MotoGP may be so expensive for its participants that it prices itself out of existence. The whole motorcycle industry at the moment seems to hope everything will be fine if we all pretend. Okay, let’s pretend.
But there are other, less expensive ways to race. Cycle World Managing Editor Matthew Miles decided to see just what was involved in going racing under the new AMA Pro Racing American SuperBike rules. Out of his address book and cell-phone memory he would bring forth a motorcycle and a team.
One theory of the origin of everything is that oscillations in nothingness erupted into somethingness, and the Cycle World team did just that. At Laguna Seca, I walked over to the big, green 50-foot tractor-trailer of Attack Performance, where Richard Stanboli and his men attended to two Suzuki SuperBikes with Yoshimura engines to be ridden by veteran Eric Bostrom.
Everything was a question. Eric took a year off from racing, but now he was back. How far back? The CW SuperBike had shown promise at the Mid-Ohio national but had slowed with an engine problem. There were handling issues. Now, the team was busily backing away from stiff Mid-Ohio settings in order to soak up Laguna’s infamous ripples. Big sports cars wrinkle the pavement with braking and acceleration, repaving tries to iron the wrinkles flat, but back they come.
Success doesn’t come easily. Eric Bostrom felt the pressure at Laguna Seca.
I joined an evening planning session between Stanboli and Bostrom in the transporter’s office. On the computer screen were the irregular lines indicating gear selected, throttle angle, rpm. The two men spoke quietly, with long pauses as each one considered. Important questions remained: wheelbase, ride heights, spring rates, damping, a low brake lever. They talked until they were tired, moving the computer traces backward and forward among Laguna’s 11 corners. Another screen showed the 3D map of secondary throttle position—it looked like one of those hand-thrown fish nets but had yielded a stronger midrange. At times, the words and ideas moved in circles. Finally, tiredness won. Everything is clearer in morning light.
In the next practice, things were better but still vague. That’s racing; it takes time for feelings to catch up to decisions and new settings. Riders are not the steely eyed commandos of motorsport the public imagines but are making a very complicated gamble on a setup they hope will bring forth their talent in the form of confidence. If the front skips or feels it may just go away, there’s no confidence. If changes make it feel better-planted, it will still take time for confidence to reform—almost like the healing of a bone. Nothing is definite. Gradually, the variables lined up, looking like sense.
In the Sunday warmup, Eric was fourth-fastest. Encouraging.
In the race, lap one saw him pushed out—almost into the gravel—rejoining in 16th place. And then he began to pass other riders. That requires serious confidence. He passed more. At the end, he was seventh. Racing teaches you to live and act strictly in reality, but the imagination flies to La-La Land, singing the sweet song of what might have been had that lap-one push-out not occurred. Those were fourth-place lap times.
People at Laguna were now taking this team and rider seriously. Talking and smiling. Next time, says the imagination, from which motivation flows generously. People will work hard to squeeze a new reality out of imagination. Next time.
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