Tested: BSB Cadbury's Boost Yamahas

The scary-fast Cadbury’s Boost Yamahas utterly blitzed the 1996 British Championship. But how? Olly Duke braved the bikes that make gods of men.

 

t all starts off as a bit of a lark. Ride the two top bikes in the British Superbike Championship. Both mega, factory-kitted machines, punching out some 150bhp at the rear wheel, with top-notch suspension, heavily-revised chassis, stonking brakes – just as they’ve appeared on telly! Yeah, c’mon lads, let’s thrash Niall MacKenzie and James Whitham’s YZF750s! So I ring Cadbury’s Boost team manager Rob McElnea to see if he’s willing. And he is. My body receives a shot of adrenalin, my heart skips a beat. “Both bikes will be at Cadwell Park, 9.30 on the dot, so be there on time,” snaps big Mac, himself an ex-grand prix rider. This man doesn’t mess about.

“…and by the way,” he signs off, “bring a spare pair of underpants with you. Ha! Ha!” Well, well, he even has a sense of humour although I suspect the joke’s pitched at us.

It’s that last quip which puts the fear of God in me, sort-of placing the whole deal in perspective. Editor Phil West and I have painted ourselves into a corner, one moment’s hilarity becomes the next moment’s nightmare. OK, so we’ve both raced, but the truth is we’re also both nobbers and all that awesomeness you see on the telly is just as incredible to us as it is to you.

The weekend of the final British Superbike round comes and goes. Ex-grand prix star Niall, and past British champ James, were lying neck and neck prior to the first race, both men on 349 points, but  James makes a wrong tyre choice, letting his 35-year-old team mate with the first leg – and the championship. James, who wins the second leg, is inconsolable. He can’t hide his grief while he’s on the podium and his cheeks stream with tears. Who can blame him?

Phil and I arrive at Cadwell on the Tuesday, on time. The purple Cadbury’s Boost transporter sits on the start-finish straight, and mechanics Adrian and Melvyn are already prepping the two Yamahas. The weather’s half-way decent, so the team’s majestic, bright-red Snap-On tool chests stand on the track, next to the bikes. A generator burbles gently away in the background, powering the tyre warmers. Everything’s so neat, even the Jerry cans match the team colour. It’s a glorious sight, but there’s no Niall, Jamie or Rob.

I chat to mountain bike-mad Adrian, Niall’s mechanic, and he talks me through the gleaming machine. It’s in showroom condition; the paintwork is lacquered and glossy, the aluminium frame and swing-arm are highly polished, there’s not so much as a minor scratch or a blemish.

“These bikes are the official factory World Superbike racers from Belgarda , in Italy,” explains Adrian. “The engines are basically ’93 A-spec, but with new internals. Just about the only common part with the standard motor are the cylinders; everything else has been changed.

“The A-kit includes special crankcases, 41mm carbs, an air box, a strengthened crank, different pistons, a heavily-modded standard head with race valves, a dry clutch…oh, and we use a British-made Skorpion exhaust.”

The YZR stands there is silence. I gaze at the gleaming chassis, suspension and brakes. It’s exquisite, a work of arm. Niall’s had the beams of his frame heavily braced (“He likes a stiff chassis,” explains Adrian), the adjustable swing-arm mounting point has been lowered, and the aluminium swingarm is a highly-polished, proper A-kit jobbie.

The fork stanchions have been coated with gold nitrade to reduce stiction (they look a million dollars), while the upside-down Ohlins forks and shock are superbly engineered. Four-piston Brembo callipers sit on 6mm thick discs, and the wheels are from Marchesini, a 3.5in front and a six-inch rear. It’s the stuff of dreams.

Reader Mick Cotterill has turned up on his own, stock YZR. The idea is that Niall and I are winning number 30, him on the standard version. It sounds a riot, but as soon as I see a crappy, hard-compound Michelin M59 tyre on the rear of Mick’s machine, I know it’s definitely out of the question.

Adrian fires up Niall’s bike. It howls, sending a shiver of anticipation down my spine. I can’t decide which emotion dominates my twisted guts, excitement or trepidation, but both are doing a good job of screwing me up.

Finally the famous trio arrive in Rob’s motor: Rob, businesslike and to the point; Niall, newly crowned champ, and grinning; and of course Jamie, not his normal chirpy self, but pissed-off and snappy. Time to be very polite. You could cut the atmosphere…

At last the machines are ready for Phil and I to ride. James’s YZR is set up slightly different from Niall’s, with external fork compression damping  and a conventional gearshift sequence, I’m used to the more normal racing sequence (first up, the rest down) that Niall uses, but I’ve never tried quick-shift, which allows the rider to keep the throttle nailed open while changing up. Adrian tells me the red line is at 14,000rpm but he adds, not to both looking at the rev counter, just watch for the red light and then push the pedal.

The racer feels feather-light compared to the standard road bike. Indeed, weighing in at 166kg, it shaves a good 30 kilos of the roadster’s flab, and it doesn’t have the latter’s top-heavy feel when it’s at a standstill either. It’s an utterly functional, no-frills weapon, and in its simplicity lies its beauty.

Last year I rode Foggy’s World Superbike Ducati with its incredible mid-range punch, and I was expecting something similar from the TZF, but just pulling away on the British championship-winning bike showed that grunt was missing. Don’t get me wrong, the engine is fantastically crisp, there’s still a stupendous surge of power as you open the throttle, and after a couple of laps of Cadwell I have the front wheel pawing the air as I accelerate out of the tight short-circuit hairpin, even with the very tall first gear.

As the revs build up life becomes worryingly frantic, and by the time I hit the dip in Park Straight on a fast lap my slow-moving brain is desperately trying to keep abreast of events. The motor’s slight woolliness at low revs is replaced by a frightening surge as the rev counter shoots towards the 14,000rpm red line, turning the circuit’s straight into a left-hander, but the four-pot Brembo callipers are super-efficent at scrubbing off speed before turning into Park corner. The Yamaha is so well set up nothing seems to upset it.

Having the bottle to use – and control – all that power is what makes the likes of James and Niall heroes, and myself a no-hoper. The YZR is easy to ride slow, but pushing the machine near its limit is quite another matter; Niall reckons it’s pretty forgiving, while I never even reached the fringes of its potential. There’s a huge amount of skill involved in wringing the most from these bikes, and as the stakes get higher, the line between crashing and not gets finer.

You’d imagine the steering on a top-notch machine would be ultra-quick, almost twitchy – but no. Like Foggy’s Ducati, Niall’s bike turns into corners completely neutrally and effortlessly, but the faster you ride it the better it behaves, the harder the tyres dig into track, the more sorted the suspension feels.

That 750’s neutral turning means you can do virtually anything with it; the front feeds naturally into long, sweeping corners, while conversely it can also be flicked into late-entry bends. By comparison the road-going YZR is a top-heavy, slow-steering lump, which needs to heaved from side to side. Lowering the swing-arm pivot point of the racer, which raises the back end and effectively throws more weight over the front wheel, keeps the front tyre glued to the tarmac.

Naturally the suspension is faultless. The machine remains totally composed through corners and completely stable when the power-s applied. When you race up the hill through Charlie’s right-hander, there’s a bumpy patch right smack on the apex, which seriously upsets most proddie bikes, but Niall’s machine floats over it almost effortlessly. Feedback from the slick tyres is excellent.

I can’t get on with the quick-shift gear change, which needs a good boot when changing up. It takes so much getting used to it upsets my concentration, so I pull in and Adrian flicks a switch to turn the system off. I rush back out on the rack for a few more laps, but it’s all too short.

Just as I start to get to grips with the bike I’m flagged back in, and the billowing, black rain clouds unleash a downpour.

In the immaculate Cadbury’s Boost truck, James is back to his normal, cheerful self. So perhaps he fell out of bed the wrong side this morning, I dunno, but it’s good to see him joking around again. Rob, forever the no-nonsense businessman, it itching to make a move, while champion Niall’s drifting around on Cloud Nine.

It’s been a brilliant day – top team, top bikes. You hear stories about how grand prix machines are uncontrollable monsters, how they wheelie without warning in front and fifth gears, how easily they spit their riders off. Not superbikes and certainly not the Cabury’s Boost Yamahas.

Even yer average biker can ride them. The difference between the likes of you and me, and Niall and James, likes in our lack of skill. And the amount of horsepower and trick chassis can make up for that.

 Words Olly Duke