MV Agusta AMA Superbike Effort - A Hard Road Ahead

"We [were] winning," Ferracci recalls, his slightly fractured English still heavily accented despite having emigrated to the U.S. more than 40 years ago. Ferracci would tell Polen to win without sticking his neck out too far. "I say to the guy, 'Listen, no risk. You know you have it, stay there, don't use it. Use the machine 100 percent, but don't risk falling down. Don't go and crash in every race.' And that guy, I don't care what everybody says, in that period that he worked with me, he was one of the [most] talented guys I ever did the deal with."

Then Polen chased a bigger payday, defecting to Castrol Honda's World Superbike team accompanied by much braggadocio. He didn't finish out the year and soon faded from the limelight. But Ferracci saw it as the natural evolution of things: "I think that is destiny sometimes."

Ferracci didn't miss a beat. With Australian Troy Corser onboard, and now equipped with the 888 SP, the FBF Ducati won the '94 AMA title, with teammate Pascal Picotte fourth.

Success has always come on Ferracci's own terms. He arrived in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia as an Italian National Champion in '65 and immediately embraced his new home. His first job was with Benelli, which had a factory near Philadelphia. In his spare time, he drag-raced, and his success attracted roadracers looking for an edge. Fast By Ferracci was formed in '80.

To be around Ferracci is to be part of his family, which surely contributed to his success on the world stage. When he began to get serious about roadracing, Ducati was owned by the Castiglioni family, with whom Ferracci had a close, personal relationship. When the Castiglionis eventually sold the company in '96, Ferracci moved on and left the roadracing arena. But they never really separated. Claudio Castiglioni still owned the Cagiva, Husqvarna and MV Agusta brands, and when he needed a knowledgeable U.S. distributor, he turned to Ferracci. Larry Ferracci, Eraldo's oldest son, runs Cagiva USA from offices not far from the Ferracci race shop and dealership, itself in a high-volume location across from the Willow Grove Park Mall, just north of Philadelphia.

So when it was time for MV, the most hallowed name in motorcycle Grand Prix racing, to return to the track, Castiglioni knew where to turn. Ferracci would spearhead the effort, with the AMA Superbike Championship serving as a testing ground for a planned '08 assault on the World Superbike Championship. It would be a daunting task undertaken in a far-too-short time frame.

Since Ferracci left roadracing, the Japanese factories have increased their investment exponentially. The salary American Suzuki pays Mat Mladin, who rode FBF Ducatis to a pair of wins in '97, may be larger than Ferracci's entire budget. The teams test constantly and rely heavily on electronics, a very expensive component.

"It's a little more complicated than it used to be," Ferracci says when asked about his return to roadracing. "Still, you know, I like to do it; I like the challenge. But, you know, I try to not get beat. So I no succeed, and that is not my way to do things. But also for the business, really this is the right way to do it." The racetrack is still the greatest sales tool for a high-performance motorcycle, Ferracci believes. "That is why I think it's much better advertising. Because our product is so good, it's so nice looking, but it costs a lot of money. Now, if Ferrari stop racing now, they cannot get the demand they have now. Well, we've got to do the same thing."

Ferracci came to the AMA championship with an untested motorcycle that he didn't run in superbike spec until November of last year, and with a pair of riders possessing vastly different rsums (Italian Superstock Champion Luca Scassa and journeyman racer Matt Lynn from Georgia). And then there was the question of tires. Ferracci tried Pirellis at the Daytona December tire test, but his team had to be on competitive rubber, even if that meant picking up part of the tab, so he went with Dunlop. "I call the people from Dunlop, and they take care of me a little bit. And the riders, they love the tire," he says.

Knowing all this, what does Ferracci expect?

"I got to run in front," he says without hesitation, aware of the magnitude of the task. "I got to be able to stay with these guys in front. I can't go back. Excuses don't work in this job. I got to go there, arrive with the other teams in front."

Then reality set in. The Daytona tire test was disastrous; Scassa made a handful of laps before first blowing an engine, then breaking his leg. Lynn was slightly more successful. But there was no turning back. The decision had been made, and the factory/FBF partnership was working overtime to make the season opener in Daytona.

The factory's original mandate was to run the F4 1000R in Superstock for a year, then move into Superbike. Ferracci thought otherwise. At the team's first test at JenningsGP in Florida, Ferracci saw the bike's potential and told the factory, "Look, I think [we're] wasting one year to [race Superstock]. Because the one year we do the same stuff and then next year we got to waste another year [developing the bike]. And I don't got too many years left."

The initial plan had Ferracci flying to Italy to help assemble the racebikes. But MV was so far behind and deep into development that the bikes had to be shipped over unfinished. "We work one week just to get the bike functioning," Ferracci says. "But you know, this is a factory effort. Even though I do it in Pennsylvania, we do it all together. Because if I do something, they got to design for me or I got to get my engineer. We work all collaborating. Whatever is fastest or easier, we make it here, we make it there. We try to get it done."

The team did better than the results indicate at Daytona. Lynn had to pit to change a front tire, and Scassa crashed. But they'd qualified on the fourth row, and both had run in the top 10. Ferracci said there was miscommunication that was a result of the tight time frame.

Being a low-volume boutique brand and required to produce fewer units than the Japanese factories for homologation, MV was able to tailor the motorcycle for the task. "We had to decide [on] a cylinder head, and we had to homologate the bike," Ferracci says. "So we made 150 pieces, 150 bikes specially from November to Daytona." Ferracci split from the factory on the clutch. He did all the work on his own slipper clutch unit and was already into his second iteration by the second race of the year. Other than that, he says, "We just play around with the mapping on the dyno and do a little bit more air work." The dyno in Ferracci's Willow Grove shop runs constantly. Mapping is everything these days, though Ferracci points out that he was the first to use data acquisition in America back in the early '90s with Polen. "We know how it works, but it's different now. Different electronics, everything more complex."

There's more power in the engine, but first the team has to master the traction control. "If I put on more power, these guys go slow, not fast, because they can't control. It's the hardest thing," he says of programming the traction control, something every crew chief in the paddock agrees with. "Most of the teams do it one way. I'm going to do it a little bit different. Most of the people, really I don't know exactly how they do, but I think somebody cut the cylinder, somebody apply the brake, somebody make slippery clutch. I want to do a little bit different no affect too much the driver. Smoother on the track. So I work on that one a little bit. And I take another maybe two months before I get it going."