Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By John Joss

Thursday is not a high-tension race day and a dozen or so top riders faced the Press with an attitude of relaxation, except for Miguel Duhamel (see below). There were no startling revelations, but at mid-season none is expected. Few questions were asked in the general session with the Press.

Points leader Neil Hodgson was exuberant: “I love this track. This and Brands Hatch are my favorites. It’s not flat and featureless. It has hills and stuff. It has real character. And it has perfect weather for riding. Warm enough, but not too hot. I expect to do well.”

Troy Corser was cool, as usual. His mellowness bespeaks years of this sort of thing. He talked candidly about the Petronas and some of the difficulties he has had. It’s not the frame or suspension, which he called ‘excellent:’ “We can pretty much make any changes we need, and you can feel them immediately. Since we (Petronas, not Corser) haven’t had a bike at Laguna before, we are starting with our Misano set-up, but the bike responds well to any changes we make. The bike handles really well.” It’s not tires, either: “We started this season with tires not as good as the top teams, because they (Michelin) said they didn’t have enough made yet. Now we’re getting the same [top level] tires and you can tell the difference. They’re much better.”

So where’s the rub, beyond being a brand new bike no one expects to see on the box right away? “The biggest problem with the bike is throttle connection. Off a closed throttle, it doesn’t pick up cleanly. There’s this slight hesitation, and it’s very difficult to adapt to even when you know to expect it. It’s not just accelerating out of corners. It has the same hesitation any time you roll off, even for an instant, and then get back into it. It’s not good for the confidence knowing that the throttle connection isn’t quite right. It stops me from riding the bike to its limit.

“The problem is quite complicated and it can’t be fixed just with timing and [fuel injection] mapping changes. We need a new [cylinder] head and that won’t come quickly. The engines are all built in Switzerland and frankly we [riders] don’t have enough direct contact. After every race we send the motors back to Switzerland and they rebuild and dyno them, and send them back to us. The changes we need [will come later] and will involve cutting metal.

“We’re making good progress. Really getting there. You maybe can’t see it in the points but you can in the lap times. We started out 2-3 seconds off the pace in the early races. Now that’s half-a-second.” He grins: “Of course, that’s a critical half-second, vs. all those factory bikes.”

Aaron Yates was his usual easy-going self, very different from the go-for-broke charger on the track: “When the bike’s right, any track and any race is OK. We know enough about [our bike by this stage of the season] and the set-up for Laguna that we can do good here.

“We don’t expect tire trouble here, or anywhere else this season. At Brainerd, you will recall, I got vibration early on, around Lap 13, and I could see that Mat was starting to have a tire problem. My bike started vibrating, and the vibration got worse, lap by lap, but the tire still worked well. Turned out that it had rotated on the rim and gone out of balance. It wasn’t chunking. I had enough of a cushion at the end that I could ease off a little, anyway.

“I ride entirely different from Mat. He likes to square off the corners and whack the throttle on the exit when he gets the bike straight up. I tend to ease into the throttle sooner and smoother, and I guess that’s the difference [vs. tire trouble].

“You might think that my sliding the way I do might be pushing the tire, but I don’t think so. It’s my momentum coming into the corner that pushes the rear out when I turn in, and I manage that with throttle on the exit.” He grins—-you can’t keep this man down: “Looks kinda interesting, though, doesn’t it?” Yes, Aa-Ron. It does. Will he consider emulating his spectacular off-track excursion at Turn 10 on the 600 two years ago. Another big grin: “Nah. I don’t think I wanna do that again.”

Frankie Chili modestly refused to be drawn into a debate on age and experience (he admits to 38) trumping youth and enthusiasm. His spirit of attack is ageless, anyway. But he did comment on the fact that he is racing last year’s machine: “I am very ‘appy on the bike, very comfortable. Here at Laguna it doesn’t matter that we don’t have so much power [because it’s not a power circuit.]” He’s the youngest 38 (?) in the saddle today.

Eric Bostrom put on a fashion show with his new, special-for-Laguna leathers, complete with ‘bow tie.’ “I thought I should show them off to you,” he said, grinning hugely, as the cameras took it all in. Reminiscent of brother Ben’s fashion show at an earlier Laguna race. The Boss seemed unfazed by his 750-vs.-1000 and 798-vs.-1000 displacement disadvantage on his two Kawasakis, either in the AMA or WSB wild-card situations in which he will race this weekend. No one asked him about 2004, and the possibility of a competitive 1000-cc bike. Asked at Brainerd, he just said “That would be nice.”

Miguel DuHamel was one unhappy guy, not just because he wouldn’t get to mix it with the WSB bunch when Honda decided not to have its AMA racers in the wild-card mix (“I was not involved in that decision,” he explained in answer to questions). He was unhappy about not having enough time for practice and set-up: “We’re struggling, I gotta tell you, even though we know a lot about set-up [here at Laguna]. We got the short end of the stick. We didn’t get enough set-up time, and [this race weekend] needs a better format. It’s hard to do testing and qualifying at the same time.”

Miguel reported that his body was still not 100%, which is not reflected in his track performance since his broken collarbone at Sears in May-—this is the man who won the hotly contested 600 race at Brainerd on his 600RR, pursued by a horde of Yamaha R-6s. “This rod [holding my collarbone] sticks out and it’s not comfortable. But I’m pretty much OK.”

Valvoline Suzuki rider Steve Rapp tumbled heavily from his GSX-R1000 on the exit of high-speed Turn 10 on Thursday and limped back to the pits, clearly in pain as he wriggled out of his leathers. X-rays at the track revealed no broken bones, but he had—as his crew pointed out—aggravated an old [right shoulder] injury.

So why are Dunlop tires seemingly so much better at Laguna than Michelin? Listen to Troy Corser, the voice of experience: “Michelin comes here once a year. Dunlop is top of the heap [in AMA Superbike] and comes here much more often. On top of that, the Dunlops seem to give better front-end feel, and they spin up a little easier, so [on a tight track like Laguna] they’re probably a bit easier to ride, more rider friendly.”