Round three of the
AMA Superbike Championship at Sears
Point this weekend is the first of an almost uninterrupted
series of back-to-back races right up until August 9 when the
Championship ends in Virginia. After a four week race break,
the teams begin a stint of races every two weeks – bar
one round – for the remaining eight rounds. The HMC
Ducati Team head to Sears Point confident of a good result
after last round’s performance, when Doug
Chandler finish just shy of the podium, and a successful
test at Atlanta two weeks ago.
Sears Point Raceway has recently undergone remodelling, beginning
with the resurfacing of a number of the higher speed corners,
modifying the road circuit to eliminate the drag strip, fixing
a water seepage problem and increasing the run-off areas in
certain corners.
The planned $50 million upgrade
to the Californian raceway is still on-going and many of the
discussed modifications will not be complete by the first of
the double header races on Saturday, but Doug Chandler feels
that what Sears has accomplished so far has greatly improved
the safety and rider enjoyment of the racetrack.
The layout of the course is tight and twisty, featuring predominantly
right hand corners with plenty of crests and elevation changes
and varying degrees of negative and positive camber. It’s
the left-hander called the Carousel that is going to keep riders
and technicians on their toes. Not only is it the longest corner
of the track, it’s the most difficult to master. But once
you have worked it out, the rest of the track is smooth sailing.
If the bike can handle the elevation change of the Carousel
it should work well on most other corners and if the rider finds
the right line, they’ve set themselves up to get on the
throttle hard – probably the only chance they’ll have
to open it fully.
Even though the repaved sections should improve lap times, it
will cause a problem with bike set-up and tires. The varying
differences between the new and older surfaces will require
a well balanced bike and the ‘green’ asphalt will
have sharp edges until a suitable amount of rubber is laid,
by both cars and bikes, to smooth the surface. Since its repaving
there have been race schools and Nascar testing but from his
time at Sears, the weekend after the Fontana race, Chandler
felt it would cause additional tire wear.
To counteract these problems, HMC Ducati’s
technicians will focus their attention on the forks and shock,
opening up the valving and letting the oil flow more freely.
Loosening the compression dampening and opening the compression
will make the bike work off rebound. This is a set-up they have
already accomplished at the mid-April Atlanta test, under similar
track conditions.
It’s hard to imagine that Sears Point is the first road-race
track that Doug Chandler ever rode on. It’s a track he’s
always been fond of and boasts some very good results at, but
so far no win. This weekend may just change that.
