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With his own high standards and working with professional teams for the previous nine years Jim was sure there was no point going on with the Saveco outfit. His mind quickly turned to how he could salvage and rebuild a 2002 season with virtually nothing in place. On his way home he went to see Jack and secured a deal from Yamaha that would provide him with the bikes to do the first four rounds of the national supersport series plus the North West and the TT.
The wheels were in motion and Jim was back on a familiar bike in the shape of the 2000 championship winning V&M R6 and after a full year (2001) out of racing the first round at Silverstone was a dream return for Jim. At one point he led the race by ten seconds and won comfortably. Onto Brands Hatch, and Jim was again in the lead but was outgunned to the line by Stuart Easton's Monstermob Ducati.
After Brands the team decided not to do the next couple of rounds, mainly because the team were pretty much where they wanted to be at that point and the downgraded championship didn't provide the team with much track time compared to previous years. Besides, the team weren't getting a great deal of satisfaction from the 600 national championships and with the exception of Easton and Laverty the depth in the series was certainly not that of previous years. So the decision was made for the team to concentrate on testing the R1 with Donington, Croft and Kirkistown all used to get the bike ready for the roads. Jim explains in detail, that testing on these circuits is fine but it's no substitute for the TT where it usually throws up acute problems unlike any other circuit.
Jim wasn't as yet fully comfortable with the R1 and the North West was to provide him with his first superbike test for nearly two years. Jefferies, Rutter, Lougher, Archibald, and Duffus, besides others, were to provide him with the best of opposition. In a wet first Superbike race, Jim who qualified on the front row, was to show a clean pair of heals leading the race on the first lap, only for the rear tyre to go off then disintegrate thereafter. It was a disappointment for Jim, but it clearly showed he was running up front with the best road racers on the latest machinery. The 600 NW race was to provide Jim with a much needed win on a bike he was totally at one with. The second superbike race was fraught with more disappointment after the mudguard jammed the rear wheel forcing him to stop for on-the-spot repairs.
The TT beckoned and after only three practice laps, due to bad weather, Jim was still looking for more from the R1. It was around four years old and the new Suzuki's were clearly the superior bike. Jim was under no illusion he had to get more from the R1 than ever before. He also knew to get more from the bike he would need to make some set up changes. The V&M R1, in the hands of David Jefferies was victorious at the previous TT, taking Jim's 1999 absolute lap record in the process. Iain Duffus, DJ's former team mate and still with V&M for 2002, was also one of the fastest men around the Island and together their times were the target for Jim to beat. Jim wanted to win all right, but he also knew he would have to ride the R1 faster than DJ ever did over the gruelling six laps.
Jim finished a very creditable third in the F1 race and he did better DJs previous winning race time by 17 seconds, something that very few pundits even noticed. Jim takes up the story "I felt okay on the R1 but I didn't feel totally comfortable on it. I knew there was room for improvement and I knew I wasn't getting the best from the bike. Looking back and with hindsight we should have changed from the Dymag rear wheel, we should have done some more work with the link, and when I think about it, the Penski shock needed replaced. There was much too much rebound damping on it, exactly the same as the Triumph. It was okay on the R6, but that bike handle exceptionally well anyway, so it never really produced any problems. But when it starts to get to the point when you need the bike to work better, like on the R1, the rear shock just couldn't quite cope. Now with all the information from the past, like the way the Triumph reacted with the Penske's, and knowing how much work we done over the season to get the rebound shimming just right, proved to me the shock was definitely over damped on the rebound. It's just time and what a lot of people don't realise, I only done three laps before the F1 race. I took the bike out on Monday night for evaluation and obviously we got a few problems and once you leave the paddock you've got to go all the way round to come back and make changes. It's basically like going to a Snetterton superbike meeting and only getting one lap, then having to analyse and make changes, then do another two laps, analyse and make changes, then race it the following morning. So when you race it the following morning and it's not quite right, you only get one chance to make more adjustments before the next race. And that's pretty much the way it was…Monday, one lap…Friday, two laps…Saturday, race…change for the Friday…..went the wrong way. I had a fair idea straight after the senior, but the race was gone by then. Obviously over the years and with some of the problems that occurred with the Triumph and the Penske shock I've realised that some things didn't quite click back then with the shock. I was getting towards thinking it was over-damped but I wasn't totally sure. A bit more time would probably have confirmed it, as it did with the Triumph and obviously I rode that bike a lot more, so I had more time to analyse the problems. With the Triumph I did click on to the over damping with the rebound quite quickly".
Could Jim have won if the bike was to his liking? Jim said "I still believe I could have won on the R1 but it would have had to be much better than it was. People don't appreciate; I still went faster over the race than DJ ever did. I was the fastest person ever on the R1. Okay I didn't do the fastest lap, but I was still 17 seconds faster over 6 laps than DJ, so I couldn't have been exactly hanging around. It needed to be a lot better as it wasn't as good as the Suzuki's by then. At the end of the day it didn't need to be the best bike for me to win the race. There have been loads of situations where I've not had the best bike. The RC45 in 1999 wasn't the best bike but I was still leading it. I think the only time I've started on the best bike was in 2002 with the R6. Every other year I don't think I've started on the best bike. It didn't have to be the best bike, it just needs to be a bike that's in the ball park and at least set up so I could ride it hard. That was the problem at the North West, during testing and the TT itself. I couldn't ride the bike as hard as I wanted and it was the same with the Triumph for half the year".
Anyone looking at Jim's third place from the F1 race would think it was quite good, so why make more changes for the Senior? "Yes, third wasn't bad" said Jim. "But, it wasn't good enough and the bike could, and should have been a lot better. Then I could have ridden the bike an awful lot harder and possibly won the Senior. So do you just say okay Jim, you've tried your hardest, the bike was absolutely hard to hang onto and go for another third on Friday. Or do you try and make the bike better and go for the win….and we could have won on it. I mean, I was doing 18.04 or something like that. I had to be 14 seconds better than that and I could see where I was loosing six seconds between Sulby and Ramsey when I was following John McGuinness. I could go into Sulby with John and then get to Ramsey after working so hard, so hard, to keep it down to a four or five second gap. Then by Mountain Box I was right back with him again. But don't be kidding, it wasn't perfect on the mountain either; it just wasn't scaring the life out of me as much, so I could ride the bike pretty hard there. There were sections of the circuit like cronk y voddy where I should have held it flat. I couldn't hold it flat over the jumps because it had no wheel speed inertia. It had no rotating inertia as there was no weight in the carbon wheels. So over the jumps it just kind of flopped, it didn't jump in a straight line. So at times I just had to roll it and I was thumb back braking to keep the front wheel on the ground. It's all these things that cost you lots of time. Where if I could have jumped straight, I could have jumped absolutely flat out rather than having to roll it then use the rear brake. That's a second or a second and a half each time and it all adds up to the time I was looking for.
So what about the Senior race, obviously a disappointment as Jim knew the bike should have been capable of winning and the changes didn't work. "The biggest problem was at Glen Helen…I was P2 minus one second. It wasn't too bad there, but I had some big frights, even going into Glen Helen. Obviously when I seen P2 on the board it made me keep going but I knew I was coming to the bit where the bike was handling exceptionally bad, and yes, it was actually worse. So the next time I got a signal I was actually P4 or P5 and the deciding factor was up the mountain mile where it just tank slapped, a really vicious tank slap. My foot fell off the back of the peg and it ran over my leg. At that point I thought….that's it. I came in and tried to change it. If the changes made it better I would have done the full race and after all I didn't know what I was doing for the following year and it wouldn't have been bad to just ride the bike, even have a go at getting the lap record back. After all I've never done a flying lap record. Every lap record I've done including the three I still hold, are not flying laps. They were either from a standing start or coming into the pits, I've never had the opportunity, due to one reason or the other to do a flying lap record. It would have been good to have a go.
So what work went on between the F1 and the senior race? Well they flew the forks over to get re-valved because Tom French brought them back in his helicopter. The Penske was also re-valved, but on a level of 100% change, the shock was changed about 6% when we needed about 55% change. So it made a small change when we needed a big change, as we later found out with the Penske's on the 600 Triumph's. So there was a lot of work going on, but it's still difficult to know what to do and you only get one stab at it. I don't think Jack and Steve were totally convinced it was a big problem. At the end of the day Iain Duffus rode the bike to second in 1999. He was the second quickest person on the R1 and he was fairly vocal about the bike being a lot different than 1999. It showed that when we got to the TT as Iain's lap times were a lot slower than my times. Another way to put it into perspective is Michael Rutter, one of the present time superbike stars, he never really got on with the bike and I still went an awful lot faster than Rutter. So I went faster than DJ, Rutter and Duffus and it's not like they were second rate riders, they were the best road racers around. The fact's are the bike wasn't quite right. Put it another way, it's not as if the bike wasn't right with me going slower than guys who had ridden it before! No, I was going faster, but it needed to be better to go even faster still and I know to a certain extent DJ masked the situation because of his size. I'm about five stone lighter than DJ and my bikes need to be better for me to get the best from them. End.
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