French Grand Prix at Le Mans

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French Grand Prix at Le Mans
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French Grand Prix at Le Mans

French Grand Prix at Le Mans
Aye, Aye Captain

So far, the Proton team fought for captain Kenny Roberts (portrait) with the two-stroke engine in the MotoGP World Championship. Now the new KR-V5 four-stroke machine made its debut.

Friedemann Kirn

06/06/2003

Jeremy McWilliams grimly held the gas open even when his three-cylinder Proton, with its rain tires, began to lurch on a drying runway. In the end, the fearless Irishman was sixth in the Le Mans Grand Prix and had caught up with the best results in the history of the Proton team? and gives the two-stroke machine a worthy finish.
The new four-stroke machine with a five-cylinder V-engine will be at the starting line at the next Grand Prix in Mugello at the beginning of June. The prototype made its debut on the racetrack at Le Mans, but was packed up again for the race? McWilliams was five seconds slower on a dry track than on its two-stroke counterpart. No wonder: apart from a brief functional test on an airport runway, the motorcycles were without a single test kilometer.
Nevertheless, the prototype took care of
A stir. In wet Saturday practice, in which McWilliams set the fastest time in the mornings and afternoons on the two-stroke
submitted, he casually pushed the brand new motorcycle to tenth place. “If the box works like this in the wet, we’re not too far from a decent motorcycle,” said team owner Kenny Roberts-
de. “All the basic requirements we need are there: neutral driving behavior and a straight torque curve.”
However: The 152 kilogram machine is still seven kilograms above the permissible limit, and the currently almost 200 hp engine still lags behind the best in its class, which compete with a good 230 hp, in terms of top performance. »We are missing a top speed and revs of 20 km / h because for safety reasons we put the next gear into gear at 12500 rpm. But we drive with the original version of the engine, on which we have not yet worked on the fine-tuning of the camshafts, valves, intake ports or the exhaust system. “
Illustrious motorsport experts should ensure that all components harmonize ideally in the future. One of them is John Barnard. The former head of development for the Ferrari Formula 1 team was hired as technical director. “In terms of performance, weight savings and reliability, a lot comes from Formula 1,” explains Roberts, who therefore relocated his team to Banbury in the heart of the British Formula 1 belt before building his first own three-cylinder machine.
The specifications for the new motorcycle are of course based on the experience of MotoGP sport, and this time Roberts is not taking any risks after the numerous setbacks with his three-cylinder project. Where he’s trying
had failed to cheat the four-cylinder two-stroke with a lighter, more agile, but weaker three-cylinder model, he now relies on a well-known recipe for success and, like Honda, built a V5, but with a narrower cylinder angle of 60 instead of 72 degrees. “Firstly, this concept already proved to be a winning formula last year. Second, they are cubic capacity units with empirical values ​​?? a V5 with almost 1000 cc is the closest relative of a superbike four-cylinder with 750 cc, «comments the former world champion.
At first, Roberts doesn’t want to know anything about futuristic electronics either. “Our goal is to create a nice motorcycle without electronic aids.” Not even an electronic clutch against the rear wheel jarring when turning is currently planned, the team makes do with a simple mechanical system, as it is also used in the Superbike World Championship.
In any case, the new KR-V5 was not built in order to be able to seriously challenge the industrial giants from Japan and Italy this season. Rather, it is a rolling test laboratory for the next variant. “Today’s V5 machine was the fastest way to have a motorcycle on the track. In autumn we will ignite the second evolutionary stage, ”Roberts announces.
In which direction the technical journey will take is not yet foreseeable ?? as with the three-cylinder two-stroke engine, Roberts embarks on an adventure with an uncertain outcome. That fits with the stubbornness of King Kenny, who first rose from cowboy to three-time world champion, then had a brilliant career as a Yamaha team boss and finally in 1996-
I opened his tech company.
Roberts could have sat back, played golf and continued to rake in millions, but instead put his money into his own project.
At first it was ridiculed, after the first difficult years it was even written off. But King Kenny survived and, as an outsider, repeatedly defied respectable successes. And above all, he remained the world champion of good sayings? like the very first Le Mans laps after the functional test on the dead straight runway. “At least we found that the motorcycle can be tilted,” he grinned.

Grand Prix Journal

Daniel Pedrosa showed his talent in the 125cc race, Toni Elias pulled out all the stops for the second time in a row after his 250cc victory in Jerez, and then the freak weather at Le Mans brought the Spanish fans in the MotoGP race the third Fiesta: Valentino Rossi had led by more than three seconds to the termination of the race due to a rain shower, but in the second part of the race the recognized brave rain driver Sete Gibernau skilfully beat the world champion in the final sprint of the last lap on a still damp track and won. “Good for the show, good for the fans,” said Rossi as a fair loser.e Gemmel Ninth Jenkner dethroned In Jerez as world championship leader, Steve Jenkner had to relinquish the throne in Le Mans and slipped to the third world championship with eighth place. Position back. “There are two slow passages in which I lose meters,” he analyzed after the race. “Also, my engine was missing 300 revs. If we want to compete against the fastest Honda at Mugello, there is a lot of work to do, ”he said, giving his Exalt Cycle team homework. For GP rookie Christian Gemmel, on the other hand, ninth place in the 250cc race was »unbelievable ?? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the pit board! «The other two German 250cc heroes had bad luck: Katja Poensgen missed the qualification because of the rainy Saturday training, Dirk Heidolf fell on Sunday morning because of a jammed butt and cracked a metacarpal bone.

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