Lapping it Up
The best weather of the three-day test at Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca didn’t translate to the best time, at least not at the top of the chart.
Erion Honda’s Kurtis Roberts struggled with his deeply bruised right leg, but still set the fastest time of the day, circulating the 2.2-mile Monterey road course at 1:26.220 on a day that started out warm and sunny, before a drastic temperature drop and fog bank rolled in early in the afternoon. Roberts’ time was a scant .005 seconds slower than the best mark of the test, set by Kawasaki’s Eric Bostrom on Wednesday. Roberts, who improved his best time by well over a second, put the improvement to working towards an optimal set-up and a newer spec Honda RC-51. “It’s going to be like what I’m going to race,” he said. “It’s a lot like what Colin (Edwards) finished up with, just some newer specs since we’ve actually had it.”
Roberts said he liked the characteristics of the new bike. It turns differently, and better, and the motor’s better. “It’s just a little bit different from the other bike to where it feels like it’s a little bit more twitchy, which I seem to like,” he said.
Another day along since his motocross accident last Tuesday didn’t seem to help much. He could either shift his weight or his gearbox, not both at the same time. “I feel so off for the lap time, I’m pretty happy as far as that goes.”
Bostrom turned in his best lap of the day, a 1:26.488 on the oversized Kawasaki ZX-7R. The time was the best he’d gotten out of the 770cc-plus engine, though he found that the carburetion caused a handling problem that slowed his lap times. That, and not feeling like he was riding well, meant that he wouldn’t have bragging rights on the day, though he still had the fastest time of the test.
“I wasn’t riding as well as I could have today. I just felt a little messed up,” he said.
The problem with the big Kawasaki is that the rear is sliding around entering the corner. “For some reason, with the bigger motor we seem to have some harshness entering the corners,” he said. “If we get that sorted out, we should be in pretty good shape. There’s a few little things we have to sort out with it, but overall we’re pretty happy with it right out of the box.”
Bostrom pointed out that the motor was only built four days ago, on Monday, so there’s work to be done, both on the dyno and on the track. “We need to get back to the shop. We need to figure out the carburetion to get it to carry into the corners. It’s something in the motor itself, because with all the other components on the 750, the bike’s fine. We’re pretty confident we can go fast on the 750, so it’d be nice and fairly easily to get that on the other bike. Until you can carry speed through the corner, which our bike likes anyway, you’re not going to be able to do that.”
American Honda’s Miguel DuHamel turned in the third fastest superbike time, and his fastest lap of the weekend, on the Honda RC-51. DuHamel said that initially the bike was set up too high in the rear. Once that was fixed, the times came.
“Al (Ludington) changed it and, boom, right into the low 27’s,” DuHamel said, “and we kept that set-up and put tires on it and I think the good tires that people went fast on, the (medium Dunlop) 758, we used up on the other set-up. So we went to (slightly softer) 950 and did a 26.7. I wanted to make sure my tires were really warmed up because it was cold. I really happy think maybe could’ve gone a little faster.”
Dream Team Ducati’s Larry Pegram continued to struggle with health problems, which would not be the bane of the day. Instead his new Ducatis would let him down, both going out at one point, one near the end of the day as he was about to test the best tires Michelin had. The bike Pegram rode all weekend developed a terminal engine problem early in the afternoon. They switched everything to the other bike, then that one developed problems with the head gaskets.
“Both (Ducatis) were brand new when we got here, but something’s not quite there,” Pegram said, adding that the motors should be re-built before they hit the racetrack. “Right at the very end of the day, Michelin gave me some tires that I really liked and I kind of used the set up learning them and did 27.1, a 27.2 every lap with them and was going to put a brand new set on and see what we can do, but the bike wasn’t going to make her.”
Just .006 seconds behind Pegram came American Honda’s Ben Bostrom, still unable to shake the cloud he’s been under since arriving in Monterey.
“It’s totally strange,” he said. “When I took my first two laps around this place on Tuesday I said, ‘I shouldn’t even be riding here.’ But we needed to because we had all our brake stuff to get sorted for next year, and a couple of other things for next year. And we got our brakes picked for Daytona, so that’s good.”
Bostrom said that, because he wasn’t up to speed, he couldn’t tax the machinery to the point where the team could collect useful data.
“If this was race weekend I’d push really hard, but there’s no reason to wad the bike up or hurt yourself,” he said. “So I just kind of circulated out there. We don’t get enough time to ride on the bikes, so it’s not fun when you’re riding bad.”
