McGUINNESS: I’M 41 AND FASTER THAN EVER!
PB’s new columnist on his first-ever road race, plus why he’s still got it…
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Guintoli thrashes RSV4 at Mallory Plater flat-out on HP4 at NW200!
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THE ULTIMAT E WSB title contender and nicest man in the world Sylvain Guintoli thrashes Aprilia’s new RSV4 at Mallory Park
mallory park 1.35 miles of friendly leicestershire tarmac welcomes WsB leader sylvain Guintoli on an aprilia rsV4 Factory
Performancebikes.co.uk | July 2013
T E TEST RIDES Meanwhile, road race god and smiliest man in the world Steve Plater spanks the BMW HP4 round the NW200
North west 200 8.9 miles of the world’s fastest road racing. road racing legend steve Plater has won the NW200 eight times
Guintoli at Mallory Park
WSB title leader Sylvain Guintoli spills the beans on what separates his full-on factory RSV4 from a stock RSV4 road bike
Words Jon Urry Photography Jason Critchell
ultimate test aPrilia rsV4 Left: Guinters stocks up on coffee and muffins in the caff Below left: APRC working hard Right: Max Biaggi wouldn’t do this Bottom right: Mallory Park today, WSB at Monza tomorrow
I
can’t understand why more racers don’t do trackdays, it is much better than off-road riding. You can really hurt yourself on a dirt bike, but on a road bike with the licence plate attached. You can turn up at a track, ride around and enjoy the bike.’ Holding a cup of instant coffee, Sylvain Guintoli ponders the reasons why he is the only WSB factory rider at Mallory in rural Leicestershire this Wednesday afternoon. It’s a surreal experience, sitting in the café at Mallory, discussing the merits of pillion racing (‘what a great idea, imagine the highsides, there would be arms and legs everywhere!’), coffee before a race (‘coffee focuses your eye, brandy makes you brake later’) and riding on the road with an Italian licence plate on your bike (‘if you are in trouble, just get away and hide the bike in your garage for a month’) with one of the favourites to win the WSB crown this year. And yes, he is wearing his race leathers, complete with sponsor patches and team branding. I’m still a little surprised he agree to join us here in the first place. The original idea seemed simple enough. The whole ethos of WSB is that what you see win on a Sunday you can buy on Monday, but how close is this to the truth? PB decided the only way to tell was to stick a WSB rider on a standard bike on road tyres and see what they said. So we called PB-subscriber Sylvain and asked if he was up for a repeat
of his heroics last year when we let him loose at Mallory on a Ducati Panigale. ‘Sounds like fun, I’ll see you there,’ was his reply. Two weeks later, and after a comical phone call to Mallory Park booking office where they asked if Mr Sylvain Guintoli had a race licence and was aware of track etiquette, we are in the café shooting the breeze with Sylvain, with his Tuono V4 parked outside. Relaxed and easy to chat with, Sylvain is about as far removed from a factory prima donna as you can get. Despite a few dark
‘mallory is a friendly track. I come here quite often. I like to ride on trackdays’ clouds gathering over-head he rode to the track carrying a small rucksack with his phone and sunglasses. I ask him if he is looking forward to riding the RSV4 Factory. ‘I think today is the perfect day for power slides,’ he says with a huge grin. ‘Keep pushing the minus button on the traction control and have fun.’ I have visions of a furious call from Aprilia asking us why their star rider left Mallory in the back of an ambulance and how we suggest they win the WSB title in his enforced absence. With the cars cleared off the circuit, we head to one of Mallory’s cowsheds, sorry
garages, and set up camp. Next to us the ValMoto MV Agusta team are about to give their F3 its first pre-North West shake-down run (see Steve Plater at the NW200 on p68), Sylvain spots team owner Jack Valentine and instantly heads over to say hello. Having ridden for Jack with the Worx Crescent Suzuki BSB team in 2009 they know each other well and it’s all smiles as Jack shows him around the MV. There is no hiding in the corner of the garage under his sunglasses, Sylvain seems to know most of the circuit’s staff, especially the noise meter man. ‘That may be a bit loud, let me take it for noise testing,’ he says spotting the race exhaust on the Aprilia. Sure enough the Akrapovic end can makes it through scrutineering and he returns with a sticker. ‘I come here quite often,’ he says, ‘it’s a friendly track and I like to ride on trackdays.’ I have to pinch myself, is this really a WSB rider talking? It only takes a few laps to confirm this is not an imposter. A couple of gentle laps to scrub in the tyres and Sylvain is soon setting the pace, easily dodging around the CB500 racer and ZX-7R trackbike while giving Gary Johnson on the MV a run for his money. He doesn’t look fast, bur rather smooth, controlled and precise, what would PB’s datalogger say? ‘That was funny! The bike was sliding around. I need to drop the tyre pressures, as they are overheating.’ said Sylvain. After a handful of laps, he’s set a time in the July 2013 | Performancebikes.co.uk
standard road BikE v Factory WsB racEr
Sylvain Guintoli reveals the differences between this bog-stock production RSV4 Factory and his full-factory, title-challenging WSB Aprilia racer ElEctronics
‘We have about fve fuel maps as well as ten different levels of traction control, all of which you can adjust on the move, so it can get quite complex. We can set the fuel mapping for individual corners via GPS. I often change the traction control settings during a race and in practice between corners, which allows me to test different settings without pitting. On low settings the road bike’s APRC allows you to slide the rear, which isn’t always the case. Often manufacturers don’t totally disconnect the traction control for safety reasons and low doesn’t mean a low setting, with the Aprilia it genuinely does cut it.’
tyrEs and suspEnsion
‘We run hot pressures of about 1.6 bar on the rear and 2.4 bar on the front, but we play with the pressures at different tracks. The Pirelli
66
Supercorsa road tyres feel very similar to the Pirelli WSB slicks, the main difference is how the suspension behaves. A road bike is set up far softer to absorb bumps, if you took my race bike on the road it would feel like the suspension had been replaced by bits of solid aluminium! The road tyre’s grip is impressive, you can go fast very quickly as they warm up in just two corners. They use is very soft rubber.’
EnginE
‘Obviously my motor is more powerful, I don’t know by how much more but it is lots, however they feel similar in their power delivery. The V4 feels very smooth, the power comes in very linearly, which is the Aprilia’s main characteristic, with a strong bottom end. My racer feels the same, just more everywhere! To make an effcient lap you don’t want to feel like you are going fast, an aggressive engine is fun
Performancebikes.co.uk | July 2013
but it is not effcient and a smooth engine is faster and better for the life of a tyre. My motor is almost electrical in its power delivery and very stable on the throttle.’
dash
‘My rev counter is exactly the same on my race bike! When I was tucked in on the straight it was like I was looking at the rev counter on my WSB bike – though we don’t have a speedo, they don’t want us to get too scared!’
WEight
‘Even though the road bike is around 20kg more than my racer, the weight balance feels very similar. you don’t feel as if it is concentrated in a different place. It is like my bike has had a big dinner!’
FramE
‘We are allowed to brace the frame but not change it, which gives the WSB bike its characteristics. A WSB racer feels more like a road bike, as there
is a degree of movement in the chassis, whereas a MotoGP bike is very stiff and uncompromising.’
lights
‘I like the new rules with stickers making the bikes look like they have lights, maybe mirrors next, though that will lose us top speed. Mind you, I’m not sure I want to see what is happening behind me on the track…’
BrakEs
‘They are strong enough on the road bike and if you don’t feel they have enough you can always pull the lever a bit harder! I think the only advantage we get with racing brakes and pads is that for the same amount of pressure you get more braking power so you don’t knacker yourself out.’
WsB v gp
‘The RSV4 is the fastest bike I have raced. I have ridden 800 and 990 MotoGP bikes for yamaha and Ducati, and when
you are over 220bhp everything is fast! The Aprilia doesn’t feel like a GP bike, it feels like a superbike, a converted road bike. A GP bike is very different, very harsh and unfriendly – it is very focused. Sometimes the superbike is faster than the GP bike, but it feels softer with more movement as the frame is not as rigid.’
strEngth
‘The motor is very fast and has the best top end of all the WSB machines, but also the engine is very smooth. On tracks where you have space, we can make a gap thanks to the top end but also at tight circuits such as Assen, where we didn’t even use sixth gear. We have very good drive out of corners. The Aprilia doesn’t have any weak points, it is a strong performer at every kind of track. Consistency is key on a bike, just like with a rider. you need to be on the podium everywhere to win a world championship.’
ultimate test ApriliA rsv4
55-seconds, less than a second off the 54.56 lap he did on the Ducati last year. ‘You can tell straight away this is the same base as my factory bike,’ said Sylvain. ‘The way the bike behaves is very similar. It honestly feels like a road version of what we ride, it is from the same mould. The riding position is very similar, the only difference is that the bars are slightly more open on the road bike. When I tuck in on the straight I feel like I am on my racer, it is exactly the same. Overall the road bike feels not as sharp, not set up for track use. A road bike’s suspension is set up far softer to absorb bumps. If you took my race bike on the road it would feel like the suspension had been replaced by bits of solid aluminium, but we are chasing fraction of seconds so we need this precision. The traction control system is amazing, it feels the same as my racer.’ That makes sense, as Aprilia have always maintained that the APRC (Aprilia Performance Ride Control) electronics package on the production bike was taken directly from Max Biaggi’s WSB race bike. ‘It’s so similar,’ laughs Sylvain. ‘This is shocking. I don’t slide my Tuono on the road but on track this RSV4’s traction control is so similar. It doesn’t cut the power. It feels like a progressive reduction and adapts the power for how much grip there is and how much the rear is spinning. It is genuinely very similar to the factory team’s version, I had the
traction control on setting one, I didn’t turn it off, I was just being gobby earlier!’ Having strapped a GoPro camera to the tank of the Aprilia, Sylvain’s attention is soon directed to watching a playback of the video, which is overlaid with datlaogged figures. ‘Is that reading in mph or kph?’ he asks, looking at the RSV’s dash. ‘Fucking hell, I was doing 146mph on the straight? I think the gearing is too short, look I am hitting the limiter in third here...’
‘I didn’t turn the traction control off, I was just being a bit gobby earlier’ The new bike comes with ABS as standard, a new feature for this year. But how is Sylvain getting on with it on track ‘I didn’t spot it. I think it is mainly a feature for the wet. In the dry you’d have to be really trying to lock the front! I never touch the rear brake so I didn’t notice this. When I was riding for Jack I told him to take the rear brake off the Suzuki to save weight!’ Having chatted over the numbers from his datalogging chart and with the tyre pressures dropped, Sylvain heads back out on track. He didn’t actually say it, but you just know he is determined to beat the time he set on the Ducati last year.
Left: Guinters really is one of the coolest guys in the world Right: Sylvain gets a chance to look at a video of his lap, overlaid with datalogging – See the video on our iPad edition Far right: ‘That’s fookin’ tres bon mega, that is’
‘It’s fucking awesome, I could get quite excited on that,’ is his reaction the next time he appears back in the pits. ‘But there are too many risks. I like to be silly on a bike but I can’t be. I am amazed how close that feels to my race bike. Honestly, with a set of slicks I could qualify for a WSB race on this bike, easily. Which is fantastic! If you wanted that in cars it would not be possible – how could you get a car that was just three seconds off a F1 lap record, you couldn’t without spending hundreds of thousands of pounds. But with bikes you can pay less than £17,000 for an RSV4 Factory and make the grid at WSB complete with lights, indicators and wing mirrors!’ Though, that 17 grand doesn’t include the huge amount of talent required to do that on any bike. But what of his laptimes? Guinters was only 0.16 sec down on his time on the Panigale. He managed a 54.56 on the Duke last year and 54.72 on the Aprilia today. ‘Last year I had nothing to lose, but this year I am leading the WSB championship!’ he said. ‘I can easily get into the 53s if I try, but it isn’t worth the risk. I have to leave for Monza tomorrow!’ And with that he hops on his Tuono and wheelies across the paddock, though not before suggesting PB gets all the Brit WSB riders together at Mallory so they can race round here on their road bikes. We’d love to Sylvain, but unfortunately not all WSB riders are as cool as you...