Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief visited Barber Vintage Festival and watched Kenny Roberts ride his world championship winning 0W48 Yamaha on some epic (and great smelling!) demonstration laps. The guys talk about Yamaha two-stroke tech, Hoyer vintage raced a 1972 BMW (and won!), the amazing Barber Museum and so much more about this epic motorcycle cultural event. There were 500 vendors at the swapmeet and the "bike show" put on by attendees just riding around the ring road was mind boggling.
Shopping for a motorcycle? Get pre-approved for that bike you always wanted: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Subscribe to Cycle World Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/cycleworld?sub_confirmation=1
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Shopping for a motorcycle? Get pre-approved for that bike you always wanted: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Subscribe to Cycle World Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/cycleworld?sub_confirmation=1
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Cycleworld podcast.
00:00:02I'm Mark Hoyer, I'm the Editor-in-Chief,
00:00:04and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:07This episode is a special episode
00:00:09related to Barber Vintage Festival, Kenny Roberts,
00:00:13perhaps one of the largest celebrations
00:00:15of motorcycling and culture at a racetrack in America.
00:00:21I think we were something
00:00:22on the order of 80,000 fans at Barber
00:00:26taking in ARMA vintage races,
00:00:29which I participated in,
00:00:31and then a host of events at the museum,
00:00:35the Barber Vintage Museum, or just the Barber Museum.
00:00:39Kevin was a noted speaker.
00:00:42We had a fundraising dinner,
00:00:45and as I said, Kenny Roberts was there,
00:00:47Kenny Roberts Jr., we saw David Aldana,
00:00:49we saw Scott Russell, and star after star,
00:00:53Jason Uribe was racing, Hayden Gillum was racing
00:00:58on this spectacular racetrack
00:01:01in what I would call a garden-like setting.
00:01:03Road America is one of my favorite tracks,
00:01:05and I would call that a park-like setting.
00:01:08They call it the National Park of Speed,
00:01:10and it's a little more rustic.
00:01:12I think equally as beautiful, or differently as beautiful,
00:01:16and Barber is just incredibly well-groomed.
00:01:22Just 500 spots rented for the swap meet.
00:01:27It was madness.
00:01:30What's your take?
00:01:31Where were you, Kevin?
00:01:32Well, I found myself in the museum most of the time,
00:01:39but I did get out to the paddock
00:01:43and met a lot of racers, not people I'd known before,
00:01:48but people whose culture was recognizable
00:01:52as that which had so attracted me
00:01:57in the late 1960s and 1970s,
00:02:01because it is a good-natured and cooperative culture.
00:02:07It is not combative and self-centered.
00:02:15It's very comfortable.
00:02:18If you need a stator or a coil for your old TZ ignition,
00:02:23somebody's sure to have one, and we'll lend it to you.
00:02:27If you need an entire spare motorcycle
00:02:29because the valve seat fell out of your racing BMW,
00:02:32someone lent, a fellow I was pitted with next to,
00:02:37Paul Elledge, his BMW dropped a valve seat,
00:02:41and he was in contention for the title and needed to race,
00:02:45and a fellow lent him his 650.
00:02:50He stood aside knowing that Paul could win his championship.
00:02:54I totally agree.
00:02:55So ARMA Racing,
00:02:57American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association,
00:03:01ARMA paddock, incredibly supportive.
00:03:03I dropped in as an interloper
00:03:06at the last race of the season on a waiver
00:03:10to be able to race at zero points.
00:03:15So I was starting at the back of the grid and so forth,
00:03:17but what a paddock.
00:03:21Everybody was spectacularly cool,
00:03:23and I really appreciate every fan of the podcast,
00:03:26for example,
00:03:27just people constantly, near constantly coming up
00:03:32and saying that they were really enjoying the work here.
00:03:35So we appreciate that quite a bit.
00:03:37But as you say, a very supportive paddock.
00:03:40Everybody's there to race and be competitive,
00:03:43have a good time,
00:03:44and we also know we have day jobs
00:03:46and we're not viciously trying to eliminate each other
00:03:51from the racetrack.
00:03:52It was great.
00:03:55It was really great.
00:03:58The scheduled appearance of Kenny Roberts
00:04:03on the Yamaha 0W48,
00:04:08on which he won the 1980 World 500 Championship,
00:04:18that all took place.
00:04:20And Kenny,
00:04:24I could see him practicing flinging a leg over the bike
00:04:29before he went out,
00:04:31but he was scheduled to do a couple of laps
00:04:34and then sign all the RZ 350s,
00:04:37yellow ones that were waiting in the autograph area.
00:04:42But he bump started that bike
00:04:45and went off onto the racetrack,
00:04:49making the glorious sound of the two-stroke era.
00:04:54And everything went according to plan.
00:04:59It was wonderful because of course,
00:05:01so many things in racing do not.
00:05:05So it's nice when it comes off.
00:05:08Yeah, it was beautiful.
00:05:09It was a, what a moment, midday.
00:05:13And those sounds, him putting his knee down
00:05:16around the racetrack,
00:05:17and he was not loafing around.
00:05:21I mean, I don't think he was on lap record pace,
00:05:23but he was not loafing around.
00:05:24He was riding as a Kenny Roberts would ride.
00:05:27Yes.
00:05:28It was just the cloud of smoke
00:05:31and that sound of it going up the front straightaway.
00:05:33That's where I was standing with you, in fact.
00:05:36And then there goes Kenny in his leathers.
00:05:38And then the autograph signing afterward was amazing.
00:05:42Yes.
00:05:43I stood in line.
00:05:44I don't have the shirt on,
00:05:45but I have Kenny Roberts, Kenny Roberts Jr.,
00:05:47David Aldana, and Scott Russell
00:05:50on my Sega World T-shirt I had at the event.
00:05:52So it was a opportunity for me to go full fanboy
00:05:57on folks I've admired for a long time.
00:06:00Full fanboy.
00:06:02But yeah, it was a huge long line.
00:06:04People had pieces of bodywork
00:06:05and they were signing postcards
00:06:07and all kinds of things like that.
00:06:10So it was a really,
00:06:13a wonderful celebration of culture,
00:06:16of motorcycle culture.
00:06:19BMW does their Motorod Days Americas,
00:06:22which is sort of their brand celebration
00:06:25and this is the event that they choose to do that with.
00:06:27And they had a huge booth full of new motorcycles.
00:06:30There's demo rides.
00:06:32So it's not just vintage bikes and all that celebration,
00:06:35but it's also a great big place
00:06:38to see all kinds of new bikes.
00:06:39And then, man, if you want to blow some money,
00:06:43head over to the swap meet.
00:06:44Every conceivable thing that you might want
00:06:46for virtually any motorcycle that's ever existed
00:06:50is there in some form or another.
00:06:52Often rusty, often mangled, but there.
00:06:55Got a rear cylinder for my Curtis?
00:06:58Yeah, it's entirely possible.
00:07:01Sure it is.
00:07:03Kenny was his own laconic self.
00:07:08I had the opportunity to speak with him
00:07:14in front of a group of interested persons.
00:07:17And Kenny is not the easiest interview.
00:07:21You have to, there's not a lot of flywheel mass,
00:07:24which means you have to keep pushing,
00:07:26keep the conversation going.
00:07:28And I could see that people were smiling and attentive
00:07:34and were enjoying this because it is from
00:07:37the mouth of the king, the man who was there.
00:07:42And at the end, when he was asked by an MC or whatever,
00:07:52if he had anything further to say, he said, I'm done.
00:08:00That's what it is.
00:08:01And of course, that makes you remember Nicky Lauda,
00:08:05who was strictly required to be signing autographs
00:08:10for a specified number of minutes.
00:08:12And when that last second ticked away,
00:08:15he was on his way to his airplane and home.
00:08:20Because as Valentino Rossi once said,
00:08:26they will take your life if you let them.
00:08:30I have to give Kenny credit for hanging tough
00:08:34for the autograph signing.
00:08:35He was not done.
00:08:38He finished the line.
00:08:38Yeah, I could see it went on and on
00:08:40and he was just right there penciling away.
00:08:43It was good.
00:08:44Yeah, it was very cool.
00:08:45So you had some time, you kind of know the backstory
00:08:49of getting that bike together
00:08:50that he rode his championship winning bike.
00:08:52Well, Chuck Honeycutt, who is a long time racer
00:09:00and has ridden many kinds of motorcycles
00:09:02and became the restoration director at the museum.
00:09:07And I think he's emeritus now
00:09:10or has some sort of adjusted status there.
00:09:15But I got a call from him some weeks ago saying,
00:09:19look, we've got to do this.
00:09:22And I have some questions here.
00:09:26So I had the opportunity to talk with Chuck
00:09:30while this whole process was going on
00:09:33and the bike wasn't running well.
00:09:36It wasn't starting well.
00:09:38It wasn't looking like being a success.
00:09:42And so one of the first things he did
00:09:46to eliminate that as a question
00:09:48was to put a set of TZ250 carburetors on there,
00:09:52VM34s with six F9 needles, O0 needle jets,
00:09:5865 pilots and 3.0 slides.
00:10:01Have you done that before?
00:10:05It ran better, but not really well.
00:10:09So Chuck got into the ignition components
00:10:13and he checked the things and made some replacements.
00:10:16Of course, a museum has not only the bikes on display,
00:10:20but vast resources stored away from the public eye.
00:10:26So changes to the ignition,
00:10:29perked it up more, so it was starting better.
00:10:32It still wasn't right.
00:10:33It just seemed something was missing.
00:10:36So he decides to make a compression test,
00:10:39just the most basic.
00:10:41This is not leak down.
00:10:42This is just screwing that thing into the spark plug hole
00:10:45and pulling the back wheel through
00:10:49until the needle stops moving, 60 PSI.
00:10:54Well, what should it be?
00:10:54That seems on the low side.
00:10:56That's low.
00:10:58All right.
00:11:01When way back in 1971,
00:11:05I think those H1Rs were running
00:11:09about 140 PSI, tested that way.
00:11:14So Chuck went off
00:11:16and considered the problem of piston rings.
00:11:23And at one point he said to me,
00:11:24you know, Brian, it's Brian Case,
00:11:28the CEO of the museum.
00:11:32Um, he doesn't much like people messing
00:11:36with stuff around here, you know?
00:11:38And I said, why does he have to know?
00:11:43So-
00:11:47Don't tell Brian.
00:11:50So delving into an untouched spares kit,
00:11:55he took out four new rings.
00:11:58Racing two-strokes usually have just one compression ring.
00:12:02Of course, being two-stroke,
00:12:03they don't have an oil scraper ring
00:12:06and they don't have a second ring
00:12:09because the balance between longevity of seal
00:12:16and friction loss favors one piston ring.
00:12:21So that really got it going, but then it quit.
00:12:27So Brian appears and he's poking around
00:12:31and the bike is on the stand
00:12:32and he's turning the engine slowly with the rear wheel.
00:12:38And Brian says, the ignition rotor isn't turning.
00:12:44So, well, all right, that's something different.
00:12:49We can fix that.
00:12:50So they get busy and they fix that
00:12:52and make sure that it's timed properly and so forth.
00:12:56And now the bike runs well, starts well.
00:13:02They're beginning to have real confidence
00:13:04that this thing is going to be good.
00:13:08And so it was.
00:13:12Well, a DNF for King Kenny on his parade laps
00:13:15or his demonstration laps,
00:13:17which that wouldn't do, right?
00:13:19Not at all.
00:13:20And of course, the whole premise of this relationship
00:13:24between Kenny and the museum
00:13:26is that Kenny's personal collection of race bikes
00:13:33is on some basis transferred to the museum.
00:13:37It's a process that's taken three years.
00:13:40And memorabilia, all trophies, all kinds of stuff.
00:13:43Yeah, all that wonderful stuff.
00:13:45And of course I can just hear my own wife saying,
00:13:48do we really need to keep all these things here?
00:13:51It's taking up quite a lot of space.
00:13:54Yes, dear.
00:13:56I'll get right on it.
00:13:57Anyway.
00:13:58Yep, same, same.
00:14:00Yeah.
00:14:02What do I do with all this?
00:14:03If something happens, I'm not sure.
00:14:05Well, I'll make a list.
00:14:07Make a list.
00:14:08Provide directions.
00:14:10Form an advisory committee.
00:14:12Yes.
00:14:13File a report.
00:14:14Anyway, that process has taken place
00:14:19and we can look forward to a future
00:14:23of presumably periodic appearances by Kenny
00:14:27on one or another of those historic motorcycles.
00:14:33And they started it up
00:14:37in the restoration area downstairs in the basement.
00:14:43Take that gigantic elevator with 25,000 pounds capacity
00:14:48down to the basement floor.
00:14:50They started it up there.
00:14:52And to me, it just sounded normal.
00:14:55Yeah, that's what you hear at the races.
00:14:57And of course the last notes
00:15:01of two-stroke exhaust have long since left the air.
00:15:08And so that was of interest.
00:15:11And also they started up, I think, was that a V5?
00:15:16I think they started up Kenny's four-stroke GP bike
00:15:19that his race team
00:15:25and many experienced advisors had designed
00:15:31for the 2002 beginning of MotoGP.
00:15:37So that was all grand.
00:15:41And it was grand to go into the actual work area
00:15:47which is also a way to bypass the lunch checkpoint
00:15:55and see the bike sitting there
00:15:58and the original carburetors in a bin.
00:16:04Beautiful zero cutaway,
00:16:07meaning that the slide closes the air passage
00:16:12completely at the front.
00:16:15In the back of the slide is a rectangular opening.
00:16:18So this was McCooney's answer
00:16:20to the responsiveness of electron carburetors
00:16:24which had no idle system.
00:16:27And there they were, their bell mouths made out of magnesium,
00:16:35their float bowls made out of magnesium.
00:16:39And it's hard to imagine that this is 44 years ago
00:16:46that this material was hot and up to date.
00:16:52But time passes that way.
00:16:54I have looked at photographs of Formula One engine pistons
00:17:01and 40 years ago, they didn't look anything
00:17:05like the present day pistons that we expect to see
00:17:08in something like a 450 motocrosser
00:17:10which are very short skirted.
00:17:14They basically consist of a flat disc
00:17:17to hold the piston rings,
00:17:19two little mini skirts hanging down, not for modesty
00:17:23but to prevent the disc from tipping sideways in the bore
00:17:28and wrist pin bosses connected to the piston crown
00:17:33by a crisscross of stiffening beams.
00:17:38So, yes, there's been a lot of change in 44 years
00:17:44but it was great to see the 0W of 48,
00:17:50which that was the year that I think
00:17:53that they introduced aluminum as a chassis material.
00:17:58Motocross had during the 1970s
00:18:02built bikes with aluminum swing arms.
00:18:04And in general, when it comes to chassis stuff,
00:18:09motocross is the most prolific source of new technology
00:18:15but I asked Ken Clark, the late Ken Clark
00:18:23who was long the head of Yamaha US racing,
00:18:29what the chassis material was that they used
00:18:33in the first aluminum bikes.
00:18:36And ultimately, he informed me that it was Z5D,
00:18:43an alloy originally developed for welded aluminum rail cars.
00:18:51And the thing about this is,
00:18:54this is an age hardening alloy.
00:19:00If you make something out of 6061,
00:19:03which is the usual weldable alloy here in the US system,
00:19:07it then has to be heat treated after welding
00:19:10in order to realize its properties.
00:19:14But Z5D, you weld it,
00:19:20you wait two weeks for it to self harden
00:19:25and all the strength you want appears
00:19:29over that period of time, but you have to wait.
00:19:32I have to make notes for my custom chassis,
00:19:35Z5D. How long has it been?
00:19:37I don't know if I can heat treat at home, can I?
00:19:39I'm not sure.
00:19:41Yeah, well, Kenny said that the early aluminum chassis
00:19:49just were so weak that they were unstable
00:19:55and they kept making the wall thickness greater.
00:19:58And mind you, this is square aluminum tubing,
00:20:03roughly an inch or an inch and an eighth on the side.
00:20:09And very quickly, that form of construction was abandoned
00:20:14in favor of the two large aluminum side beams,
00:20:18which are of a much larger section than the square tubing.
00:20:25And in this way, they were able to make stiffer chassis
00:20:30that were lighter.
00:20:32And here's how that works.
00:20:35Imagine that you have a steel tube chassis
00:20:39and you say to yourself, this thing is pretty heavy.
00:20:41I'm gonna make one out of 20 gauge tubing.
00:20:48So you do that and you find,
00:20:51oh, look, the engine mounts are cracking.
00:20:53I'll put a little reinforcement there
00:20:55and we'll weld the mounts onto that reinforced
00:20:57or buttered area, as they call it.
00:21:00Well, that's better.
00:21:01But now we've lost our weight savings
00:21:04because we've had to add reinforcement at every point
00:21:06we wanna feed stress into the thinner metal.
00:21:10And eventually it gets so thin
00:21:12that like a plastic drink cup,
00:21:14you can push the side of it in with your thumb.
00:21:18Well, if you make that same thing out of aluminum,
00:21:24it's going to be three times as thick
00:21:26because aluminum weighs roughly one third what steel does.
00:21:30So the wall thickness prevents that buckling.
00:21:35And it is also more competent
00:21:38at feeding stress into the structure as a whole.
00:21:42So the idea of making lighter and lighter
00:21:48steel tube chassis came to an end
00:21:52because there was nowhere for it to go.
00:21:55We got down to an inch or an inch and an eighth
00:22:00and what, 16 gauge or a little thicker than that.
00:22:05And that's all she wrote.
00:22:07Now I'm not saying you couldn't build a lightweight
00:22:11steel chassis that worked well.
00:22:13It has been done and it is being done.
00:22:16But this is why aluminum was adopted in the first place.
00:22:21And since it recalls the car.
00:22:23Yeah, this bike was a pioneer in that technological change.
00:22:29It recalls a conversation I had
00:22:30with a mountain bike component designer.
00:22:34And he said, well, you know, we make aluminum handlebars,
00:22:40tapered aluminum handlebars for mountain bikes
00:22:43and it requires X grams of metal.
00:22:45It just does, you know, they couldn't,
00:22:48they basically had gotten to the most optimal wall thickness
00:22:52that would stand up to the stress
00:22:53and you could make them stronger if you needed to
00:22:55for somebody like me, who's 225 pounds
00:22:58and hammering, bending his seat post
00:23:00as he did twice on his mountain bike.
00:23:03So yeah, it just takes a certain amount of material.
00:23:07Yeah.
00:23:08Yeah.
00:23:09That's how it goes.
00:23:12But it's great to be at Barber because for this weekend
00:23:17because they bring out their shuttles
00:23:21which are trailers with shade, overhead shade
00:23:25and open seating that are pulled by pickup trucks
00:23:31with unfashionably large engines.
00:23:33And you'll get from place to place economically
00:23:38and swiftly that way.
00:23:40There'll be another shuttle along in a few minutes
00:23:42and you just wait until you get to where you wanna go
00:23:45and there you are.
00:23:47Yeah, the design of the track with that ring road
00:23:50and then everything is in orbit around the racetrack.
00:23:53Yeah.
00:23:54It's just, it was ultra convenient
00:23:57and easy to get around.
00:23:59And all, you know, God, the massive camping,
00:24:04the show itself, obviously the museum,
00:24:05like if the museum isn't the biggest motorcycle museum
00:24:11in the world, I'd be shocked.
00:24:13Yeah.
00:24:15But like overwhelmingly beautiful
00:24:18and overwhelmingly stacked with interesting things.
00:24:23And then you, as you say, there's an entire,
00:24:25the entire world where all of those running motorcycles
00:24:30like pull it off the shelf and do a little prep
00:24:32and it'll start, you know, they're all meant to run
00:24:35every one of those darn things.
00:24:38There's that whole work area
00:24:40where all that magical stuff happens
00:24:43and all those spare parts and the people working on them.
00:24:47You know, Brian Slark was at the museum
00:24:51for years and years.
00:24:52He used to be.
00:24:54He never looked any older.
00:24:56The Norton guy.
00:24:57He was the Norton guy in Southern California.
00:24:59I had a very nice, fairly original,
00:25:03extremely original Norton Commando
00:25:06that he used to work on for the second owner,
00:25:10John Leisner, who was the father of my cohort over here,
00:25:17Andy, when he was the publisher.
00:25:18And I bought it from him and got it running.
00:25:21And Brian's like, oh yeah, I worked on that bike.
00:25:24But Brian, I mean, Brian was a wealth of knowledge,
00:25:26you know, just for virtually anything vintage.
00:25:30He did all the, you know, he restored a bunch of the BMWs
00:25:32that we had talked about in relation
00:25:36to what I was working on this weekend,
00:25:38which was riding a Formula 750
00:25:42and Bear's 1972 R75 slash five
00:25:48built in the spirit of the Butler and Smith Superbike.
00:25:50So essentially a Superbike replica of the era
00:25:53with the frame braces,
00:25:55the same frame braces that Butler and Smith had,
00:25:57because it was a twin loop sort of, you know,
00:26:00Norton Manx-like.
00:26:02Udo Giedl struts.
00:26:03Yeah, the struts.
00:26:05And it was essentially kind of twin sparring this.
00:26:09It was trying to connect the steering head
00:26:09to the swing arm pivot.
00:26:11There was a bunch of bracing under the swing arm
00:26:13to stiffen that up.
00:26:15And then the rear wheel was laced offset
00:26:18so that we could fit, you know, wider rubber on it.
00:26:20And this was an existing bike that was developed.
00:26:24It was originally built from junkyard parts
00:26:28by a guy named Ivan Messina.
00:26:29And then Dan Smith, or excuse me, Dan May,
00:26:33the executive director of Arma bought it from Ivan
00:26:36and continued development.
00:26:38And it's making about 70 to 75 horsepower
00:26:41depending on the dyno,
00:26:42with a beautiful torque curve.
00:26:44And what you were talking about, zero cutaway VMs.
00:26:47This bike has, I think they're VM 36s.
00:26:52Yeah.
00:26:53And the slides, you know, round slides
00:26:55are what you have to use in Arma.
00:26:57Round slides, you can use a CR or VM
00:26:59according to the rule book that I read.
00:27:01These are VMs and everybody has VM parts.
00:27:03And that's one of the reasons it's like,
00:27:04hey, if you need jetting or whatever,
00:27:06it's all over the paddock.
00:27:07Everybody's like salt shakers full of brass, you know?
00:27:10Yes.
00:27:12But the slides, the slides were packed
00:27:15and flowed with a putty.
00:27:17Yeah.
00:27:18And so it would H stroke at 3000 RPM.
00:27:22So it was rich down low.
00:27:24But when we ran that thing on the dyno, two things,
00:27:26on the racetrack and running it on the dyno.
00:27:28Running in the dyno, wide open throttle
00:27:31with the sniffer in the pipe,
00:27:33a straight line from the O2 sensor.
00:27:37Yeah.
00:27:38Just perfect.
00:27:38Constant mixture, yeah.
00:27:40Great, constant mixture.
00:27:42And it played out on the racetrack.
00:27:44The throttle response in the power band,
00:27:46which was beautifully wide,
00:27:47it was about 4,800 RPM to 82.
00:27:52It just, you just turned it on.
00:27:54You just, you wanted more, you just kept rolling it.
00:27:57And it just, it pulled, grab a gear.
00:27:59It was a, it was really, really nice to ride.
00:28:02Anyway, Butler and Smith replica,
00:28:05racing it in Arma, in bears and Formula 750,
00:28:09beautiful silver paint job.
00:28:11And I got to ride that over the weekend,
00:28:13never saw a barber,
00:28:15had never really ridden the bike in anger.
00:28:17We had a, you know, we had a test in Chicago
00:28:20that was just pouring with rain.
00:28:22And so I basically, once it stopped raining,
00:28:25I got to wobble around on a very slick, wet racetrack.
00:28:29I got at least familiar with how the power was
00:28:32and how the shifting was, and then got to race.
00:28:34I got, I won two races, the two bears races,
00:28:36and I got fifth and sixth in the two days
00:28:39of racing in Formula 750.
00:28:40So super good time, super fun.
00:28:42A great race in bears on Saturday
00:28:44with a guy on a BMW, Justin Hebel,
00:28:48and then this other fellow on a 650 Triton.
00:28:52So a Triumph motor in a featherbed frame,
00:28:56650 with a single, with a drum brake.
00:28:59And he was flying, David Tompkins was his name.
00:29:05And it was really fun.
00:29:08I got passed.
00:29:09They pushed me to my fastest lap of the weekend
00:29:11because I didn't want to get passed again.
00:29:13I didn't want the trouble of trying to get it back.
00:29:16So I just rode as hard as I could for one spectacular lap.
00:29:22And-
00:29:23One of the great things about vintage racing
00:29:29is that a lot of available technology
00:29:35that we can use today was not available
00:29:38when these bikes were built.
00:29:40So applying what you know about engine tuning
00:29:45or engine development can just make you feel like a wizard.
00:29:51Because it's so easy to, it's not necessarily cheap,
00:29:59but it's easy to apply modern ideas about, for example,
00:30:04valve timing in four strokes, valve chain stiffness
00:30:09in the case of pushrods and rocker arms
00:30:13and get excellent results.
00:30:17Yeah, this bike gave excellent results.
00:30:20The top end had been rebuilt.
00:30:22He dropped a valve after, I think, five years.
00:30:24He was at New Jersey and he dropped a valve.
00:30:26So he said, hey, you're getting a fresh top end.
00:30:29He sent the cylinders to Millennium Technologies
00:30:32and simultaneously Gary Braun, who works at Millennium
00:30:36and does lots of great work there and was at the event,
00:30:39he'd fix some pipes for you.
00:30:41Simultaneously, Gary Braun sent me pictures
00:30:43of the cylinders at Millennium and then so did Dan.
00:30:47And I got those crossed and in the ether to me
00:30:50showing that it was happening.
00:30:52After the test, the bike ran beautifully for the test.
00:30:55I didn't really get to hammer it,
00:30:56but I ran it through the gears
00:30:58and I got it up to red line and all that.
00:31:00And that was essentially a break-in run for it.
00:31:02He went through and he did a leak down test
00:31:05and he showed me the gauges and it was 90, 90.
00:31:08So 0% down and he does, he's very meticulous about
00:31:12making sure that the valves are properly lapped
00:31:15and broken in and all that stuff.
00:31:16He has a very specific procedure he uses
00:31:19because they are nicosyl bores.
00:31:21And so that was super.
00:31:24It was really, really something.
00:31:27Oh, and, but, you know, valve timing, that was the thing
00:31:30is Dan listened to the podcast where we had talked about,
00:31:33you know, the Udo Gedo bike, the 50 mile engines podcast,
00:31:36which you can go back in the past
00:31:40and you can listen to that.
00:31:41But he says, man, you would have saved me a lot of time
00:31:43if you'd done that, you know, five years ago,
00:31:45you would have saved me years of development
00:31:47because he's developed the bike.
00:31:48When he got it, it was probably 62 horsepower.
00:31:51And through tuning work,
00:31:54he's increased it about 10 horsepower, roughly.
00:31:58Exhaust length, intake length.
00:31:59And then the cams, you know, the valve train stiffness,
00:32:02chromoly push rods and the cams are custom cams
00:32:06are asymmetrical and they are as described NASCAR cams.
00:32:11NASCAR cams.
00:32:12And then that is a lot of immediate lift
00:32:15as much as you can stand with a fancy valve springs
00:32:19in this case, nested dual valve springs
00:32:21so that they don't get into a cyclic vibration and break.
00:32:25And so a lot of immediate lift
00:32:28giving what you would call the Euro five torque curve,
00:32:30a lot of lift, not that much overlap.
00:32:34And he says on the forums, you know,
00:32:36the Euro guys who are racing,
00:32:39those cams will never work.
00:32:40And I'm here to tell you they work.
00:32:42Yeah, they definitely work.
00:32:43It's such a good running bike.
00:32:45Now the chassis was really nicely tuned too.
00:32:47There's a Cogent Dynamics had done the suspension
00:32:51and it's beautifully tuned.
00:32:53It has cartridge dampers in the fork,
00:32:55which is what you were talking about.
00:32:56You know, technology that we can have today
00:32:58that we didn't have then.
00:33:00Adjustable cartridge dampers stuffed inside,
00:33:03which is a really nice thing to have, let me tell you.
00:33:07The front fork damping technology of that period
00:33:12was like a screen door closer.
00:33:15There's basically a check valve
00:33:17so that most of the damping is on rebound
00:33:21and it's a simple orifice.
00:33:24It's just oil going through a hole
00:33:26and the same thing on compression,
00:33:29except that it's a bigger hole.
00:33:30So there's less upward shock to the chassis.
00:33:34And the check valve is open on compression
00:33:41and closes for rebound so that it goes down easily
00:33:44and comes up slowly.
00:33:49And that's all you could do.
00:33:51Oh, we got to put some 50 weight in here.
00:33:56This thing's moving too freely.
00:33:59That was the kind of crudity
00:34:01that we were up to in that time.
00:34:04Well, yeah, I mean, your orifice damping,
00:34:05you know, you can, if you make the hole small enough
00:34:09that the oil is flowing through
00:34:10so that your low shaft speeds are controlled
00:34:13so that you don't get wallow in the corner,
00:34:16you don't get this kind of cycling.
00:34:18If you make it that small, as soon as you hit a bump,
00:34:21the orifice essentially turns to nothing
00:34:23because it's a, what is it?
00:34:26It's a square, right?
00:34:27It goes-
00:34:28V-squared, yeah.
00:34:28V-squared, so the friction goes up as a square
00:34:31and the hole sort of, at a high enough shaft speed,
00:34:34the hole essentially ceases to exist for the oil.
00:34:37It just-
00:34:38And this is why everybody used to upshift out of turn five
00:34:43just as they hit the west banking at Daytona
00:34:49because otherwise it would just be a hammer blow
00:34:52to the chassis and you'd probably lose the back end
00:34:55and have to spend several tenths of a second
00:34:58getting gathered up.
00:35:01So as to proceed.
00:35:03So great things can be done with suspension damping,
00:35:09but there are still the problem of chatter.
00:35:14And when Todd Henning was struggling
00:35:18with his vintage Honda four-strokes,
00:35:22he finally overcame the chatter,
00:35:25but he had all those things available to him,
00:35:28cartridge dampers and whatnot,
00:35:30and he just persistently worked at it
00:35:33until he crushed the chatter to nothing.
00:35:38It was something I was proud of during the race weekend
00:35:41was getting on my goal as ever,
00:35:45getting on an unfamiliar bike, unfamiliar track.
00:35:48We're trying to make incremental progress,
00:35:50not excremental progress.
00:35:51So you just keep going, adding, breaking later
00:35:57and trying to turn the throttle sooner
00:35:59maximizing your line,
00:36:00getting all of that stuff sorted out
00:36:02so that you're doing an efficient and safe lap.
00:36:05And you're riding versus the track.
00:36:08Like during practice,
00:36:09the other bodies on the track are certainly relevant
00:36:12and you can probably learn things from looking at them,
00:36:15but ultimately it should be you and the cornering line
00:36:18and how the bike is operating.
00:36:19And so I was feeling good.
00:36:21We're getting times I got into low 50s,
00:36:25got into 50 flats, stuff like that.
00:36:28And then finally got into the 49s
00:36:30and going onto the front straightaway,
00:36:33I got chatter during practice.
00:36:36And I knew, why was that?
00:36:38It was terrifying
00:36:39because it felt like it went on for a thousand feet
00:36:41and it was the first time the bike had done anything to say
00:36:44like, hey, wait a minute.
00:36:45And it was just a front end load,
00:36:47not on the throttle enough going down the hill
00:36:51to get that drive onto the front straight and it chattered.
00:36:53And I was a terrified again
00:36:56because I thought it went on for a thousand feet.
00:36:58I'm like, what is that?
00:37:00Screamed into my helmet.
00:37:01I'm sure I had a microphone.
00:37:02So I'm sure that's been recorded.
00:37:04We'll put that in the video.
00:37:07But what was satisfying was I loaded the bike enough
00:37:10to get a protest.
00:37:13And that meant I was using the bike's available performance.
00:37:17And I felt proud of doing that.
00:37:19And it was borne out in the lap times
00:37:21and I did get chatter during the race,
00:37:24having to load it,
00:37:25racing with the two guys I was talking about earlier
00:37:28because it was, you know, as they say,
00:37:30the hammer and tong battle.
00:37:33It was really fun.
00:37:34Just so satisfying with those guys.
00:37:36They were so cool.
00:37:36And it was just, it was great.
00:37:39In olden times when hot young riders
00:37:42would encounter chatter for the first time,
00:37:44they would try to ride through it.
00:37:47But as Mick Grant put it years ago, he said,
00:37:52chatter occurs under conditions of
00:37:58heavy load and good grip.
00:38:03So trying to add more power to ride through it
00:38:08just makes it more, it intensifies the action.
00:38:13So you quickly find out, well, that's not the answer.
00:38:18Yeah, there was, we used a Continental 3CR,
00:38:24their Road Attack 3CR, they're a vintage race tire.
00:38:27So you have a great compound and skinny,
00:38:31skinny enough to fit the rims.
00:38:33And there was enough grip.
00:38:36There was, in fact, I never worried about grip,
00:38:40even we put them on warmers,
00:38:42but on like just a warm setting,
00:38:44like call it a hundred degrees.
00:38:45They don't actually want to be on warmers.
00:38:47They don't want to be 180 degrees.
00:38:50Like you might have a Pirelli slick or something
00:38:53or any other slick.
00:38:55You just want them to be not cold.
00:38:57I want them to be not cold.
00:38:58Let's put it that way.
00:38:59And so does the bike's owner.
00:39:01And just went out and just rode around,
00:39:03but there was enough grip to get chatter.
00:39:05And that load for me was off throttle,
00:39:08turning, getting down to the apex
00:39:10so that I could pull the trigger.
00:39:13You were transferring weight to the front then.
00:39:15Transferring, yeah, transferring, trailing,
00:39:18and then if I did that a little too long,
00:39:20it was cracked the throttle and it would go away.
00:39:25So we just altered our style a little bit there,
00:39:28but there were times where I had to go out
00:39:31because I had a bike coming at this angle
00:39:34and I'm coming at this angle
00:39:35and we had to make sure that our paths,
00:39:38we didn't occupy the same space.
00:39:40There were a number of distinguished people at Barber
00:39:47several of them speaking.
00:39:49Alan Cathcart for one,
00:39:52David Aldana with that cocky grin of his,
00:39:56which does not diminish with age.
00:39:59And Neil Spalding,
00:40:06the author of MotoGP Technology, three editions.
00:40:12And Cook Nelson,
00:40:15who was the man who was put in charge of Cycle Magazine
00:40:20to put the Floyd Clymer era behind it.
00:40:26Floyd Clymer, some of you of my vintage will recall,
00:40:31was famous for riding a Harley-Davidson
00:40:34while seated backward on it.
00:40:38I believe there were also hints of mail fraud
00:40:41and other difficulties.
00:40:43And reviews of motorcycles said that the new bike,
00:40:49as always before, was ideal for general riding,
00:40:53family fun and racing.
00:40:56So everything was perfect.
00:41:00And so that was the climate in which cycle
00:41:04and cycle world introduced actual criticism.
00:41:08And by this, I don't mean saying
00:41:10that's a bad motorcycle,
00:41:12but here are the characteristics of that motorcycle.
00:41:16You might want to know what they are
00:41:18if you're considering purchase.
00:41:21So that was during the time that we were in print,
00:41:27that was the major focus of interest in the book
00:41:31was road tests of recent late model machines.
00:41:37People wanted that solid information.
00:41:39They wanted to see a dyno curve
00:41:40that wasn't somebody from marketing
00:41:44doing freehand exercises in the air.
00:41:49No, it was an explosion of popularity of Cycleworld,
00:41:55meeting Joe Parkhurst when I did back in the day.
00:41:59He's describing the year and he says,
00:42:00we just explained it like it was.
00:42:02And also we were willing and wanted
00:42:06to test Japanese motorcycles.
00:42:09And there were other publications
00:42:10that weren't so inclined to do that.
00:42:12They were sort of circling the wagons
00:42:15against the interlopers.
00:42:16And it's like, no, these are good products
00:42:19that deserve to be fairly reviewed.
00:42:21And just to tell people plainly,
00:42:25that's the thing that was with Joe's magazine,
00:42:31it wasn't a hatchet job.
00:42:32It wasn't just trying to flame the thing to the ground.
00:42:34It was, no, these are the specific qualities
00:42:37that are successful about this motorcycle.
00:42:40And here are the issues that we had.
00:42:41And they're stated plainly.
00:42:43And what the goal remains for me in running the website
00:42:51is what we want is, I want a road test.
00:42:54I want to write a road test to where the engineering team
00:42:59and development team read that road test and say,
00:43:01yep, you nailed it, you got us.
00:43:04Yeah, we couldn't get rid of that
00:43:06or whatever those things are.
00:43:08You want to do that job.
00:43:10You want to be-
00:43:11Taken seriously, yes.
00:43:13Taken seriously and worthy of a proper critique
00:43:16of a motorcycle so that someone
00:43:18who's going to spend their money on it
00:43:20is getting what they know they want to get.
00:43:24If you plan to go to the Barber Museum one day,
00:43:29just like the US Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio,
00:43:32it is not a one day affair.
00:43:36There, you will feel rushed if you're there for one day,
00:43:40you'll be saying to yourself,
00:43:41well, I'm going to have to come back now
00:43:43and see all this other stuff
00:43:45because there is a lot of other stuff.
00:43:49And if you care about motorbikes, there's a lot to see
00:43:55and more than you can see in a day.
00:43:57It's, I spoke with George Barber some years ago
00:44:06about how he happened to do this.
00:44:10He said, when I was a young fellow,
00:44:13I was naturally interested in hot cars.
00:44:16I drove a Porsche or two.
00:44:18And he said, when I inherited the milk business,
00:44:24I knew we had a well-equipped shop
00:44:29because we did the maintenance
00:44:31on all of our milk delivery vehicles.
00:44:34They could restore automobiles.
00:44:36So I thought, why don't we restore a couple?
00:44:40So we did that.
00:44:42And he said, I was sort of disappointed
00:44:45because having gone through the whole thing,
00:44:48I knew what the engine was, what the rear end was,
00:44:51what all the parts were,
00:44:53but nobody in the public could see them.
00:44:56All the lids and doors and hatches were shut.
00:45:01So that made me think of motorcycles
00:45:03because with the motorcycle, what is there,
00:45:08you can see it all.
00:45:10So that was the direction we went and are still going.
00:45:17Yeah, the motorcycle collection is crazy,
00:45:19but he's also got a bunch of spectacular cars
00:45:21and he seems to have a real thing for the Lotus, Mark.
00:45:24A Lotus.
00:45:25Yes, no question about it.
00:45:27I mean, tube chassis and my favorite Lotus would be a 23,
00:45:33the 23B.
00:45:34It's just a little pancake tube frame
00:45:37with a potato chip, fiberglass body.
00:45:42And something probably on the,
00:45:44at least I would expect the vintage racers
00:45:46to be sort of near 200 horsepower
00:45:48or something like that out of that motor.
00:45:51And he's got them just peppered all over the place.
00:45:53He's got Formula One cars that are hanging from ceilings
00:45:56or stuck up on the walls or just everywhere.
00:45:59There's one on top of the elevator.
00:46:01Yep.
00:46:02As it rises to your floor, you're looking and you think,
00:46:06there's a car there.
00:46:07Yeah.
00:46:08A Formula One car, what's that?
00:46:10So there's whimsy in all of this.
00:46:12Oh, the touch is everywhere, yeah.
00:46:14Yes.
00:46:15I mean, walking up the stairs in the paddock,
00:46:17there are connecting rods sunk
00:46:20into the concrete of the stairs.
00:46:23I mean, there's sculpture everywhere,
00:46:26little things everywhere you go,
00:46:28reminding you of where you are
00:46:31and what we're celebrating.
00:46:33Sure.
00:46:34And I can't recommend going to the vintage fest enough,
00:46:42but you can go to the museum anytime.
00:46:43Anytime you get yourself down to Birmingham, Leeds area,
00:46:49it's open many, many, most days of the year, it's open.
00:46:51You should, as you said, take a couple of days.
00:46:55He said, he says that the museum is,
00:47:00or the track is in use over 300 days of the year.
00:47:06So this is not a pure exercise of tourism
00:47:13or turning money into fun.
00:47:15There's also a self-sustaining aspect.
00:47:18There's a Porsche driving experience that's based there.
00:47:23There's quite a lot of industry use of the track.
00:47:27And I'm told that the museum is funded far into the future.
00:47:34So if you can't make it this year,
00:47:37it'll still be there when you do make it.
00:47:42Yeah.
00:47:44Of course, my, yes.
00:47:46Oh, we had one of those days.
00:47:50I was there for racing.
00:47:52We finished on Sunday.
00:47:54The ARMA program was ultra seamless, really well done.
00:47:58A little sketchy.
00:47:59I have to say I was in the first race
00:48:02and all you get is a sighting lap.
00:48:03They call it a warmup lap,
00:48:04but at eight o'clock in the morning, I had to go race.
00:48:08And you just, you go out, you do a lap.
00:48:10There's shaded areas of the track.
00:48:12It's misty overnight.
00:48:13And that's really on your mind.
00:48:15As soon as the green flag drops
00:48:17and you're going into turn one, you're like, hmm,
00:48:20turn two is kind of shady.
00:48:21I wonder what's going to happen up there.
00:48:24But there was that.
00:48:25And anyway, the program was really slick.
00:48:28The announcing was really good.
00:48:29You knew when you had to be out for your race.
00:48:31So we finished up, finished up on time.
00:48:33And then the next day, Monday, was a Nate Kern,
00:48:36they call it Nate Kern's Eraser.
00:48:38He races hooligan and other things.
00:48:42He's a long time racer.
00:48:43And he had the Nate Kern Double R Fest, they call it.
00:48:47And so it's a BMW track day,
00:48:50BMW M1000RR, S1000RR.
00:48:54You can bring anything.
00:48:55They're welcoming to all brands and marks and people.
00:48:59But that's a rental day.
00:49:00It's a rental day, a day after the races.
00:49:02And there I was riding an M1000RR.
00:49:04And that was part of the video was,
00:49:07I'm riding a replica of the very first BMW Superbike.
00:49:12And also the latest version.
00:49:13And interesting how far we've come.
00:49:19That M1000, we dyno those somewhere around 190 rear wheel
00:49:24on a Dynojet dyno.
00:49:26And the bike I'd had been riding that weekend
00:49:28at the facility was dynoed at 70 horsepower.
00:49:31That's what we got with the ambient air and all that.
00:49:33So I went from 70 to about 190 horsepower,
00:49:37full suite of electronics, aerodynamics,
00:49:40quick shifter, light throttle.
00:49:44And that was what was one of the most interesting things
00:49:46about that was that the Superbike,
00:49:49the M1000RR was both easier and infinitely harder to ride.
00:49:56It was easier because the throttle was very light.
00:50:01It had traction control.
00:50:03So I could put a lot of throttle in at an apex
00:50:07and I could feel it working.
00:50:09And as you're picking the bike up,
00:50:10it's adding power as required by available grip.
00:50:15And you're just picking the line and going.
00:50:18And then it was pulling impossibly hard.
00:50:19So a lot more fatiguing
00:50:24because the loads are just incredibly higher,
00:50:27even with the, I mean,
00:50:28just I'm using a DOT race tire essentially.
00:50:31And the loads are a lot higher,
00:50:33but the effort to turn the throttle,
00:50:37it has an up and down quick shifter, seamless,
00:50:40like going into a corner, just tap, tap.
00:50:43And away you went.
00:50:44You know, it was great.
00:50:45Exiting corners, bah, bah, bah.
00:50:46You know, that beautiful seamless upshift.
00:50:50And then braking, you know,
00:50:51I had twin Grameca discs,
00:50:52cast iron discs on this vintage BMW,
00:50:55and it stopped really well.
00:50:57And it had a predictable, not scary amount of flex going on.
00:51:02You could feel the front end kind of loading up.
00:51:04You could trail break it quite hard.
00:51:07And it was pretty nice, but you're working that lever.
00:51:09It takes a lot of effort to do that.
00:51:11And then turning the bike,
00:51:13trail braking was a lot of effort.
00:51:15And on the M, I was floating the back tire
00:51:18and going into Charlottes,
00:51:20which you have a pretty good straightaway
00:51:21with a downhill braking area,
00:51:23lifting the back tire and a lot of load on the old shoulders
00:51:27and squeezing the tank,
00:51:28trying not to go over the windshield as a human projectile.
00:51:32Yes.
00:51:33But the lever effort to do that was really low
00:51:37and the ability to modulate that,
00:51:38because the first time I floated the rear,
00:51:40it was a surprise.
00:51:42You know, I was getting used
00:51:43to a completely different motorcycle.
00:51:46What was great about the relatability
00:51:48was the track positioning
00:51:51was really essentially quite similar.
00:51:55It was far more critical to have the M1000RR
00:51:58aimed in the direction you wanted it to go
00:52:01very precisely when it was time to hit the throttle.
00:52:05There was a lot more latitude with a 70 horsepower bike.
00:52:07You could sort of like, yeah, I'm pretty good.
00:52:09And you can just hit it over a blind crest
00:52:12because there really are three significant blind corners
00:52:17on that track that if you can pick your markers
00:52:21and be set up properly for,
00:52:23you can just make yards on people who are not doing that.
00:52:27And you try to get those corners right.
00:52:31But anyway, it was a rented day.
00:52:33It was a track day afterward.
00:52:34And that was part of our story
00:52:36is sort of 50 years separating these bikes
00:52:38and what have we witnessed and how do we experience it?
00:52:44The nature of the power or the torque curve
00:52:48that a motorcycle tire can tolerate
00:52:51is very different from that of a race car,
00:52:55because the race car has acres of footprint
00:53:00and it uses the whole width of each tire tread.
00:53:05Whereas a motorcycle, since it cambers,
00:53:10leans over for turns,
00:53:12you're only using roughly one third of the tread width
00:53:15at any given moment.
00:53:17So your connection to mother earth is weak.
00:53:23Yeah.
00:53:24And in order to transmit,
00:53:25imagine transmitting 300 horsepower
00:53:28from a MotoGP engine through a single tire.
00:53:32It's, it calls for optimism.
00:53:37But the thing that BMW learned
00:53:42when they went super bike racing first,
00:53:46they would, Troy Courser would go to the front
00:53:50after the start and then start moving backwards
00:53:54because the motorcycle was gradually lunching on its tires.
00:54:01And finally, he might finish 13th.
00:54:04And this was caused by BMW's great,
00:54:10profound experience of Formula One.
00:54:13And you have to change your thinking
00:54:17and make a torque curve that is more predictable,
00:54:20flatter, and easier to use,
00:54:23easier even for electronics to smooth.
00:54:28Because as a former Ducati engineer, Corrado Cecchinelli said
00:54:34about, oh, back in the nineties,
00:54:37he said the smoother the natural engine is,
00:54:43the easier it is for the electronics
00:54:47to make a good job of the torque curve.
00:54:50So that's why when Formula One constructors
00:54:56like Cosworth designed the Aprilia Cube three-cylinder engine,
00:55:05it was tremendously fast in a straight line,
00:55:08but its only possible purpose in real life was burnouts
00:55:13because it could not get around the racetrack.
00:55:18Illmore built an 800 CC V4 and it didn't go anywhere.
00:55:25Now, if the electronics are the whole story,
00:55:28why couldn't they just load the electronics on,
00:55:32punch the button and set lap records?
00:55:36The torque curve is also built into the cam timing
00:55:40and every other variable in the engine.
00:55:42So it requires a complete rethink.
00:55:46If you're doing an engine for a motorcycle,
00:55:48you can't do the things that you can do
00:55:51when you have four great big tires.
00:55:53It's so true.
00:55:54I was fortunate to get a ride in a BMW M3 competition.
00:56:00So it's an M3 with the competition packages,
00:56:02503 horsepower, great big tires.
00:56:06They had, it's the performance driving school
00:56:09there were cars from that school here at the track
00:56:12and they were doing things related to being on display
00:56:16and they had two of their instructors
00:56:18and they were giving rides to folks
00:56:19who were attending that track day.
00:56:20And so I got two laps in that car
00:56:23and there are a couple of things,
00:56:26on a motorcycle, you're dynamic
00:56:29and you're part of what the motorcycle is doing
00:56:32and you're leaning with the motorcycle,
00:56:33you're hanging way off in a corner,
00:56:36you're accelerating, you're tucked in
00:56:38and you're leaning forward
00:56:39and it's athletic in the sense that you're,
00:56:41just as if you're trying to lunge off the line
00:56:44on a football field, you don't do that standing up,
00:56:47you don't do that sitting in a chair,
00:56:50you're leaned over and you're ready to go,
00:56:51the sporting position of a motorcycle.
00:56:54And so the tremendous acceleration or the braking,
00:56:59you're dynamically reacting to interface
00:57:03with the motorcycle, but you get in a car
00:57:05and I was just a passenger,
00:57:06you get in a car and you're sitting in a chair.
00:57:10And so the side loads are crazy,
00:57:14they feel unnatural because I've spent my whole career
00:57:18riding motorcycles, it feels unnatural,
00:57:21it does feel incredibly fast
00:57:23and this guy driving was a talent driver,
00:57:26the car is rotating.
00:57:27But the one takeaway I have is exactly what you said,
00:57:30the loading of the tires.
00:57:33When we went to break for Charlotte's Web,
00:57:37when I'm braking for Charlotte's Web,
00:57:38I'm doing it swiftly, but I'm taking the brake lever
00:57:40and I am squeezing it.
00:57:42And I am lowering the front wheel on the springs
00:57:47and I'm compressing the front tire to the load,
00:57:50the maximum load that I feel comfortable,
00:57:52which in the straight line is lifting the back tire
00:57:54and then give it a relax.
00:57:57And then trail braking, you're loading the front
00:57:59as much as you feel you should.
00:58:02And then you go, you pause at the apex
00:58:05and you're looking up and you cite your exit
00:58:07and then you roll in the throttle.
00:58:10In the car, braking was like the slamming of a door.
00:58:14He went, bang.
00:58:16And I'm like, no way would I ever do that on a motorcycle.
00:58:20And it was just how it was, bang.
00:58:22And then the car would rotate on brakes,
00:58:25the car would rotate and then he'd hit the throttle
00:58:27and we would carry this beautiful drift
00:58:29and then peel out to the curbing,
00:58:32get a little up and then away.
00:58:34And every corner for hard braking,
00:58:36it was like a door slamming.
00:58:38And what felt to me like an instant load,
00:58:41it would be the load of death.
00:58:43On a motorcycle, you would go, ping,
00:58:45and the bars would go sideways
00:58:48and off you'd go into the gravel.
00:58:50Very different experience.
00:58:51And I think at the apex too,
00:58:53the way that he came back into power was smooth,
00:58:58smooth but far quicker than I would do
00:59:03at my skill level on a motorcycle.
00:59:05There may be people who peel in
00:59:08and give it more throttle or rotating the bike.
00:59:11Jason Uribe was one of the coaches at the track day.
00:59:14So he was second in stock 1000
00:59:17and obviously incredibly talented, super swift.
00:59:20And I'd love to sort of be the fly on the wall
00:59:25on that motorcycle to see what his inputs are
00:59:28and what I could learn from something like that.
00:59:30It was gratifying to follow him around on the M1000RR
00:59:36and find that most of my essential track positions
00:59:40that I had learned from the R75,
00:59:42trying to set a lap time and be safe
00:59:45and have the bike aimed, were really similar.
00:59:48There were a few refinements
00:59:49and obviously something that's slightly different
00:59:51with a super bike tire and super bike power.
00:59:54But I was gratified to say like,
00:59:57hey, I'm pretty close here.
00:59:59There's places definitely where I gotta make up time.
01:00:02If I ever race there again, I'm gonna study.
01:00:05Yes, study.
01:00:07I got a ride.
01:00:09I was at Willow Springs in California
01:00:12and it was a day when John Ulrich
01:00:18was going to ride Kenny's Daytona Square Four.
01:00:25So this is early eighties.
01:00:27And could see that John was nervous.
01:00:33And finally went up to Bud Axlin,
01:00:36who was there looking after the bike.
01:00:39And he said, this motorcycle,
01:00:44is it really as rip roaring as they say?
01:00:51Bud turned to him and said mildly,
01:00:55it'll do a wheelie.
01:00:59And at some point Eddie Lawson arrived
01:01:02in a new Porsche that he'd bought something fancy.
01:01:05I don't know what it was.
01:01:08And sometime during the afternoon
01:01:10when nothing was going on, he said,
01:01:12get in, I'll give you a ride in my new car.
01:01:14Off we went around the track.
01:01:16And as we rushed through the first turn
01:01:22and I'm sort of trying to brace myself as best I can.
01:01:29He said that seatbelt on your side doesn't work.
01:01:33Sorry about that.
01:01:35So it was great fun.
01:01:38Come on now.
01:01:42No warranty work needed.
01:01:47Yeah, I think,
01:01:52it'll do a wheelie.
01:01:53I think nerves are, if you're not nervous,
01:01:57you should think about doing something else.
01:01:59If you're not nervous getting out on a racetrack,
01:02:02you should have some degree, I think.
01:02:04I think you should have,
01:02:07I think a little bit of nervousness shows
01:02:09that you respect what's happening.
01:02:11Don't you?
01:02:12I think.
01:02:13Well, I think that it's the reason that it exists
01:02:17is to prepare you for action.
01:02:19Yeah.
01:02:21Otherwise you could just blandly go out and crash.
01:02:25I think that you're going to have to turn on
01:02:29that squirrel alertness.
01:02:32And that frisson of anxiety and questioning and so forth
01:02:38is part of that switching on process.
01:02:42Fear, Jorge Lorenzo talked about fear quite often
01:02:47and acknowledged that it exists.
01:02:51These are not men of steel with nerves of iron
01:02:55or possibly the reverse.
01:02:57They're human beings with extraordinary skills
01:03:03who are not that different from us in terms of emotions.
01:03:08And we're seeing this now with Jorge Martin,
01:03:14who is currently on a Ducati.
01:03:16Next year, he'll be on an Aprilia and making the rounds
01:03:19is that frightening video of him with not just his elbow,
01:03:29but his whole upper arm right to his shoulder
01:03:34on the pavement.
01:03:35And you can see his leathers being deflected
01:03:38from the contact.
01:03:40And it's done in slow motion, rounding a corner.
01:03:43And what he's trying to do is emulate the La Bistia
01:03:53who is so noted for having tire left at the end of the day.
01:04:00He rides with extreme body offset to the inside.
01:04:04What he's doing is pushing the motorcycle upright
01:04:08to get it on the part of the tread
01:04:11that is closely supported by the carcass.
01:04:14It's not that cantilevered out edge.
01:04:18Edge grip has been called a wasting asset.
01:04:25And if you use it too often,
01:04:27there won't be any left when you need it
01:04:29in those final laps.
01:04:32But Martin has a problem with performance anxiety
01:04:37and he's very candid about it.
01:04:41He's done all sorts of things to try to train himself
01:04:44out of the worst of it and out of the,
01:04:48its ability to compromise his performance.
01:04:51But I think that it's marvelous that human beings
01:04:57like ourselves filled with anxiety and confidence
01:05:03in equal measures can just straighten up,
01:05:08go out on the racetrack and perform so beautifully,
01:05:13so wonderfully.
01:05:16And I think that is encouraging for the rest of us
01:05:19that we can manage.
01:05:23Am I gonna have to file my tax return late?
01:05:25And what will my wife say when she finds out
01:05:28I haven't cleaned the leaves out of the gutters
01:05:31and all the annoying little anxieties of daily life?
01:05:37It's not the Motegi circuit, but it's real.
01:05:44Yeah.
01:05:45Coping with that.
01:05:46Yeah, you have to cope with that precariousness
01:05:49that a motorcycle represents
01:05:51because you're trying to go faster.
01:05:55It's such a huge difference between a track day
01:05:57and then waiting for the green flag to drop.
01:06:00Yeah.
01:06:01It's huge.
01:06:03I have a certain amount of nerves going out for a track day,
01:06:06but the nerves at a racetrack, you have them.
01:06:14I try to think rationally.
01:06:15I go up to the starting line.
01:06:16I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.
01:06:20And I watch everything that's happening
01:06:22and I try to keep my thoughts organized.
01:06:24And then when the light goes,
01:06:25I'm not frantically throwing the clutch
01:06:28and revving to the moon.
01:06:30I'm just doing another start.
01:06:32And you try to, really, for me,
01:06:35it's always been maintaining a level of intellectualism,
01:06:38even under the greatest, when things are going very wrong,
01:06:41like, oh no, I've left my braking too late.
01:06:46How do I deal with this?
01:06:48Recoup, yes.
01:06:49In a rational way that has a hopefully positive outcome.
01:06:55And that's been it for me anyway.
01:06:59Well, I hope he figures out how to keep coping with that
01:07:03because it's certainly beautiful
01:07:05to watch him successfully negotiate a racetrack.
01:07:09Oh my gosh.
01:07:10It certainly is.
01:07:10And Benyaya, who is a two-time champion now,
01:07:16and he's only around 10 points behind Martine.
01:07:21And the photographs of him,
01:07:24his hair is as the helmet left it.
01:07:29And he has a kind of goofy look on his face,
01:07:31like, hey, I just came through the ceiling.
01:07:36And then he talks and he says well-considered things.
01:07:44You can tell that, for example, in a recent race,
01:07:48he said the front was gone.
01:07:53I had to base my style on the rear.
01:07:57And when it was gone, I had to change my lines.
01:07:59He's got a backup for every problem.
01:08:03And Kenny Roberts once said,
01:08:05my reflexes aren't all that quick.
01:08:09So I have to get a lot of my thinking done ahead of time.
01:08:13I think of my mind as being a big Velcro board
01:08:18and sticking to that board are little packets.
01:08:22Each one contains my plan to deal
01:08:25with a specific set of circumstances.
01:08:28When those circumstances pop up,
01:08:30I grab the packet and do it.
01:08:36So we see people do miraculous things,
01:08:41but they have a method.
01:08:44They are not, as somebody once put it, just that good.
01:08:50People learn how to do this.
01:08:52Well, we can leave out certain persons,
01:08:56but in general, people learn how to do this
01:09:00and they work at it.
01:09:02They are thoughtful.
01:09:03They try to find out what they're doing wrong.
01:09:06For example, when Mike Baldwin was starting out
01:09:10in club racing and famed vintage racer, Dave Roper,
01:09:17was always ahead of him.
01:09:19And when he tried to follow Roper, he would just crash.
01:09:24He would lose the front and slide off the track.
01:09:27And it was humiliating.
01:09:29So he went home and he got the bathroom scale
01:09:32from the upstairs bathroom
01:09:34and the one from the downstairs bathroom,
01:09:36put the bike on the scale.
01:09:37And then he got on the bike
01:09:40and studied how the weight shift is affected
01:09:44by your position on the bike.
01:09:47And with that information, he went out and beat those guys
01:09:52because he was able to load the front, make it grip
01:09:58and apply his other abilities to a race winning effect.
01:10:06And he always talked about,
01:10:08there's no such thing as a natural.
01:10:12Well, Dave Roper is still racing today.
01:10:14He was racing Arma with me this past weekend.
01:10:17How super was that?
01:10:19Well, we wandered far field
01:10:20and I just brought it back with Dave Roper.
01:10:22Thanks for saying that.
01:10:25We wandered far off of Barber and Kenny Roberts.
01:10:28But as it is, it is an event
01:10:31that kind of encompasses the entire motorcycle culture.
01:10:35It's spectacular.
01:10:37It was fun to share it with you, Kevin.
01:10:39It was great to see guys like Cook Nelson
01:10:41and Kenny Roberts and all those folks in one place.
01:10:44And to every fan who brought something interesting,
01:10:48the ring road around the track was packed
01:10:53with citizen motorcycles that were just infinitely
01:10:57interesting and weird and wonderful and new and old.
01:11:01And it was just spectacular.
01:11:03An opportunity to spend a weekend with like-minded persons,
01:11:09people who don't think you're stupid
01:11:12for riding a motorcycle.
01:11:14People who don't think you're an unbalanced person.
01:11:21Riding a motorcycle is normal in that crowd.
01:11:24We show exceptional balance, Kevin.
01:11:29Next year is the 20th Barber Vintage Festival.
01:11:31So join us then.
01:11:33I should hope to be racing once again,
01:11:35perhaps on a bike of my own construction.
01:11:38We'll see.
01:11:39Thank you for joining us.
01:11:41We appreciate you listening.
01:11:42We appreciate all the fans at the event
01:11:44and everywhere else who say,
01:11:46hey, I recognize you cause you're a flannel lawyer.
01:11:49Luckily I'm not wearing a flannel today.
01:11:52In any case, thanks so much for listening.
01:11:54We'll see you down in the comments.
01:11:55We appreciate those a ton
01:11:56and we will catch you next time.