Cycle World Assault On The 1994 Daytona 200—From The Archives

This article was originally published in the June 1994 issue of Cycle World.

Do you suffer from chronic fantasies about racing at Daytona? Have you imagined yourself tucked in tight behind the low screen, knees squeezed against the tank, the tach needle up above 13, the engine sound hammering up through the machine as a hard mechanical rush?

Cycle World's Road Test Editor, Don Canet, turned imagination to reality, and the rest of our staff became his crew. We went racing at Daytona. Daytona is not like other tracks. First is its breathtaking speed. When you emerge from the access tunnel into the Daytona infield, you see its size. Then you see the tiny machines with men on them, moving so fast that the first feeling is, "I don't want my friends doing this." In time, your eye catches up to the action and it begins to look normal. And you begin to distinguish the fast from the pack, and the pack from the droners. Lawsons factory Yamaha is timed at 174 mph in early practice, but there are other machines that are slower than stock. Where will we stand between these extremes?

Daytona is a left-hand speedbowl, but its infield roadcourse contains two 180-degree right-handers. The 31-degree banking of the tri-oval heats the left sides of the tires, but the right sides remain cool, and grip poorly. Yet in the first 180, the East Horseshoe, you Scott Russell get his Kawasaki over impossibly far, his tires squirming, his bike jinking. Others coast through, leaned over 20 degrees less, yet less at ease.

And there’s the Daytona reputation. “We come to get the aggravation,” said an English rider, speaking of the Great Florida Dynamometer. Engines must give full power at max revs for 17-straight seconds here, lap after lap. That and the G-forces and the bumps and the wheelspin eat many of them. Daytona is a place of great expectations and bitter disappointments. Things that are no problem at other tracks are fatal faults here. Oiling systems that survive hour-long, full-power dyno tests mysteriously deliver air instead of oil on the Daytona banking. Fuel pressure disappears. Tires overheat and their rubber boils to blister and chunk. Tire engineers may respect Daytona most of all.

Cycle World would need a competently prepared chassis, a practice engine, and a race engine. Attack Performance would supply a YZF Yamaha chassis with all the required raceware, and Vance & Hines would supply the engines. Editor David Edwards' greatest concern was that, "We not out-trick ourselves." This track likes variety; it eats anything new with special gusto. For this reason, wise builders try their new ideas somewhere else, and run the best of last year's setup here.

Work expands to fill all available time. Pre-Daytona prep is nerve-wracking because only continuous hard work and adequate good luck puts everything in the truck and on the way south in time. This rule applies from the lowliest privateer all the way to the top factory operations. No one is calm, no one is relaxed, no one feels lie has it under control at Daytona.

Don's reaction after first practice was terse. "It wobbles." he said.

"Where?" asked Stanboli.

"Everywhere,” he replied.

"Don't worry, we'll fix it."

They did, but it would take time, and many combinations. In the end, Canet says, “We got it pretty good everywhere, pretty close.” A harder spring at the back, a new front fork, and numerous adjustments to damping, ride height and machine attitude kept the crew busy.

The engines we used in Florida dynoed at a modest 128 horsepower—as Canet said, only 10 percent more than a good supersport engine. Don had only ridden here once before—and he had never raced a full-on Superbike. In early practice, he compared the soft ride of production bikes with the tauter responsiveness of our new Superbike. “It seems more of a piece,” he said. Attack Performance’s Richard Stanboli had fitted the machine with a computer data-acquisition system, and Don, who is computer-literate, was fascinated. Back in the garage, staring at a monitor, he could see where he was getting on the throttle and where he was not; he could see the correlation between throttle position, chassis attitude and suspension action. Hmm.

After two practice sessions, though, Canet looked lost. He had plenty to think about. He hovered between the computer, where he poked at the keyboard to read his fortune on the screen, and the back of our truck, which provided a place to sit and think. In the back of garage 29, Stanboli and assistant Mike Belcher labored over their machine. Richard declared ominously, “These chassis either work or they don’t. They’re very sensitive. There’s no such thing as just being close.”

Because you’re in Florida a week, Daytona seems endless, but practice time isn’t. Pro practice is Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday is qualifying, Friday is other finals, and Saturday is Supercross—no roadrace practice. Then comes a final short session Sunday morning, then the race itself. A workable combination had to be found in three days.

Don Canet is an outwardly taciturn person, rarely seen to break into a grin. As he says, “My face just doesn’t have the muscles for it.” But behind that unexpressive exterior, plenty of calculation was in progress. He soon concluded that Turn 1 and the approach to the Chicane were central to a good lap time. These places are daunting because they are approached at the top of sixth gear, and braking must be well-judged to insert the machine at a high comer speed without wasting time in corrections or in half-hearted braking. The Chicane flicks left, right and left again as the bike shoots up the East Banking towards the wall.

Holding it on here is essential to getting a launch that will give maximum speed around the bank and past Start-Finish. Lots of riders race here year after year and never get a handle on the Chicane.

Daytona will lead the unwary astray. Riders slide off in the right-handers because only the left sides of their tires are warmed up. Riders approaching the Chicane in a draft for the first time forget the reduced wind resistance behind another bike. They get in too hot, lift at the last instant, and go into the bales. Still others underestimate the complexity of the Speedway, dismissing it as just a horsepower track. They ignore the close coupling between solving the Chicane and a quick laptime.

Don was figuring it out. His times were coming down nicely. Too many first-timers on a Superbike can’t go even as fast as the production-class supersport 750s, but Don cleared that hurdle early. He was using the advantages built into his machine.

Superbike qualifying uses a mix of tests. Timed qualifying is simply a practice session in which each riders laps are timed. This locks in the pole, and positions the rest of the pack for the Twin Fifties, a pair of 50-mile qualifying races, 60 riders in each, that determine the rest of the grid. By fortunate accident, Don discovered the existence of soft qualifying tires, able to give increased grip, but with a four-lap lifetime. On these, Don took the Cycle World/Attack/V&H Yamaha to a very respectable 1:55.9 qualifying time (Ducati's Pascal Picotte nabbed the pole with a 1:50.1), then finished a fine 10th in his 50-miler. This had us all stroking our chins and looking speculatively at one another. He's doing good. This is getting serious. It's not just a madcap excursion by Walter Mitty desk-jockeys. This is racing.

Stanboli had fabricated a heavily braced swingarm and rear-wheel quick-change system like that used a year ago by Yamaha at the Suzuka 8-Hour. Both the drive sprocket and brake disc are on the left-hand side, fastened to the swingarm, not part of the wheel. The wheel has a big five-sided boss that engages a three-sided receptacle on the sprocket/disc combo. At the pit stop, an air-wrench loosens the axle, the fresh wheel and tire are set in place, and the axle is air-wrench tightened to a captive nut on the other side of the swingarm. Each crew member got a printed duty list that read like jacket notes on a jazz record: Paul Dean on quick-fill, Richard Stanboli on air-wrench, and so on. In a Saturday-afternoon drill, we Mitty-men and the Attack duo somehow struggled this process down to under 10 seconds—pretty damn good, if a little rough. Could it all work in the heat of competition, or would we drench Don in gas, trip over each other, or otherwise embarrass ourselves? But racing implies willingness to expose strength and weakness equally. We were as ready as we’d ever be.

After Friday's 250 GP and 750 supersport races, the garage area clears out, as if stripping for action. The emptiness, after all the week's bustle, focused attention starkly on the upcoming 200. The week's weather had been grand, and the only rain had fallen obligingly at night. The Cycle World team donned its garish bowling shirts Sunday morning; now we were official. In the a.m. Superbike practice, Stanboli had scheduled us to make a "wet" pit stop with an actual fuel drop. The pit area was staked out, the nitrogen cylinder that would drive the air-wrench was secured to a pole, and tools, spare wheels, dump can and other necessaries set out.

There had been some worries about Gotham Racing’s carbon-fiber replica gas tank (saves 7 pounds!), which had leaked slightly in practice. Now it had been sealed and cured in the sun. It held. Don rolled out with the practice. Attack’s Mike Belcher wore the radio headset that would link us to Art Director Elaine Anderson at the remote signal station, where pit signals would be displayed to tell Don his position in the race, the number of laps remaining, or other useful info. When the gas board was shown, Don turned into pit lane next time around, zoomed down to our little knot of expectation, and received fuel and a tire in good time. He accelerated away towards Tum 1, rejoining practice. We felt good—but too soon.

Canet didn’t come around. The moments spent waiting, not knowing what’s happened when your rider is overdue, are some of the worst in racing. Had he crashed? Was he all right? Had the engine stopped? Had one of us made a serious error? These pointless speculations buzz around us like mosquitoes.

Then came word; he’s back at the garage. A failure? Yes, the quick-change rear drive had broken, the three-sided sprocket driver had snapped off. A spectator couldn’t believe what he saw; our motorcycle being wheeled along with its chain and sprocket stationary! Now our plans were shattered, with no chance of making a quick tire change. We were forced back to a stock swingarm and rear wheel borrowed from Yamaha PR director Bob Starr’s streetbike. In a display of good sportsmanship, fellow Superbike racer Jacques Guenette lent us a spare rear wheel from his supersport YZF. Stanboli & Co. got on the case and the changes were made. We humans make plans, but Daytona can veto them in an instant.

At the appointed time, Don Canet and the reconfigured Cycle World bike rolled to the line in the 20th starting spot. The grid was dense with mechanics, photographers, start-carts and white-clad officials. Then the bikes streamed out for the sighting lap, returning to be topped off with fuel. Then the warm-up lap. Finally, the start, with engine revs climbing as the 2-minute board was taken down, and the chaotic rush off the grid in appalling noise, wave after wave, 80 motorcycles.

Up front, Lawson led from Corser, with Russell working to erase the deficit of his last-wave start. Polen on the RC45 challenged briefly in the early laps, then slowly faded. Fried tires? Don, meanwhile, was racing against more than other riders. His bike was visibly busy past Start-Finish; it was weaving. Had the swingarm change brought on this instability? It takes courage to ride a weaving bike, but Canet wasn’t letting it slow him up. Lap times were good; we ran as high as 13th place for a while, then held steady in the top-20. Our #80 bike wasn’t the only one weaving; the flatter rear profile of Daytona tires doesn’t always work cooperatively with the fronts, and the result is instability.

But we soon had other problems. As the crew prepared for the gas stop, planned for lap 28, Canet didn’t come by. Bikes streamed past, approaching Turn 1, their engines wailing like baleful air-raid sirens. Pit stops went on around us, bikes stopping, people dashing with wheels and tools, bikes accelerating. Then Canet appeared—from the garage area! White steam was jetting lazily from the radiator overflow vent line; a blown head gasket, the same thing that had stopped Tom Kipp’s sensational privateer ride on a Yamaha here three years ago, the same thing that had finished our practice engine. Don told us that the temp gauge had run up to 112C-far above boiling. Race officials, seeing the steam, had stopped him for inspection. Combustion gas, leaking past the gasket, had entered and overpressured the cooling passages, pushing water out past the pressure cap. That’s racing.

After a quick conference, we arrived at the reasonable conclusion that this was indeed it. There was no point in rejoining the race with replenished coolant, hoping that the defect might somehow fix itself. Our day was done.

Days later, Terry Vance expressed concern and embarrassment over the blown head gaskets. He said that, had Canet been able to continue at the good pace he'd set, and making one gas stop to the factories' two, he'd have been in the top 10 for sure, perhaps as high as seventh. We thought about the formula that had almost worked: a good rider, a reliable and reasonably fast machine and a little luck. As the what-ifs and the might-have-beens die away, whispers of plans for next year can be heard in the offices of Cycle World.

Racing can be habit-forming.