Dunlop Officials Had Met with Riders Prior To Daytona Test To Explain Previous Tire Failure

Dunlop Officials Had Met with Riders Prior To Daytona Test To Explain Previous Tire Failure

© 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

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Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Representatives from Dunlop held a series of meetings with teams prior to the start of the tire test at Daytona International Speedway to explain the catastrophic tire failure suffered by racer Ben Spies during testing at the Speedway in October and to set the riders’ minds at ease.

Spies fell from his Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 Superbike October 13 during tire testing at Daytona when his rear Dunlop exploded as he crossed the start/finish line at a radar-measured 186 mph.

The 19-year-old Texan suffered serious skin abrasions in his long slide on the pavement, has undergone skin graft operations to repair the damage and has been out of action and unable to train since the incident.

“They were just trying to put our mind at ease and explain (Spies’ tire failure) to us,” American Honda’s Miguel Duhamel said Tuesday after the end of on-track activities at Daytona. “They had little graphs and charts and stuff. It shows a lot of the company as big as Dunlop taking time to sit everybody down and set their mind at ease.”

Duhamel’s teammate Ben Bostrom was also present at the meeting between Dunlop officials and Honda team members Sunday, December 7 and was encouraged by what the Dunlop men told him.

“The good thing is they found it, they found out what went wrong (with Spies’ tire),” Bostrom told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “They said they tripled or quadrupled the strength of the part they had the problem with. It was a big confidence builder for sure.”

Speaking early Tuesday morning at Daytona, Dunlop Senior Road Race Manager Jim Allen acknowledged the problem encountered with Spies’ tire and said Dunlop had found the answer. “Obviously with the problem we had with Ben Spies in October there’s been a whole lot of emphasis on finding out exactly what went wrong with that tire. We did finally get the answer to that, and once that was done, we were able to start producing tires for this test,” Allen told Roadracingworld.com.

However, Yamaha’s Jason DiSalvo crashed late Tuesday afternoon at Daytona when the rear tire on his 2004 Yamaha YZF-R1 Superstock racer failed coming out of NASCAR Turn Four.

“Hopefully what happened to (Jason) DiSalvo was something else,” said Duhamel. “They (Dunlop) care a lot. They’ve been in racing forever. They’ve supported the American racing, my racing, forever. It’s just bad. Like I said, we’ll just wait and see what comes out, but they are definitely trying hard.”

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