Honda CBR1000RR

It would have been hard to find anyone more laid back and relaxed at Phillip Island than Chris Vermeulen. The reigning World Supersport champ seemed unfussed by the pressure of performing in front of his home crowd, or carrying the weight of the mighty Honda Racing Corporation on his broad 23-year-old shoulders.

As the sun set on a thrilling Phillip Island SBK weekend, and Vermeulen signed autographs and mixed with the fans along the pit wall, you'd think he had just finished a leisurely Sunday ride through the hills.

What the results sheets showed however was far more than that. In his only his second ever World Superbike race meeting, and only his second ever race meeting on the brand new Ten Kate Honda CBR1000RR, Vermeulen had won the round.

The Queenslander had emerged with more points than any other Superbike rider there, 40 in total from two second placings. He'd qualified seventh fastest after two 'normal' qualifying sessions, but then gone out in Superpole with a set of sticky tyres to uncork a blistering 1:34.398 to line up alongside pole-sitter Regis Laconi on the front row of the grid. It was Vermeulen's second ever Superpole lap.

 Not only that, but the bike beside him on the rid was one of the awesome Fila Ducati factory bikes, the V-twins from Bologna that have pretty much dominated World Superbike racing since 1990.

Vemeulen's Honda had only been delivered to the Dutch-based Ten Kate Honda Racing team in January, and was still in its early stages of development.

"It's been pretty good straight out of the box," said Vermeulen. "We've done no testing with it in race form - just the race at Valencia, and that's pretty much it.

"We've come to Phillip Island with no data, so I used the first session on Friday to get some base settings.

"Others have tested here in the pre-season, such as the Fila Ducatis, but not us.

"We were lacking in rear-end grip, so we've been working on that.

"The problem was that once we got more rear grip the front started to push wide, so we had to make some changes to compensate.

"We tried a heavier spring rather than adding more preload, and dropped the front end as well.

"I'd go out, do a few laps, maybe three or four, then come in and talk to the team. It was a matter of doing things step by step.

"Of course, if something wasn't right I'd come in straight away and we'd make changes."

Vermeulen would spend a lot of time during and after each session in debriefs with his small but enthusiastic team. At his disposal was his chief mechanic Kor Veldman, chassis technicianPieter Breddels, data specialist Peter Bom, and two mechanics, Niels Reynders and Gerrit Teunter.

 Together they'd work methodically between sessions to fine-tune the CBR1000RR, very rarely taking a backward step.

What the above demonstrates is that the eam knows its stuff, and that the Honda CBR1000RR is a pretty potent weapon straight out of the box. And the Ten Kate team knows how to make it even better. And it's done that with a rider 'raw' to the class and without a wealth of testing.

But then the Ten Kate squad knows a thing or two about getting Hondas to lap race tracks pretty quickly, especially yellow ones in the World Supersport class.

It's that knowledge that team boss Ronald Ten Kate has applied to the CBR1000RR, and it's surprising how little has been done to the new Blade to get it to its current state of competitiveness.

Vermeulen's two second placings in the two 22-lap races at Phillip Island were achieved against some pretty hot competition, least not the two factory 999Rs of Laconi and championship leader James Toseland.

Fastest lap of race one was recorded by Laconi with a 1:34.742, with Vermeulen's best lap of 1:34.771 not far adrift. And the Honda's top speed of 306.3km/h was actually quicker than Laconi's at 298.6km/h. Fastest in that race was McCoy's privateer Duke with a blistering 314.3km/h.

 Nevertheless, for a still-to-be developed motorcycle, the CBR1000RR was mighty impressive.

So what's been done? Not a lot if you believe Ronald Ten Kate - so far.

"We're running the standard radiator, standard clutch, and most of the parts are bolt-on bits anyone can buy.

"We use some of the HRC kit parts, but many of parts we make ourselves."

Vermeulen let slip in one of the trackside interviews that he'd had quite a shock adapting to the extra power of a Superbike after his CBR600RR Supersport bike of 2003. When asked about the difference, he mentioned the figure of 200 horsepower.

"Surely that's got to be at the crank?" I questioned Ronald Ten Kate.

He smiled.

"Let's just say it's got more than 200 horsepower - and that's at the rear wheel."

Ronald wouldn't divulge the compression ratio, or the offset the team settled on for the triple clamps Chris used at the Island, but he was pretty open about everything else.

"We use the HRC kit pistons, HRC cams and HRC valve kit. The crankshaft and rods are standard, as is the radiator and clutch. We'll fit a slipper clutch from Misano onwards.

"We also use the HRC close-ratio gearbox and HRC ECU."

The drawback for a privateer is that the HRC bits are hideously expensive, as privateers who raced RC30s, RC45s and VTR SP1s will attest to. However, if the HRC stamp is on the part you're assured that it will work. As for those HRC prices, have a look at the table on page 61.

 The rest of the Vermeulen Blade runs pretty much off-the-shelf aftermarket parts.

The exhaust system is a titanium Arrow race system, wheels are Marchesini, steering damper is WP, and the rear shock is a fully-adjustable WP unit. All items that you can buy for your own CBR1000RR.

The front suspension is also WP, but don't expect to be able to buy a set of similar forks. Just as you won't be able to buy a set of the Ohlins forks on the front of a factory MotoGP bike.

With the forks come a range of WP triple clamps, which allow the team to fine tune trail by altering the offset - more offset means less trail, and it's one thing Kor changed during sessions to give Chris better feel at the front.

The brake rotors on the Ten Kate CBR1000RR are from Braking, but are of the new 'bat wing' design rather than the commercially available 'petal' discs.

Rounding out the mods are the Brembo radial-mount calipers up front, which carry SBS pads.

And that's about it. Nothing special, but a 1000cc sportsbike with some carefully-matched bolt-on parts that took a 23-year-old Aussie to the round 'win' at Phillip Island and fourth place in the championship.

Chris has put the Blade on the front row in his first two starts at tracks as diverse as Phillip Island (fast) and Valencia (tight), and has been on the podium twice in only his and the bike's second SBK event.

So is it a pseudo factory bike from HRC to get around the MSMA boycott of this year's Superbike World Championship? Not if you compare it to the full factory Blades competing in the AMA and British Superbike Championships.

"The Ten Kate bike is like a kitted-up roadbike in comparison," said AMCN's SBK scribe Gordon Ritchie. "Just look at the swingarm in Chris's bike - it's stock. Ben Bostrom's is like a MotoGP bik in comparison."

 Why not just lease a full HRC bike and save the development stress? Well, e monumental lease fee is one hurdle.

But there's more than that behind Ronald Ten Kate's thinking - and a look at www.tenkateracing.com will show why.

Ten kate is in the business of developing, then building, racing motorcycles. And selling the parts that go with them.

When Broc Parkes recorded a stratospheric 293km/h on his Ten Kate CBR600RR he showed just what a fully-developed Ten Kate bike will do. That's right - 293km/h top speed into Turn One at Phillip Island on a 600 Supersport bike!

The yellow CBR600RRs of both Parkes and Muggeridge were regularly 15km/h faster than the rest of the 600 field.

Ronald Ten Kate knows where the secret to that performance lies, as his grin when I asked him about cylinder-head mods showed.

"We have to have some secrets," he explained.

That probably also explains why the 45 CBR600RRs Ten Kate built last season found homes everywhere except in the World Supersport Championship.

"We build bikes for people to race in their national championships, but we won't build them for other teams in this series."

Makes sense I suppose. It also makes sense when Ronald says that Ten Kate will use this season to develop the Vermeulen Blade, before building 15 to 20 replicas at the end of the season.

Mmm, 306km/h already, over 200 horsepower at the rear wheel. It makes you wonder just how fast that Vermeulen Blade will be when they get it sorted...

By Ken Wootton, pics by Steve Reeves - Australian Motorcycle News