From a press release issued by Pirelli’s advertising and PR agency, Plummer Menapace Group:

PIRELLI RECAPS LAGUNA SECA: VERY PLEASED WITH PERFORMANCE

Competitive Lap Times, Great Racing, Even Without The Added Bonus of Wild Card Entries

(Rome, GA) When the smoke cleared and the final calculations and comparisons were finished on Pirelli’s first visit to the fabled Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca as the World Superbike spec tire, coupled with the AMA race action, there were smiles on the faces of the Pirelli engineers. And the announced three-day Laguna crowd of 93,000 seemed to enjoy themselves as well.



In a word, the Pirelli folks were proud. Saturday’s World Superbike Qualifying times showed less than one second separating the first ten riders, less than two seconds between the first twenty, and that’s with the two fastest riders’ lap times in the 1:26s. This compares to a qualifying gap of over four seconds between the first and tenth AMA Superbike riders.

“This is the spirit of the spec-tire rule, closer action, closer times, every racer on the same tires, no special back-door tires for a couple teams,” said a Pirelli spokesman. “This is why Formula 1 and MotoGP are also talking about a spec tire.”

Comparing the fastest lap times on race tires showed race-one winner Chris Vermeulen at 1:26.793 for the 28 laps. (A mere .7-second gap separated his fastest and slowest lap times over the race distance). This was just .6 behind the fastest pre-red-flag AMA Superbike lap time, and just .8 behind the fastest time after the re-start (when the teams had an opportunity to switch to fresh tires). Further, in the second World Superbike race, less than one second separated the fastest lap times of the top ten racers. “This shows the excellent consistency of the Pirelli tires being used by all of the World Superbike riders, also a very important point of the new tire format. And our tires are production tires, the same tires an American racer can buy, the same tires for every World Superbike racer. We race what we sell and we sell what we race.”



Rookie World Superbike competitor Vermeulen captured the season’s first double win, taking both Laguna Seca races on his Ten Kate-sponsored Honda CBR1000RR, the first SBK Laguna double since Ben Bostrom’s in 2001 on a Ducati. Vermeulen’s was a remarkable performance considering that neither he, his team, nor his “non-factory” bike had ever before tested or competed at the challenging hilltop Laguna road course. (The bike still has the stock swingarm and no trick HRC racing parts, compared to the special factory bikes and equipment of AMA and British Superbike competition.) It was the second and third wins in a row for the immensely-talented, “searingly fast” young Australian, who just turned 22 years old on June 19. His first victory at Silverstone a couple weeks ago was also the first for the new CBR1000RR, a bike that, coincidentally, is available in the States with Pirelli’s super-sticky Diablo Corsa track/street radials as original equipment. Vermeulen also put Honda in the World Superbike record book as the series’ first-ever 1000cc, four cylinder-engined winner. But Vermeulen is no stranger to either Hondas or Pirelli tires: he rode a Pirelli DOT Supercorsa-shod Ten Kate CBR600RR to last year’s World Supersport championship by one of the widest margins in that series’ history.

Vermeulen won the first race by 4.1 seconds, despite a poor start that left him in eighth on the first lap. It was one of the largest victory margins of the season, although still comparatively modest. Big victory margins have been rare this year, with the spec-tire rule delivering on one its promises to provide much closer, hard-fought, “level playing field” racing. Not at all like some of 17- and 18-second margins seen last year. In fact, there have already been six different winners in the first 14 races of the season (there are two races in each round), compared to last season when Ducati Fila’s Neil Hodgson won all of the first 12 races before Laguna Seca. Once Vermeulen got past early leader James Toseland on the factory Ducati Fila 999RS, he was gone, leaving the battle to those behind him. And quite a battle it was. But fan-favorite Frankie Chili and his unique PSG-1 Ducati “998.5”, as he calls the 998 chassis housing a 999 engine, got the best of the close-packed followers for second. Chili set a record of his own, competing in his 230th World Superbike race. Superpole winner Steve Martin and his DFX Ducati 999RS, was third.

The second race was a close-fought battle between Vermeulen and the 23 year-old Toseland, with only .465 seconds separating them at the checkered flag. Toseland’s teammate, Regis Laconi, was third.

Giorgio Barbier, Pirelli Racing Development Manager, commenting on the weekend’s racing said, “The important thing about today is to note that last year race two was slower than race one, while today the second race was seven seconds faster. The best lap time was a little bit slower. It was also interesting to see that the best and worst laps of Chris Vermeulen were within 0.7 seconds of each other. This demonstrates a good consistency from the tires, so we can work on the pure performance of the tires now. The pity is that because the AMA Superbike race was stopped and restarted we did not get the chance to see a comparison over full race distance. There was no significance in the fact that the four-cylinder machine won both races today. In my opinion this bike is a very good base to go racing from. Everyone used the softest rear tire we had in race two, and the vast majority chose it in race one. At the end of the day, even in our short comparison to the AMA races, our tires were very good.”

AMA RESULTS

Pirelli holds a completely different place in AMA racing, being the tire choice for most of the AMA’s top privateers. Three of them finished in the Laguna Superbike final’s top 10: Lion Racing’s Jacob Holden in eighth, Triangle Cycle’s Larry Pegram, 9th, and Prieto Racing’s Geoff May, 10th. Holden only recently began competing in the class at the Road America round, and this was his best finish of the year, a very consistent effort marked by his holding the position through both parts of the red-flagged final; he also had a ninth in Saturday’s Superstock race. May, on the other hand, provided one of the weekend’s gutsiest performances. Not known as a crasher, he nevertheless suffered two of them at Laguna, resulting in injuries that made it difficult for him to get into his leathers and boots. But he was still able to fight to ninth before the red flag. Hitting a false neutral on the first turn of the re-start dropped May all the way back to 20th, yet he fought his way to another top-10 finish. May has finished in the top 10 in every Superbike race thus far in 2004 – which is why he and his Suzuki GSX-R1000 with a “bone-stock” engine currently hold an amazing fifth place in the championship standings.

There are eight Pirelli privateers in the Formula Xtreme point standings even though it is admittedly a two-rider race for the championship. Three of them finished in Laguna’s top 20. Larry Pegram, fifth in points, finished eighth; Heath Small, eighth in the standings, finished 13th; and Nathan Hester still holds the number-seven spot despite his disappointing 20th at Laguna. Two Pirelli riders who don’t normally compete in the series finished ninth and tenth: Lion Racing’s Nicky Moore and Hal’s H-D’s Mike Ciccotto on a Buell XB9R, respectively.

Championsonline.com’s Michael Barnes and his Pirelli Supercorsa-mounted Yamaha R6 earned another hard-fought eighth place in the factory-bike dominated AMA Supersport class, a finish that kept him in eighth place in points.