Attack Suzuki GSX-R1000 - Motorcycle.com
Torrance, California, October 4, 2002 -- Wide-open throttle is another of those areas I always thought of as a black or white issue which, it turns out, really isn't. You either have the thing pinned or you don't, right? Now I'm no longer certain. If you give your wife's friend a hug/kiss which accidentally evolves into a lusty grope, without malice aforethought, have you committed adultery? Is Dr. Kevorkian a murderer? Is stealing bread a crime if you're starving?
'Cause I can get the throttle on the Formula Xtreme champion Attack Suzuki open enough on the straights to experience the kind of speed that makes that sizzling sound, which segues into the smooth rush airplanes get just after they pass through Mach 1--but mostly you feel like if you openthe throttle just one more nth of a degree of rotation, that
I, I can't. I'm afraid....
Attack main man Richard Stanboli knows why: "Yeah, there's about 20 more horsepower between 90 and 100 percent open. The throttle butterflies disrupt the airflow until they're all the way open."
In fact, Pridmore's Suzuki was usually the second or third-fastest thing through the timing lights at AMA events all season long--often a mph or two slower than Nick Hayden's RC51 Honda, but still banging on the door of 190 at fast tracks like Brainerd.
Which really just makes the FX championship that much sweeter.
"Let's put it this way," Stanboli says, "we're the only team competing for the championship without a tractor trailer. Our inhouse personnel is relatively small, our budget is probably a quarter of what they (Erion and EMGO Valvoline and Graves Yamaha, we think he means) have, if even that. We do have a really talented rider and we have a good engineering capability. What we lack in finances or support we make up for in talent.
Stanboli would know. His R1-engined R7 was outlawed way back during the 2000 season, long before the AMA went ahead and let factory Yamaha use the R7 frame for the first half of 2002 (maybe they thought nobody would notice?).
Formula Xtreme's few-rules format was made for guys like Stanboli: Superbikes are too expensive and corporate, and you can't really do anything to Supersport bikes. In FX, though, if you want to chop up the frame and improve upon what Suzuki built, have at it. The Attack Suzuki's frame seems to have undergone radical surgery in the swingarm pivot area.
What have you done Richard?
"After Fontana we got a chance to view the bike and suspension data, and then again at Sears Point, it was even more prevalent, that there was a problem with the power delivery, and the suspension being able to handle all the torque, so after Sears Point we made the frame change... so we moved the swingarm pivot. I can't tell you where we moved it to, but we moved it so we'd be able to utilize the horsepower of the motorcyle. Now it's adjustable, 6mm up and down, 3mm forward and back... it took us a couple rounds to get it right. We got to Colorado and it was a piece of cake. We won that one. Road America we had some other issues with suspension but dialled that out and won that one too."
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