control handle all that? No, because it can’t.

It can help, but it can’t mask a violent powerband and poor grip. As Burgess told us three years ago when speaking of trackside engine mapping, “You can trim off the peaks but you can’t fill in the valleys.” Conversation with a Marelli engineer revealed that, at least for now, the best traction control is the simplest.

“A clever person can think of many variables to include,” he said. “But when too much data is used, the results easily become useless.”

The ICBM-style gyro platforms you’ve heard rumored do exist, but their data are for later analysis only; they do not control engine operation. As I listened to engine sounds, another thought came to me. What if actual cylinder cuts-the ir->

regular pops I was hearing, especially from the Kawasakis-are less to control torque than to tell the rider how far “into the system” he is pushing?

Roberts Jr. added another dimension. He said, “When you finally have the traction control turned up all the way, you know there isn’t much grip.”

Then why are some bikes so fast? Vermeulen’s topped the list, and Hayden’s was third-fastest. Blame Ducati. When the Italian factory showed two years ago that power could win, Honda powered up and Yamaha followed. This is hard, for with increased power come more potentially traction-breaking ups and downs in the torque curve. Combining power and smoothness is time-consuming and expensive. Yet it’s essential, for races are won off corners.

I asked Hayden about the transformation in his riding. Until the past 18 months, he has ridden too hard for too little, using up his tire early. Clearly, his new crew has helped, but the riding is up to him.

“I was studying and watching other riders,” he said. “Testing taught me a lot about what does what-(adjustable steering-head) collars, offsets, swingarms.”

What we see is a much stronger, subtler rider and a more confident racer. There is no doubt about his motivation.

“I took a pay cut to get to Europe,” he said, with a note of disbelief in his Kentucky twang.

Why has it taken him so long? MotoGP bikes handle more like hyper 250s than like Edwards’ “big, heavy old Superbikes.” On the Laguna podium, Hayden, >

the ex-AMA Superbike champ, was flanked by two former 250cc world championsPedrosa and Melandri.

Roberts Jr. surprised many people here by leading most of the first lap, then finishing fourth. He did not surprise himself. Any time he’s had a motorcycle that was nearly right, he has immediately gone quickly on it. Teamed with Hopkins on Suzukis during that company’s trying “time in the wilderness,” he refused to ride to the edge of sanity for 13th place and was therefore dismissed as “unmotivated.” When he topped two Laguna practice sessions, pundits proclaimed, “It won’t last. He won’t finish.” Roberts is a unique personality-remote, extremely practical, yet durably self-confident.

What about his dad’s company? As a non-factory unknown quantity, it has so far attracted limited sponsorship. With no test team or second rider, development

is slower than it could be. But as team manager Chuck Aksland noted, theirs is a special situation. When the rider asks

for a change, the team makes the part and they test it-now. The request does not travel halfway around the world, penetrate a language barrier and then be denied or altered by rear-echelon desk jockeys. I can understand why Honda might be interested inTeamKR’s operations, The fourth American, Hopkins, finished sixth. Previously billed as Mr. Motivation, he is doubly so with Vermeulen’s new presence ahead of him. With serious power finally at his disposal and smoothness on its way, his task becomes easier, Everything is changing. A short time ago, Bridgestones worked best on cool

mornings and lost grip as the sun rose, Forget that. In the Laguna heat, the Japanese rubber was state-of-the-art. Rossi and Burgess are the architects of this era

of smooth, usable power. Now everyone else, including Suzuki and Kawasaki, has learned that lesson. Nothing will be easy, as the tire war forces constant chassis reoptimizations and new 800cc engine rules take effect next spring.

Hayden left Laguna with 51 points over Rossi, who remarked, “For the first time, I will be able to enjoy racing without the pressure of a championship.” It’s not in the bag for Hayden, because the implacable Pedrosa trails by only 34 points.

As I spoke with riders and engineers at Laguna, I was impressed by their curiosity about racing and humility in the face of many unknowns. Racing does this to people, no matter how magisterial their parent companies. In this game, there are no masters, only students. □

For additional photography from the 2006 USGR visit www.cycleworld.com