|
|
 |
Switching Sides
|
|
|
|
|
|
Corona Suzuki GSX-R1000 Racer
Alan Cathcart
10/01/2007
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Photography By Kel Edge
|
No neutral observer of the titanic on-track battles and off-track spats between Max Biaggi and Valentino
Rossi can fail to regard Biaggi as a genuine superstar—a man who has displayed
skill and courage in garnering 42 Grand Prix race victories, four successive
250cc GP world titles, and three runner-up slots in the MotoGP premier class
series. Having switched this year to World Superbike with Team Alstare Corona
Suzuki, Biaggi promptly won his very first race on the GSX-R1000 K7.
 Riding the Biaggi bike at a private test day at Germany’s
EuroSpeedway Lausitz gave me a hands-on look at the factory Suzuki that is an
evolution of the bike on which Troy Corser won the World Superbike crown in
2005. Redesigned for 2007, the K7 employs an all-new frame while retaining the
same longest stroke motor of any four-cylinder 1000cc sportbike. "The engine is
not so different than before," says Alstare technical guru Bruno Bailly. "Just
the cylinder head is new. But, after modifying the combustion chambers, and
polishing and flowing it to the same specifications as last year, we were
disappointed to find it was five horsepower down on the K6! That’s because both
riders wanted a bike that was easier to ride, so we’d left in the
counterbalancer which made the engine vibrate less." (Click image to enlarge)
 Biaggi won in Qatar with an engine that was deliberately down
on power compared to last year’s bike, which produced 210 hp at the gearbox!
"But then, as the other teams improved, especially the new Yamaha, he realized
he needed to have that extra top-end performance," says Bailly. "So here at
Lausitz, we’ve removed the balance shaft again, and now he’s happy!" (Click image to enlarge)
This would explain the surprising drop in top speed at Monza
this year, where both Corona Suzukis were trapped at "only" 194 mph, whereas a
year ago Corser was timed at an even 200 mph on a bike that was minus its
counterbalancer. I did not notice any undue vibration even at high revs, though
it seemed to pick up revs quickly despite the longer stroke, a fact Bailly put
down to the reduced friction of Alstare’s own new forged two-ring pistons,
rather than the three-ring factory ones used so far this year. However, top
speed wasn’t an issue at this twisty track, where Biaggi uses just the bottom
five gears of the works transmission, with a choice of four different ratios for
each gear matched to the factory slipper clutch that replaces the STM unit used
at the start of the year.
I had to get comfortable on a bike with a quite different
riding position from the balanced, spacious stance of Troy Corser’s K6 of 2006.
Corser’s bike was also lower at the rear, making the rear tire work harder for
extra grip. Biaggi prefers a more close-coupled tail-up stance, a legacy of his
250 days. As I expected, his 2007 Suzuki was much taller at the rear and lower
at the front, with a thick seat squab pushing my body weight forward and wedging
me firmly in place to deliver a 54/46 forward weight bias. Moving back and forth
in the seat was not an option, until I stopped and got Biaggi’s race engineer to
take the squab off.
That got me comfy on the Suzuki, with handlebars that are also
more steeply dropped than a year ago. The digital dash between them has a row of
green lights on the top, surmounted by a bright red light that flashes at around
13,800 rpm telling you to hit another gear wide open on the powershifter before
the 14,300 rpm rev limiter cuts in. Biaggi is one of the few top riders using a
street-pattern gearshift and this takes quite a bit of getting used to;
sometimes you have to short-shift, because you can’t get your toe under the
lever to shift up a gear when cranked hard over to the left. At least the
GSX-R1000 motor is plenty torquey enough to let you do that.
Author Alan Cathcart attacks the corners on Max Biaggi’s Corona
Suzuki
at EuroSpeedway Lausitz.
On the left handlebar is a switch accessing one of the two
different engine management maps. There is an up/down button providing five
different settings within each of those maps for both traction control and
engine braking, varying the idle speed while backshifting. On the right clip-on
is a headlamp flasher switch acting as the pit lane speed limiter, it is next to
the button for the electric starter which Alstare still retains on the bike. It
is evident Biaggi finds the tacho readout on the Marelli dash just as hard to
decipher as I did, as the team has stuck small white numbers at the top of the
screen so he can check the revs at a glance.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
