The Rest (and Best) of Cycle Week
THE REST (AND BEST) OF CYCLE WEEK
RACE WATCH
RON LAWSON
STEVE ANDERSON
CYCLE WEEK IS AN APPROPRIate name for Daytona's annual motorcycle festivities: Each year, for more than nine consecutive days early in March, that famous tourist town on the eastern coast of Florida becomes the capitol of American motorcycle sport. It's a time filled with non-stop amateur and professional competition that includes roadraces, enduros, short-tracks, half-miles, motocrosses and poker runs, plus various and sundry bike shows, swap meets, press conferences and just about any other sort of activity that somehow involves a motorcycle.
Cycle Week activities culminate each year with the running of the Daytona 200. But not all the roadrace heroes and all the kneedragging excitement are found in that 200-mile classic; the support races at the Speedway showcase the spectacular talents of many other, often lesser-known riders. And each
year, that support program just seems to get better and better, as exemplified by these four exceptional roadraces that complemented this year’s Daytona 200.
250 GP
Alan Carter and three-time 250 and 350cc world champion Kork Ballington both know something about GP racing; and both claim that the 250 class in America is so competitive that it reminds them of the 250cc world championship series. Thus, this year’s Daytona 250 race looked like a preview of the Laguna Seca Grand Prix to be held in April.
Like last season, Kenny Roberts’ protégé, John Kocinski, was the star of the 250 class, the rider to beat at Daytona. And his bike, the 1988 Yamaha TZ250, by a small but convincing margin was the machine to beat.
There were 12 of the new TZ250s at Daytona. All would eventually finish the 250 race, but it didn’t look that way early in the week. The new Yamaha is still a parallel-Twin, but with reversed cylinders: Its exhausts come out the back, where you would normally expect carbs, while the two carbs sit in front of the cylinders. An airbox built into the fairing attempts to shield the filterless carbs from debris flung from the front tire, but Daytona sand found its way into many engines early in the week, shortening piston life to a scant few miles, and sending tuners searching for foam and duct tape to better seal the airbox.
Yamaha claims the new TZ makes 74 horsepower, which is believable considering Kocinski’s 155-mph trap speed. But that amount of power from 15 cubic inches means the engine is dancing so close to its edge that the slightest jetting mistake will melt pistons, as some tuners soon discovered. Many engines were rebuilt on the way to finding the proper tune.
Kocinski was the standout rider on the TZ during practice, turning low 2:01 laps, but close behind him was an exceptional group of Yamahamounted riders: former GP rider
Alan Carter; new Noridca/Roberts team member Thomas Stevens; Pro Twins champion Doug Brauneck; former 250 champion Don Greene; 250 ace Richard Oliver; and former Vance & Hines rider Richard Moore. The main defenders of Honda’s honor were Team McLean riders Kork Ballington and Bubba Shobert.
Shobert, who had first ridden a 250 just weeks before Daytona, was mak-
ing the transition from 400-pound Superbike to 240-pound two-stroke amazingly well, and looked faster in the infield with each practice session. Filling out the field of possible contenders were two 212-pound, Rotaxpowered Aprilias, $22,000 replicas of the Italian company’s GP-winning works bike carved from chunks of magnesium and titanium; and Daniel Coe’s Spondon/Rotax. Coe’s machine, tuned by Cycle magazine editor Phil Schilling, was arguably the fastest 250 at Daytona, matching trap speeds with Kocinski’s Yamaha without the benefit of Kocinski’s drive out of the Chicane.
Because of week-long rains, the 250 race was moved from its traditional Saturday-morning start until after the 200 on Sunday. Despite being fast qualifier, Kocinski started in the middle of the first wave because his richly jetted bike had loaded up on the last lap of his heat race, forcing him to coast over the line.
Alan Carter led at the start, but Kocinski’s drive was already on. He passed nine riders on the first lap, and was in the lead by the start of the third. Low 2:01 lap times allowed him gradually to pull away from Carter, who had an edge over the tight bunch of riders fighting for third.
From there on, it was smooth sailing all the way for Kocinski, and for Carter, as well, but the battle for third began to look like a mile dirttrack race, so often did positions swap. Ballington, Shobert, Coe and Stevens could easily have been the Blue Angels executing precision drills, and each took turns leading their four-bike pack. But most laps, Coe’s speed on the banking carried him across the finish line in third, more than making up any ground he might have lost to world championcaliber riders in the infield. The last lap came down to a speed and drafting duel for the third-place spot, one that Coe won by a few feet.
250 GP
1) John Kocinski (Yamaha)
2) Alan Carter (Yamaha)
3) Daniel Coe (Spondon/Rotax)
4) Kork Ballington (Honda)
5) Bubba Shobert (Honda)
600 and 750 Supersport
The 600 Supersport class has proven immensely popular for both riders and spectators, providing close racing with low machine costs. A Supersport bike must be essentially stock, with only minor engine and suspension modifications allowed, along with a racing exhaust system. This year, the AMA has built on the success of 600 Supersport by adding the 750 class, which made its debut at Daytona.
Doug Polen, the king of production-bike racing, was expected to run away with both races. But it was not to be—not in the 600 race, at least. Instead, that event was a four-rider duel that pitted Honda-mounted John Ashmead and Paul Bray against Polen and Gary Goodfellow, both on Yoshimura-prepared Suzuki Katana 600s. Again, the race was more like a tightly fought dirt-track event than a typical roadrace: No one was able to pull enough of a lead in the infield to prevent the pack from drafting and catching up on the banking. The positions of the four front-runners shuffled with every lap; and while Polen and Goodfellow had some advantage in the infield, the Hondas, probably more through superior aerodynamics than any horsepower edge, had the advantage on the banking.
The contest was settled on the final lap when Ashmead led through the last corner of the banking, followed by Polen, Goodfellow and Bray. A laughing Polen later claimed, “I had the race won; I was all set up to slingshot Ashmead at the finish line when Goodfellow cut down in front of me, and I had to roll off the throttle to keep from hitting him, and lost my drive.” Goodfellow’s move relegated Polen to third, but fell about three feet short of beating Ashmead, who gave Honda its only victory of Cycle Week.
Polen had his revenge in the 750 Supersport race, taking his 1988 GSX-R750 to an early and commanding lead. But once again, a fiverider battle for second was waged all race, and was settled only on the last lap when David Sadowski took the place spot. The close racing in both Supersport races left most observers convinced that these were the best races of the week, and that the AMA had a winner in the Supersport formula.
600 Supersport
1) John Ash mead (Honda Hurricane)
2) Gary Goodfellow (Suzuki Katana)
3) Doug Polen (Suzuki Katana)
4) Paul Bray (Honda Hurricane)
5) Douglas Tosten (Honda Hurricane)
750 Supersport
1) Doug Polen (Suzuki GSX-R)
2) David Sadowski (Suzuki GSX-R)
3) Steven Dick (Suzuki GSX-R)
4) Jamie James (Suzuki GSX-R)
5) Mike Harth (Suzuki GSX-R)
Pro-Twins
This Daytona should have belonged to the new Ducati 851 EightValve in the Pro-Twins GP class, but that’s not how it turned out. Cagiva/ Ducati elected not to send a factory team to Daytona, and production Ducati 85Is didn’t trickle into private hands—hands that had neither the time nor the experience needed to win—until the middle of Cycle Week. Not helping was a fuel-injection system that worked well only if the 851 was left absolutely stock: Remove the exhaust baffles from a Ducati Eight-Valve, and you’d better have a Weber technician to reprogram the injection’s fuel-delivery curve.
Fastest of the Ducatis was the Eight-Valve ridden by Stefano Caracchi, the Italian rider whose father runs NCR, a tuning company that specializes in hot-rodding Ducatis. Caracchi managed 2:01 lap times and qualified reasonably well for the Superbike event, but elected to save his Ducati for the Pro-Twins race rather than run it in the 200.
The rest of the competition was particularly strong. British GP rider Roger Marshall was piloting the Quantel Cosworth—which, according to owner Bob Graves, finally was fully sorted and making 120 horsepower. Australian Paul Lewis (a former Suzuki GP rider) was mounted on Martin Adams’ 860cc Honda, which used an enlarged version of the RS750 dirt-track V-Twin fitted with a five-speed gearbox courtesy of HRC. Dr. John Wittner restrained himself and debuted the new sohc, four-valve-per-cylinder Moto-Guzzi engine just as it had come from Italy; still, both he and rider Doug
Brauneck were impressed by its speed and wide powerband.
Not in the hunt, surprisingly, were any Harley-Davidsons. The Mert Lawwill/David Garoutte Harley showed outstanding speed during practice, but was too new to have the
reliability required to be a threat at Datyona. And Harley-Davidsonsponsored Gene Church crashed his Buell Harley early in the week, breaking his hand and missing the race.
In the end, the Pro-Twins race was dominated by Paul Lewis on the V-
Twin Honda. He ran 1:59 laps early in the race to build a substantial lead, but his engine was making ominous noises from the first lap. “I tried short-shifting it on the banking to save the engine” said Lewis, “and making up for it by running the infield harder.” But on the seventh of 10 laps he coasted to a stop with a failed big-end bearing.
That left the race to Caracchi and Marshall, who had been contesting second spot. On the last lap, it was Marshall, with the better drive out of the Chicane, who took the decision. Once again, a race at Daytona 1988 had been settled by less than a bikelength. Brauneck was third on the
Moto Guzzi, suprising no one more than Dr. John; Wittner had absolutely no spares for the four-valve Guzzi, and had first run the engine on Wednesday before the race.
The eight-valve Ducatis will almost surely be stronger competition as the season progresses; but right now, with both Marshall and Caracchi headed back to Europe, the Dr. John Moto Guzzi team is effec-
tively leading the Pro-Twin points, and Doug Brauneck is perfectly placed to retain the Pro-Twins title for Moto Guzzi.
Pro-Twins GP
1) Roger Marshall (Cosworth)
2) Stefano Caracchi (Ducati)
3) Doug Brauneck (Moto Guzzi)
4) Chris Oldfield (Bimota)
5) John Long (Ducati)
