By Mike Nicks
'Anti-spin' catches out Toseland.
It looks like it’s only going to get tougher for
James Toseland as Noriyuki Haga and
Troy Bayliss continue to pare away his lead in the World Superbike Championship. In the chilly wet conditions that forced the abandonment of the
Silverstone round of the championship, any rider could have repeated Toseland’s mistake, applied a fraction too much power and ended up on the grass.
But even if Toseland hadn’t committed that error in the first race - the only one that was held, as it happens - it looked like he had only a fourth-place bike in his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda. With the Ducati 999 now at the end of its development cycle before the factory runs the new 1098 next year, Bayliss can request only minor improvements to his V-twin, yet he and the bike are so well matched that he’s now winning or hitting the podium at every meeting.
"At the Misano tests recently we found a couple of things which made me feel more comfortable," he said. "It was just a couple of different clutch springs that we’ve had in the garage for ten years to help balance the bike. We’re just looking for a couple of tenths."
Meanwhile, further up pit lane in the Yamaha Italia garage, team coordinator Massimo Meregalli is looking increasingly happy. He received the new four-valve version of the Yamaha YZF-R1 in September, had to make a mass of new cycle parts including fairings, fuel tanks and footrest assemblies, and had the bikes ready for testing in November.
Early in the season Haga and his team-mate
Troy Corser experienced excessive rear tyre wear, but Meregalli’s technicians identified the problem. "There was a hole in the power curve," he said. "There was either nothing or too much. When the tyre was new this wasn’t a problem for the rider, but as it wore down it started to spin and destroy itself."
