Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Dunlop’s road racing manager Jim Allen and American Honda’s Ben Bostrom, Jake Zemke and Miguel Duhamel attended a Michelin tire test at Pikes Peak International Raceway Wednesday and Thursday, making a mockery of Dunlop’s pre-season claims that it needed to exclude Michelin teams from Dunlop team tests to maintain developmental secrecy.

Dunlop Vice President Mike Buckley–a member of the AMA Pro Racing Board of Directors and until recently a member of the main AMA Board–broke up an AMA team-testing co-op over the winter by personally calling the managers of Dunlop teams and buying up the test dates they had shared with Michelin teams in an arrangement going back at least seven years. Buckley bought the dates for the express purpose of excluding Michelin teams and Michelin technicians.

After Roadracingworld.com exposed the buy-up, Dunlop issued statements quoting Buckley as saying that the company had to exclude engineers from competing brands to maintain developmental secrecy. Buckley also claimed that it was normal in MotoGP for tire companies to take the same position, although tire engineers from Michelin, Dunlop and Bridgestone all attended pre-season MotoGP tests with no apparent compromise in their development programs.

Michelin responded to the test date buy-up by seeking its own test dates with mixed success. A late-April date at Road America featured temperatures so cold Ducati’s Eric Bostrom complained that he couldn’t feel his fingers by the time the tires he was supposed to be testing came anywhere close to operating temperatures. And the company could not obtain any alternative dates at Infineon Raceway that worked logistically for Michelin teams. As a result of not testing at the Sonoma, California track, which has several recently repaved sections, Michelin teams were not competitive at last weekend’s AMA National there.

Michelin’s announcement of its own test dates included an invitation for non-Michelin teams to participate on a shared-cost basis; to date, Buell teams on Pirellis participated in a Michelin test last month at Barber and now Honda has participated at Pikes Peak, bringing Dunlop’s Allen and several Dunlop tire fitters to the two-day test.

Duhamel rode both his Formula Xtreme CBR600RR and his CBR1000RR Superbike at the test, while Ben Bostrom and Jake Zemke rode their Superbikes, all on Dunlops.

Parts Unlimited Ducati Austin’s Eric Bostrom rode his Ducati 999R on Michelins. Valvoline EMGO Suzuki’s Steve Rapp rode his Superstock GSX-R750 and his Supersport GSX-R600 on Michelins, while teammate Vincent Haskovec rode his Superstock GSX-R750 and his Formula Xtreme GSX-R600.

Rapp did the most laps during the two-day test, with 351 circuits of the tight Pikes Peaks racetrack. Haskovec did about 300 laps.

Random stopwatch timing caught Zemke fastest at 55.4, followed by Duhamel at 55.5, Ben Bostrom at 55.6, Eric Bostrom at 55.8, Rapp on his Superstock bike at 56.0 and Haskovec on his Superstock bike at 56.3.