Listening At Laguna Seca
Race Watch
NICKY HAYDEN TALKS J REA AND SYKES WIN J DUCATI CRASHES THEN PODIUMS
THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PADDOCK
LISTENING AT LAGUNA SECA
The ins and outs of success at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Kevin Cameron
WORLD SUPERBIKE
queezing into airliners en route to the World Superbike event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, I was full of questions. After a championship by Tom Sykes on Kawasaki in 2013 and another by Sylvain Guintoli on Aprilia in 2014, former Honda rider Jonathan Rea joined Sykes on the green brand and took the title in 2015. How did Rea do this on a bike that was new to him, after years of being, in a sense, out to pasture on the uncompetitive Honda?
(It should be explained that the Honda wasn’t allowed throttle by wire until 2012—a system that by smoothing engine delivery allows use of significantly higher tune.)
Ducati, too, posed a question. Its “frameless” Panigale 1199 — born in 2012—has somehow become competitive after some dry seasons. I wanted to know how. Yes, a 1,200 twin is 20-percent bigger in displacement than the i,ooocc four-cylinder bikes, but to make equal power it would have to come closer than it has to the Kawasaki’s 15,000-rpm rev limit.
American Nicky Hayden has moved to World Supers after 12 seasons in MotoGP. Men like Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa won WSBK championships after making the same switch.
When I asked around, I learned that Rea’s experience on the Honda had been that it was “never the same twice,” obliging him to develop extraordinary ability to compensate. Although it became much better in 2012, moving onto the powerful Kawasaki last year applied Rea’s abilities at the highest level. I could see this in race one, as when Rea made a mistake at the Corkscrew, allowing teammate Sykes to gap him, the distance was almost casually made up. Rea clearly had pace to spare, not spinning and sliding as the Ducatis were, tire management at work.
In early laps, the two Kawasakis of Sykes and Rea and the Ducatis of Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano were a tight group. With Rea biding his time, the two Ducati men riding very hard to be where they were. Davies had a big wobble then pushed past leader Sykes on lap six only to fall a few corners later—a classic example of what happens when your machine is almost fast enough; you try to make up the difference out of nothing. Giugliano was next, crashing out as he chased the Kawasakis down.
This left Nicky Hayden third at the end behind Rea and
THE SNAP: Few shots in all of motorcycling are as conic as bikes charging down The Corkscrew at [t Laguna
Sykes, losing four-tenths of a second per lap to the leaders.
World Supers has run on spec Pirellis since 2004. When I spoke with motorcycle race tire manager Giorgio Barbier, he said his company’s philosophy is to keep the parameters of production and race tires very close, giving racing R&D prompt value in raising the performance of production tires.
Speaking with Ronald Ten Kate, principal of the Honda team for which Hayden is now riding, I asked about the constant
two-to-three cycles-per-second tail-wagging oscillation visible in on-bike video.
“That is tire flex,” he said. “If you set a Bridgestone MotoGP tire, unmounted, in front of you on the floor, when you press down on the tread, nothing happens. The tire is rigid even with no inflation. But do the same with a Pirelli and your hand punches the tread in easily.”
When I had asked Barbier about riders coming to WSBK from MotoGP, he said, “At first they say, ‘It’s moving! There’s a floating feeling!”’ (MotoGP bikes and tires are so rigid that any movement shouts loss of grip and imminent catastrophe.)
“But after they have ridden maybe three or four races, they begin to say, ‘You know, grip is not so bad on those rear tires. They may even have a bit more grip than the Bridgestones.’”
When I asked Hayden about this, he said, “You know, the tires were good, I have to say. I would say the tires are better than I expected, especially considering
these are production tires. It does drop and it does move, but overall the tires work well. Also Pirelli, for a spec championship, wants to and works hard to improve—at the last test in Misano they had quite a few developments going on that I didn’t expect in a spec tire.”
In conversation Ten Kate said, “Already we have reduced this gap [to the front] by half.” When I reviewed the finishes of 2016 Supers races I saw that Hayden in early races had been back as far as 25 seconds—twice the 12.3 seconds that separated him from first in Laguna’s race one.
I asked Hayden, “You reckon you’re in with a chance? You can get with those guys?” (Ten Kate Hondas are not factory bikes.)
“Why of course, I always think I have a chance,” Hayden said. “This year at the moment the gap’s a bit too big under normal circumstances.” He won race two in Malaysia in rain.
Ten Kate put it differently, saying that the top four bikes are factory machines with riders and crews who understand them
well. The Honda chassis, he said, needs to be stiffen Of this, Nicky said: “When I first started to ride the bike, in changes of direction I couldn’t be aggressive because when I was too aggressive I would upset the chassis too much. So the general direction we’ve been going with what we can change on the chassis and swingarm is stiffer, stiffen”
In a red-flagged-and-restarted race two the Ducatis showed improved staying power. Rea’s bike went to safety mode, putting him out (maybe a sensor failure). Sykes found himself doing every' thing possible to keep the two Panigales off his back in the final close, tense laps.
The Ducati’s big boost was discontinuance of the 50mm restrictors and a chassis update. Richie Alexander said a 40mmlonger swingarm has allowed them to accelerate harder without power cuts from the anti-wheelie system. I asked Öhlins tech
Jon Cornwell for more: “A good motorcycle chassis is a filter. It lets through the motions the rider needs to feel what’s happening and filters out the distractions.” Has Ducati somehow softened the stiffly twitchy Pani chassis?
Skyes said of those last laps, “Davide was getting on the power so much earlier than me. I couldn’t get the power applied on the edge of the tire. This made it very nervous on the front end.”
He did what it took to win by 0.2 second from Giugliano. Jostling off the last turn put Davies back a half-second in third.
Hayden had a new front tire for the restart, and it wasn’t as good as the first one. He finished fifth, 12.2 seconds out of first.
With the new World Supers format of race one on Saturday, and race two on Sunday, Hayden said, “You know, there’s not a lot of time to really tweak on it. You get Friday, but Saturday you get a 15-minute session and you’re
qualifying and racing. So it’s very important to make progress fast. It’s one of the things we’ve struggled with some—we’ve been reaching our limit quite quick, so we hope next year we’ll see if we get some fundamental help.
“You know what? I’m happy,” Hayden added. “At the end of last year when I considered if I should hang it up, I came back to the same conclusion: I want to keep racing.” EUM
