Cycle News Staff | May 30, 2021
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from issue #44, November 10, 2004. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
Scott Russell’s Daytona, Yamaha Win
By Scott Rousseau
You would think that after carding three exciting Daytona 200 victories, and then finishing runner-up to Miguel Duhamel in the closest Daytona 200 finish ever in 1996, that Scott Russell would have met his waterloo when he returned to battle at the 1997 Daytona 200 on a Yamaha that was basically an iteration of the bike that had won the 1993 race with Eddie Lawson aboard. But if you counted Russell out, you couldn’t have been more wrong.
After an unsatisfactory end to his long-time partnership with Muzzy Kawasaki—for which he scored his first Daytona 200 win in 1992, runner-upped to Lawson in ’93, then came back to win two straight last-to-first romps in ’94 and ’95 (the latter of these being Russell’s unforgettable crash-and-win performance)—Russell switched to Lucky Strike Suzuki to take his shot at GP racing for the 1996 season. First, however, came the 1996 Daytona 200, where he and Smokin’ Joe’s Honda’s Duhamel staged a titanic battle, Russell just missing in his attempt to slingshot past Duhamel at the finish line. Then it was on to the GPs. In a perfect world, Russell’s view of Daytona should have been strictly rearview, a pleasant memory of his old American road racing days before moving on to bigger and better things in GP.
“Yeah, that sounds good, but it didn’t work out like that at all,” says Russell, who celebrated his 40th birthday on October 2, 2004. “It was hard to jump into a team like that and just take over, especially when Mick Doohan was riding like he was. The [Suzuki) team was good, but I never liked the bike. I never could get it to do anything I wanted it to do. Then I got hurt on it. It was tough. We didn’t make a lot of hay when that sun shined.”
So, come 1997, Russell returned to superbike racing, starting in Daytona with a factory Yamaha VZF750 on which he’d had a total of eight days of test time. Though he could certainly be counted on to be a factor in the race, there were questions as to what extent that would be. After all, reigning AMA Superbike Champion Doug Chandler was expected to be stout aboard Russell’s former Muzzy Kawasaki ride, and Duhamel and Honda had one more year of development time on the already proven RC45. On a Yamaha that was basically a 6-year-old design, a Russell win wasn’t exactly a given.
“The bike was what it was,” Russell said. “We came there without ever getting a good test in. We were on Dunlops that year, and Colin Edwards had the thing going pretty good, and I just jumped on what he was riding. And we didn’t change a lot of things. The Yamaha wasn’t really that good, but it went really good at Daytona. It went around there practically by itself. I can’t explain it.”
Russell’s comfort level on the bike was readily apparent during qualifying, where after his Yamaha teammate, Colin Edwards, set a record lap of one minute, 49.274 seconds to hold down the number-one spot at the end of the odd-numbered qualifying session, Russell went out and erased it by becoming the first man to lap in the 1:48s at Daytona, taking his third career pole with a 1:48.999. The handwriting was on the wall.
“Edwards, he really wanted that [Rolex) watch,” Russell remembers, “and I was sitting in my motor home, listening to them call out the times, and I heard him get on the loudspeaker and say that they might as well put his name on that watch right now. I told my boys, ‘That’s over. I’m going to go out there and hammer him right now.’ And that’s just how good it was for me at Daytona. I don’t know why I could do things like that, but it just came easy. Every time I came to Daytona, I felt like I was in my backyard. I knew I was going to win it.”
The race took place, on March 9, 1997. Russell jumped out to the early lead, with Edwards and Chandler coming right with him. Edwards passed Russell on the opening lap and led the first two circuits before Russell took over again. Then Chandler led lap five before yielding the point back to Russell.
And that was it. After that, Russell simply seemed to go into another gear. He started to pull away, and nobody—not Edwards, not Chandler, not Duhamel—could even get close to him as he built up a 22-second lead that would only be cut into by the pace car after a yellow flag when privateer Dean Mizdal crashed on lap 49. A few thought that the second-running Chandler might be able to use the break to surprise Russell in the same fashion that Russell was surprised by Lawson in the 1993 race. Nothing doing, says Russell.
“I knew they’d try, but I knew I had them covered,” Russell said. “That ’93 race was a different story. I knew from lap two in that one, when Lawson passed me on that Yamaha on the banking without even drafting me, that I didn’t want to be anywhere near him on the last lap. I knew I wasn’t going to beat him. This time, I knew they weren’t going to beat me.”
When they went back to green, Russell simply went back to the same pace he had been running all race long, pulling clear to a 4.5-second margin of victory that truly belies his thorough domination of the event. Not only was Russell’s fourth Daytona 200 win a new record, but it also broke a tie between Yamaha and Harley-Davidson for the most Daytona 200 wins, giving the Japanese factory 17 Daytona 200 wins.
“It was a cakewalk,” Russell said. “The Yamaha was working great. That was the easiest one that I ever won until I won my fifth one in ’98.”
Well, yeah, then there’s that… CN
