A common press release error is to write about the other guys. In the case of this release from Munroe Motors, it sounds like the team to sponsor is their competitor, AMS! And now on to the press release:

Daytona International Speedway, Florida
March 6th to March 10th 2002.

Bike week at Daytona opened unusually cool and cloudy as a 40 degree cold front moved through the area from the northeast. As last year’s champion Tom Montano and the Munroe Motors pit crew got their 2001 Ducati 748R and related equipment set up in garage #21, the strategies of the various rival teams of Pro-Thunder became apparent. Although the Munroe race team coffers are rather smaller this year than last, both the Buell and Jeff Nash’s AMS teams are splashing out big time. The Don Tilley and Hals Performance Advantage Buell teams are fielding the usual hard-charging suspects of Shawn Higbee and Mike Ciccotto on the new XB9-R Firebowl and Dave Estok, Michael Barnes and Tripp Nobles on last year’s racebikes. The Nasher too had been busy during the winter, and had procured Australian ex-Superbike champ and occasional World Superbike rider Kirk McCarthy to ride a new 2002 Ducati 748RS. Jeff is a Ducati race tuner by trade, operating out of his Advanced Motor Sports facilities near Fort Worth Texas, and when questioned by our mole as to how well his bike was running, Jeff said that he’d “found something new” in the porting of his cylinder heads. At first we were scoffing from our high ground as seasoned skeptics, but when our man Montano couldn’t pull closer in McCarthy’s draft while running hard and fast on the banking, we reversed our opinion and admitted that Jeff had built a good ‘un.

Practice sessions started Wednesday morning, and very quickly Tom posted lap times in the 1 minute 58 second bracket. Considering that last year, the fastest times all week in Pro-Thunder were 1 min 58’s, this year promised to be much more impressive. As Thursday afternoon’s 30 minute qualifying session drew closer, the Munroe team was testing various parameters of suspension and chassis settings to try and get the bike to ride smoother and turn better, so that Tom could get on the gas earlier exiting corners. The old axiom of racing is to concentrate on the corners that exit onto the fast sections of the track, as the rider will carry the extra exit speed all the way down the straight. Daytona being the ultra-high speed track that it is, this means that turn 6 onto the west banking, and the chicane driving onto the east banking are critical corners to get the bike to turn through and drive out of. The team had fitted some new front fork triple clamps that allowed for adjustment of steering trail by changing the fork offset, and we found a setting where the bike rode much better than with the stock Ducati triple clamps.

Thursday was clear, but cool, and the wind was about 10 knots from the east. Tom found that when riding into the wind on the west banking, the bike wouldn’t rev past 10,000 rpm in sixth gear, but it would pull 12,500 with the following wind on the start-finish front straight. We tried changing the fuel curve a little leaner as the day warmed up, but no gains were noted. During the timed qualifying session, Tom was running strong, but was stuck on a plateau of mid 1:57’s, just behind three of the Buell riders, and McCarthy, who posted a pole-setting time of 1:55.7, a lap record for Pro-Thunder at Daytona. So at the end we were fifth fastest, and placed in the second row on the starting grid for Sunday’s race. By contrast, the top 600 class times were around mid 1:53, the 750 class around a mid 1:52, and Nicky Hayden’s Superbike at 1:47.

A late Thursday practice session after qualifying was a real dud as our lap times hovered in the low 1:58’s. Tom reported that the clutch was going soft, the rear tire was spinning at the exit of turn 6 onto the west banking, and the bike was bobbing through the kink – which is a fast left between the International and the West horseshoe hairpin turns. After the session ended and before the pits closed at 7pm, we quickly fitted a brand new 48 tooth Evolution slipper clutch from STM of Italy, who sponsors the team with their products. The Ducati factory teams have been using the STM clutches since the Carl Foggy days – and when you take a tour of the factory museum, you’ll see them on the race bikes from the last 5 or 6 seasons.

Our two practice sessions on Friday morning showed no particular gains anywhere, but all the top riders were posting times in the same second. Daytona is incredibly hard on tires because it’s so fast. We found that our hard compound Dunlop rears were lasting for about 17 laps before going off – which means they start to spin easily at corner exits, and the rider tends to go sideways not forwards. We were burning through two rears and one front per day. In the afternoon, we decided to dyno the bike on the free mobile Dynojet dyno that appears at the national races. Our rear tire was shagged out from the morning practice, which is perfect for a dyno run which will spoil a good tire. We found that our Ducati RS engine has a large flat spot at 10,000 rpm – which explains Tom’s difficulty in driving into the wind on the west banking. This is a crucial problem because shifting up at about 12,000 drops the engine rpm into this power depression. We also speculated for our own amusement that Nash’s “discovery” mentioned earlier eliminated or reduced this flat spot that Ducati 748 RS engines have.

There is no track activity on Saturday because the AMA runs the Supercross races on the grass area between the pits and the start-finish straight. We spent a few hours performing maintenance on the bike and, after chatting with our buddy and tuner-to-the-stars James Siddall, we changed the front fork springs to a softer rate so the bike would ride lower through the corners at the front, and hold the exit line better. We took measurements and reviewed notes from successful races last year to ensure the front fork preload, compression and rebound settings were the best possible choice to be tested in Sunday morning’s brief pre-race warm-up session. A substantial change like this, made at the last moment, is always a gamble that you’ll improve the bike in the problem area more than you may lose performance elsewhere …as all chassis and suspension settings are a compromise, with the net result being measured by your lap times.

Sunday dawned bright and hot for the early morning short 17 minute warm-up practice. We had fitted new tires for the session, with the actual race tire on the front to scrub it in, and a practice tire on the rear. Tom took about 5 laps to get comfortable and up to speed, and then he shot into the pits for a quick adjustment, as the front end had felt low on the banking. We dropped the rear ride height a couple of millimeters and he went out again for the last few minutes. Only MccCarthy posted a quicker time during the session, and Tom said the bike felt like it was getting through the turn 6 and chicane better than ever – seems like the softer fork springs was a good choice.

The riders assembled on pit row for the race start at 11:30 am, after being on the tire warmers for about 40 minutes. We made one last adjustment to the forks, adding a little preload and compression to prevent the fork from bottoming out under hard braking. Tom had only bottomed the fork once all week, but in the heat of the battle, we know that he will brake even more aggressively. We had also fitted a new rear tire for the race. The riders took a warm-up lap, and lined up for the start. At the green light, Tom got a great start and went into turn one in about 3rd spot. From the pit wall, we could only see the front straight, but we could hear the commentary on the P.A. Two minutes later the riders come round into view – McCarthy was leading with Tom and a pack of three Buells in close formation right behind. Estok and Higbee were already out of the running – Estok fried a brand new clutch before even completing one lap, and Higbee had a misfire and was losing power. In the next few laps, McCarthy slowly eased away in front, turning lap times in the 1:55’s and 1:56’s. Tom also turned a 1:55 time on lap 2 and gained some space on the Buell hordes, but found that his rear tire was beginning to lose grip. As lap four came around, Tom was three seconds behind McCarthy, but Ciccotto was only two seconds behind Tom and starting to gain ground. He caught up on lap 6, and they had a good duel, swapping places a couple of times. It appeared that the Munroe Motors Ducati 748 had the legs on the Buell, and each time they came around, Tom was leading as they crossed the start-finish line, and we were sure that he would prevail at the checkered flag.

Then, at the start of the ninth lap, Tom tucked the front end at the apex in turn one and lowsided the bike. He jumped up and ran over to it, the left handlebar was bent down, the footpeg broken, but otherwise it was just scraped and dinged. He jumped on, got it started, and reentered the track in 8th place. The bike was hard to control in its bent condition, but he managed to pass a couple of guys to get 6th place at the finish. Up front McCarthy took a clear win, with Ciccotto now an un-contested second place and Michael Barnes following up in third. In a post-race analysis, we decided that the front had tucked probably because the chassis was riding a little too low at the front with the softer springs, and that we should have tried a higher ride height – given some more practice time. However there was a small consolation in the disqualification of the 4th place finisher for using an oversize engine. The class limits for a 4-valve Ducati is 750 c.c., and this illegal engine was measured around 860cc. The rider was protested by the 5th through 8th place finishers – who had all heard through the pit grapevine that his engine was oversize, and of course they had the most to gain. Our 6th place finish was thus transformed into a 5th place points result, and so the team heads to the second round of the series at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, at the end of May, holding 5th place in the 2002 AMA Pro-Thunder championship.

Team sponsors include:
Vehicle Systems,
Dunlop tires,
STM clutches and performance products for Ducatis,
Azione Moto, U.S. importer of STM, FG shocks and other performance products
Performance Friction Brake Pads,
Nutec Race Fuels,
Arai Helmets,
Alpinestars race apparel,
PVM Wheels,
and MBP Valve Retaining System for Ducatis
2000AD, Lamar Photography LLC