Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By Glenn LeSanto

Benelli withdraws from Valencia Superbike race

The Benelli Sport team has been forced to withdraw the beautiful Tornado Superbike from racing in Valencia.

Due to repeated failures of a component, thought to be in the engine cylinderhead, the team has decided to withdraw, rather than risk the rider’s safety.

The problem is thought to be down to faulty heat treatment. Benelli engineers have stressed that the faulty part is not used in the road going version of the Tornado.

At this point in time, it is not known if the team will return for the next round in Phillip Island.



Bostrom on provisional pole

American Ben Bostrom will have the luxury of knowing what he has to do to stay on pole for tomorrow’s first races of the new World Superbike season.

The Ducati L&M rider sneaked in to push rival American Colin Edwards off the provisional pole as the session came to an end on Saturday morning. His time of 1:34.649 was just 0.211 up on Edwards’ best time in a close-fought session.

Ruben Xaus had topped the timesheet for much of the session, but slid off his Infostrada Ducati with four minutes to go as Edwards and Bostrom piled on the pressure. Xaus ended the session third fastest.

Reigning champion Troy Bayliss made the last place on the provisional front row as Haga was edged back into fifth on his Aprilia. Hitoyasu Izutsu was again the first man on a four-cylinder bike in the running; he’s a provisional sixth fastest going into Superpole. James Toseland put his HM Plant Ducati into seventh place, just ahead of his teammate Neil Toseland.

World Superbike
Final Qualifying
Saturday morning

1. Ben Bostrom, USA, Ducati, 1:34.649
2. Colin Edwards, USA, Castrol Honda, 1:34.860
3. Ruben Xaus, Spain, Ducati, 1:34.927
4. Troy Bayliss, Australia, Ducati, 1:34.936
5. Noriyuki Haga, Japan, Aprilia, 1:35.030
6. Hitoyasu Izutsu, Japan, Kawasaki, 1:35.385
7. James Toseland, GB, Ducati, 1:35.393
8. Neil Hodgson, GB, Ducati, 1:35.429
9. Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy, Ducati, 1:35.632
10. Lucio Pedercini, Italy, Ducati, 1:35.873



First Person/Opinion:
The State Of World Superbike

By Glenn LeSanto

Friday 8 March marked the start of a new World Superbike season with riders getting out on the track for the first free practice and qualifying sessions of the year.

The organizers are boasting how they have an extended contract with the FIM which takes Superbike racing well into the next decade, but who will be racing with them by then? The series is in very real danger of becoming a Ducati Cup and the 15th World Superbike year could be the last with any real inter-factory battling.

Suzuki almost left the series last year and only plenty of arm-twisting and alleged palm greasing kept them in. Gregorio Lavilla only managed 11th fastest time in Friday’s qualifying. Will the factory want to continue to support such results next year as the MotoGP sucks more and more resources out of their racing budget? The answer is probably not.

Hitoyasu Izutsu fared better on his factory Kawasaki; he was the first four-cylinder motorcycle in the ranking at sixth fastest. But his team manager Harald Eckl is set to defect to the factory GP1 effort next year, so what’s the future of Kawasaki in WSBK? None it would seem, if the rumors that a replacement is being sought but with a new job title; that of Kawasaki Supersport Team Manager. So we can be pretty certain that Kawasaki won’t be back.

Teams with four-cylinder bikes might be tempted to stay a little longer if the rules help them a little more. But with the fudged rule changes slated for 2004, about which I’ve yet to hear anything positive from any teams, it will be a case of too little too late. And I’ve yet to speak to a Superbike rider willing to ride on treaded tyres.

Benelli’s valiant effort looked good last year, with the little factory scoring championship points in their debut year. But this year a drastic downturn in the Italian scooter market, the bread and butter for all the Italian factories bar Ducati, has severely curtailed their advance. They are easy to ignore as they set times that wouldn’t even get them on the front row of Supersport, let alone Superbike, so much so that even official WSBK press releases have often failed to note them as a competing factory! But ignore them at your peril, not because they are about to pull an extra 20 horsepower out of the bag and set the track alight, but instead because without them the series would be a duller, and less pretty, event.

What of Aprilia? They played a trump card this year, let’s call it the Ace of Haga’s. This man can and probably will revitalise the factory’s interest in WSB single-handed. But for how long? He’s very expensive, thought to be costing the factory around US $2 million in wages alone. And with an expensive MotoGP effort underway, how long can Aprilia, also affected by the Italian-market malaise, afford such a luxury?

So who are we left with? Ducati of course! Although even their commitment may reduce to factory support for private teams in the near future as they concentrate on their own MotoGP effort.

The new boys not yet on the block, Fogarty Petronas, already have their troubles. The WSBK and FIM are thought to be taking a hard line over homologation, forcing the team to produce 150 expensive road bikes before they can go racing. These are of course the rules, but last year they were very loosely applied to the Benelli entry. But while Fogarty may be Mr. Superbike, he ain’t Italian. He should expect to see more of the rulebook than Mr. Merloni the Benelli team boss was ever shown during his negotiations to enter the almost entirely Italian managed series.

I almost forgot the Big Red Wing themselves, the mighty Honda. Surely they won’t desert a production based series that marketing logic would suggest is so valuable to bike sales? Oh yeah? Well, how many VTR 1000 SP2 (RC51) road bikes do you think they’ll sell on the back of Colin Edwards’ performance? Not many, actually. I’ve already heard that they intend to farm out their future SBK effort to a factory-supported team, just as they already have done with their World Supersport entry.

Are we looking forward to 15 more years of World Superbikes or a just a Ducati Cup? As the series begins its 15th year the future isn’t entirely clear.

From a press release:

They’re Racing Trucks At Daytona

Actually it’s CDLSCHOOL.com Racing, a new entrant in the Formula USA and AMA racing series. The CDL School is based in the eastern U.S. with offices in Miami, Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Albany, Newburg, Bronx NYC and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The CDL School is proud to sponsor the team of Mike Hanley, Debi Venega and Leo Venega, in association with Debi Venega’s shop, Right On Track. The team is contesting selected Formula USA events with one of The CDL School’s 18-wheeled mobile classrooms serving as a race transporter.

“We’re quite excited to be involved with such a dnyanic and beautiful sport,” said Kathy Tejeda, Director of Admissions for The CDL School. “It is a great opprtunity to show the benefits of career training in the Transportation Industry. We will have information packets available at the truck, and if people see our truck and are interested on a career where they can make $50,000 a year, they shouldn’t be shy.

“It’s great because right there at the track people can sign up for our school and even get tuition assistance if they qualify.”

More information is available from The CDL School at (800) 423-5837.

From a press release:

MICHELIN GEARS UP FOR MotoGP HORSEPOWER RACE

Michelin are gearing up for their most challenging Grand Prix season in years.

The French tire giant, which has dominated both the 500cc and Superbike World Championships since the early 1990s, faces a new challenge with the new-look MotoGP World Championship. For the first time in GP history 990cc four-strokes will contest bike racing’s premier series, and these machines are by far the most powerful motorcycles ever seen on a racetrack.

Since last year Michelin has been working closely with Honda and Yamaha, the two factories at the vanguard of the four-stroke MotoGP revolution, developing tyres for this new breed of racing machine. With horsepower outputs already well up on the 500cc two-strokes, Michelin engineers have had to create a new generation of rear tire capable of handling in excess of 200 horsepower.

“This is an exciting and very busy time for us,” says Michelin’s motorcycle competitions chief Nicolas Goubert. “And we’re trying to look as far ahead as possible because we know the factories can get much more power from their engines. As soon as the racing starts in April, and one rider sees another in front, they’ll want more horsepower. I think it will be easy for the factories to get 240 or 250 horsepower; power is not a problem. And it is our job to make tires which allow riders to get the best out of these incredible machines. We are mainly using our experience from 500 GPs to create these tires, though our knowledge from World Superbike has also helped because the bikes are four-strokes and heavier than 500s, like the MotoGP bikes.”

Since serious four-stroke testing began last summer, Michelin has been working to produce a new variant of their hugely successful 16.5-inch rear slick, specifically suited to the more powerful and heavier four-strokes. So far they have produced three different profiles and multiple different compounds/constructions, with a fourth profile due at the IRTA team tests at Catalunya, Spain, on March 9/10, the first occasion all the major teams will share the same racetrack. A 16-inch slick has also been evaluated during Michelin’s MotoGP development program.

“Our four-stroke tire takes the 16.5-inch concept further down the same road of development,” explains Goubert. “We started development using the same 16.5 rim size but the four-stroke tire has a larger center diameter, giving a different profile to increase the contact patch and thus reduce running temperature. The new profile also offers improved edge grip, because the four-strokes have more torque available when the riders start to open the throttle at full lean, and more traction, because you need a lot of acceleration grip if you’ve got 240 or 250 horsepower. In some ways the tire is very different from our 500 tires, though the compound and construction are quite similar.

“That was our starting point and it was a big improvement, working pretty well straight away. Also, we found out quite quickly that the four-strokes aren’t as demanding on tires as we thought they’d be. Since then we’ve tried many other things, even a 16-inch rim with a wider tire to take another step but that didn’t give us what we were looking for. Obviously every time we try something new there’s an objective but sometimes the results aren’t what we expected; that’s what testing and development are all about. So we’ve stayed fairly true to our initial four-stroke design because it works so well, but of course we are still working. We will have another rear profile for our riders to test in March and, to be honest, we think the rear may change more in the future than it has so far.

“We’ve also done race-distance endurance testing with both Yamaha and Honda and it seems that there’s not a huge difference between the demands of the 500s and the four-strokes over race distance. But, as I said, this is early days for the four-strokes, what happens from now on may be a very different story, so we’ve got to keep working.”

Like any aspect of racing, whether it be engine, chassis or tire design, development moves ahead in a spiral. When engineers improve one aspect of a machine, another facet will inevitably need to be improved to restore overall balance. This is especially true in tire design: improve the rear tire and the rider will be able to get on the throttle earlier in the corner and at a greater angle of lean. This transfers more weight to the rear of the bike, taking weight and therefore grip and steering capability, away from the front, which must then be restored by adjusting chassis and suspension balance.

“Whether it’s the front or the rear, every time you gain something at one end, you have to make a similar step forward at the other end,” adds Goubert. “So when we build a grippier rear tire that sustains more cornering force, it’s going to make the front push when the rider gets on the throttle. In this case we do look to the chassis and suspension guys to help by adapting their settings. In fact we already improved our front slick by quite a lot at the end of last season. We brought a different construction front to the Rio GP and the few guys who had the chance to properly test the tire jumped on it. We then asked all our riders to try the tire during the winter and 90 percent liked it. So far we’ve not been asked by any of our four-stroke riders to concentrate on improving the front because that tire was a good step forward and it seems to work well with the new bikes. But we have been doing some extra front-tire testing with the Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3 team and what we’re learning with them might help us to improve our front tire still further.”

Racetrack development also throws up unexpected results from time to time, and Michelin’s engineers were surprised and pleased to discover that the larger-profile 16.5 also works well with the 500s. “Most of the 500 riders who’ve tried the tire really like it, though some say it pushes the front too much,” Goubert continues. “Every time we go to a new track we’ll see how the tire works with the 500s, because it’s sure to work better at some circuits and not so well at others.”

Unlike last year Michelin won’t be supplying tires to every team on the MotoGP grid during 2002. Two rival tire manufacturers have joined the series and Michelin are delighted to have some competition again, though most riders and teams are still choosing Michelin tires, which have won every 500 title since 1992 and every World Superbike title since 1994. The company will continue its policy of making the same tires available to all of its riders whenever possible, though the diversity of machinery entered in the 2002 series from Honda’s RCV V5 four-stroke to Yamaha’s YZR-M1 inline four-cylinder four-stroke and a number of “old-school” 500 V4 two-strokes requires that Michelin may have to undertake specific development work with different teams.

“If one of the new bikes turns out to have very different demands from the others, then we’ll create tires for that bike, and then make those tires available to anyone else who wants them,” explains Goubert. “As always, the policy is to give the same priority to all our partners.”


MICHELIN’S 2002 MotoGP PARTNERS

MotoGP–500cc(2-stroke)/990cc(4-stroke)

Malboro Yamaha Team (4-stroke)
Max Biaggi
Carlos Checa

West Honda Pons (2-stroke)
Loris Capirossi
Alex Barros

Repsol-YPF Yamaha d’Antin (2-stroke)
Pere Riba
Norick Abe

Honda Pramac Racing (2-stroke)
Tetsuya Harada

HRC
Valentino Rossi
Tohru Ukawa

Gauloises Yamaha Tech 3
Olivier Jacque
Shinya Nakano

Fortuna Honda Gresini
Daijiro Katoh


RECENT MICHELIN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORIES

500cc GRAND PRIX
1992, Wayne Rainey (Marlboro Team Roberts Yamaha-Michelin)
1993, Kevin Schwantz (Lucky Strike Suzuki-Michelin)
1994, Mick Doohan (Repsol Honda-Michelin)
1995, Mick Doohan (Repsol Honda-Michelin)
1996, Mick Doohan (Repsol Honda-Michelin)
1997, Mick Doohan (Repsol Honda-Michelin)
1998, Mick Doohan (Repsol Honda-Michelin)
1999, Alex Crivill? (Repsol YPF Honda-Michelin)
2000, Kenny Roberts (Telefonica Movistar Suzuki-Michelin)
2001, Valentino Rossi (Nastro Azzurro Honda-Michelin)

WORLD SUPERBIKE
1994, Carl Fogarty (Ducati-Michelin)
1996, Troy Corser (Ducati-Michelin)
1997, John Kocinski (Castrol Honda-Michelin)
1998, Carl Fogarty (Ducati Performance-Michelin)
1999, Carl Fogarty (Ducati Performance-Michelin)
2000, Colin Edwards (Castrol Honda-Michelin)
2001, Troy Bayliss (Ducati Infostrada-Michelin)

Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Mat Mladin has been admitted to Halifax Medical Center for surgery on an open fracture of his left elbow.

Rich Oliver may be admitted for treatment of a fractured pelvis and possible surgery on a fractured left ring finger.

Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Scott Russell has just announced his official retirement from racing.

Russell made his announcement moments ago in a press conference held in the media center at Daytona International Speedway.

Russell said that the extent of the injuries he suffered in a starting grid accident at Daytona a year ago have made it impossible for him to ride a bike at the level at which it takes to win.

From a Care Center Update released by Daytona International Speedway:

Aaron Gobert will be admitted to Halifax Medical Center with a chest injury, right leg fracture and for a closed head injury.

Anthony Gobert is being treated at Halifax Medical Center for an open neck wound that could possibly be an open clavicle injury.

Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Aaron Yates caught the lead pack and worked his way up to take the lead in the run to the white flag, charged through the infield and onto the west banking, held off his pursuers through and out of the chicane, and won the Daytona Supersport race on his Yoshimura Suzuki.

Yates was aided by Kurtis Roberts, who spun up his Erion Honda’s rear tire, slid up the banking out of the chicane, and delayed the rest of the leaders.

The race was marred by a fiery crash exiting the chicane on lap 7 of 18, involving Anthony Gobert, Aaron Gobert and Tommy Hayden. One of the Gobert brothers was run over by Hayden in the crash, which saw Anthony Gobert’s Yamaha go end over end and burst into flames.

After reviewing a video tape replay of the Supersport race finish, AMA timing and scoring ruled that Honda’s Miguel Duhamel finished in third place 0.001 second ahead of Jamie Hacking. The change was announced in the Daytona Media Center at approximately 6:10 p.m. Eastern Time.
Revised unofficial results follow:

1. Aaron Yates, Suzuki
2. Nicky Hayden, Honda, -0.402 second
3. Miguel Duhamel, Honda, -0.502
4. Jamie Hacking, Suzuki, -0.503

5. Kurtis Roberts, Honda, -0.567
6. Damon Buckmaster, Yamaha, -6.792
7. Mike Hale, Honda, -17.263
8. Jason Pridmore, Suzuki, -17.382
9. Josh Hayes, Suzuki, -17.386
10. Ben Spies, Suzuki, -17.417
11. Tom Kipp, Suzuki, -25.794
12. Miering, Kawasaki, -52.951
13. Roger Lee Hayden, Honda, -54.629
14. Steve Rapp, Suzuki, -54.706
15. Jimmy Moore, Suzuki, -54.723
16. Alex Gobert, Honda, -61.001
17. Jake Zemke, Honda, -70.007
18. Scott Hermersmann, Suzuki, -77.279
19. Shaun Harris, Suzuki, -85.811
20. John Ashmead, Suzuki, -1:47.576
21. Ray Bowman, Honda
22. Tyler Wadsworth, Yamaha
23. Owen Richey, Yamaha
24. Ty Howard, Suzuki, 17 laps
25. Russ Intravartolo, Kawasaki, 17 laps
26. Chris Greer, Yamaha, -17 laps
27. Kevin Pate, Suzuki, -17 laps
28. David McPherson, Yamaha, -17 laps
29. Richard Ford, Suzuki, -17 laps
30. Eric Bostrom, Kawasaki, DNF, 14 laps, mechanical
31. Andrew Nelson, Kawasaki, DNF, 13 laps
32. Aaron Gobert, Yamaha, DNF, 6 laps, crash
33. Tommy Hayden, Kawasaki, DNF, 6 laps, crash
34. Anthony Gobert, Yamaha, DNF, 6 laps, crash
35. Santiago Villa, Yamaha, DNF, 5 laps
36. Hector Romero, Yamaha, DNF, 5 laps
37. Jimmy Filice, Kawasaki, DNF, 2 laps

DNS: Owen Weichel, Larry Pegram, Lee Acree, Craig Connell, Jordan Szoke, Jeff Tigert, Dirk Sanchez, Brent Bennett, Scotty Van Scoik.

Race Time: 34 minutes, 26.890 seconds
Victory Margin: 0.402-second
Winner’s Average Speed: 111.611 mph
Winner’s Average Lap Time: 1:54.827
Second-place Average Speed: 111.589 mph
Second-place Average Lap Time: 1:54.850

Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Superbike, 80 entries.

Superstock, 102 entries

250cc Grand Prix, 52 entries

Supersport, 54 entries

Pro Thunder, 33 entries

Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Unofficial Practice Lap Times:
1. Mike Ciccotto, Buell XB9R, 1:56.900
2. Kirk McCarthy, Ducati 748RS, 1:57.972
3. Tom Montano, Ducati 748R, 1:57.985
4. Michael Barnes, Buell X-1, 1:59.381
5. Carlos Macias, Ducati 748, 2:01.473
6. Ricky Lundgren, Ducati 748, 2:01.919
7. Leo Venega, Ducati 748, 2:02.851
8. Thomas Fournier, Ducati 748, 2:03.594
9. Josh Bryan, Buell X-1, 2:04.808
10. Ian Roper, Ducati 748, 2:05.266

From a press release:

PIRELLI SUPERCORSA PUTS TWO RIDERS ON AMA (750) SUPERSTOCK FRONT ROW, FOUR IN TOP 10 IN DAYTONA QUALIFYING

(Daytona, FL) Hooters Suzuki’s Michael Barnes and Larry Pegram put the Pirelli Supercorsa DOT race radial in two of the four spots on the front row of Daytona’s AMA SuperStock (formerly 750cc Supersport) grid. Supercorsa riders hold four of the Top 10 grid positions for the SuperStock final that will be run on Friday afternoon: Arclight Racing’s Craig Connell holds the sixth spot, and his teammate Lee Acree is inside row three in ninth position.