Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

tro Azzurro livery, has changed significantly since last year, with a whole new adjustable chassis (rather surprisingly Honda's first ever with an adjustable swing-arm pivot). Nor are these the only possible winners. Some say the smart money goes on Max Biaggi, who won four consecutive 250cc crowns with masterly brinkmanship, but has failed to find the year-long combination in three seasons on a 500. I'd prefer a longshot on Garry McCoy, who is not half as zany as it looks when it comes to racing a 500. With three victories, the Red Bull Yamaha man was second only to champion Roberts in race wins last year. You can go for Carlos Checa if you'd like, Biaggi's Marlboro Yamaha teammate; or if you're really sentimental (or Spanish) you can chuck your cash away on Alex Criville. The importance of this last twostroke chance has not been lost on the manufacturers, either. Especially Yamaha, fielding an unprecedented eight full-factory bikes. It was Yamaha that won the first-ever 500cc twostroke title, back in 1975. It would mean a lot to them to win the last. This year's field has been considerably enriched by the fun factor. Rossi is already one of those riders who (like Kevin Schwantz) visibly has a big laugh on a 500. Sometimes it seems the most important aspect of the extra power to him is that it means he can do rolling burnouts. "The 250 did not have enough power," he explained. Likewise McCoy. You can really see how much he's enjoying himself, even if the toothy grin is hidden behind a dark visor. Plus, for this year, his new teammate Noriyuki Haga, star of preseason testing as he showed an instant aptitude for chucking a two-stroke around with the same sort of reckless abandon he showed on a Superbike. Plus Olivier Jacque (a fine French chevalier), and the surprisingly fast Japanese pair of Nakano (Yamaha) and Ukawa (Honda), the latter of which was the fastest man at the final Suzuka tests. And let's not forget Dutchman van den Goorbergh, well-versed at taunting the lesser V-fours on a mere production V-twin, and now joining Team Roberts just as the Proton (nee Modenas) is starting to look good. These, the last of the great twostroke riders, embody a type of riding skill that has evolved to a high level of sophistication over the past 25 years, driven by a succession of heroes who pushed the level ever higher. The two-stroke champions have almost all been men whose particular aptitude or experience made them especially fit for the special demands of engines that offered new levels of power, delivered - especially in the early years - with a mean streak and light-switch throttle response. Consider this: Some of the two-strokes that first rose to dominate the smaller classes had such a narrow power-band that they required lLettl A1ell Barros will join Capiro. .1 again on West-backed Honda NSR5oos. almost constant changing of gears to stay within it. The jewel-like twincylinder 50cc Suzuki of the mid-Sixties required a 14-speed gearbox! It took time to tame these seizeproned little engines enough to start making them in bigger sizes, but when the two-stroke 500s came (the first to score a championship point was actually a Bultaco single in 1969, but the big guys and their multis didn't turn up until two years later) they offered such a horsepower advantage over the four-strokes that they could be run relatively detuned. (RIght! Nortyukl Haga and his teammate Gany McCoy will make up Yamaha's second team In the series - Red Bull Yamaha. (Below) Loris Caplro. .1 had a good year in 2000. He's hoping for even better In 2001. mean and nasty, with snappish horsepower that not only tied the tubular frames in knots but also turned the rear tires to jelly even before the races had gotten warmed up. Enter Stevie Baker and Pat Hennen, at the front of a queue of US riders trained on dirt tracks, where even the power of a lazy old Harley V-twin did the same thing. Hennen was the first American to win a GP; Kenny Roberts the first to become champion, not once but three times in a row. What the Americans could do so well was to steer the bike from the rear, by spinning the rear wheel. Just like on a mile or half-mile oval, except on tar, and (by the time Roberts arrived) without putting their foot down. Since, by now, the twostroke power output was climbing rapidly past 150 hp and the back wheels were spinning all the time, the technique was tailored for the twostroke. That's why Americans and Australians, with a vaguely similar racing background, took over the 500cc class. With Kenny came the technique of dragging your knee in the turns - part of an overall package of bodyweighting that allowed a smaller angle of lean for a given corner speed. The next riding milestone came from his successor, Fast Freddie Spencer. Freddie's great gift was an ability to blitz everyone on cold tires - another dirt-track legacy; his contribution to technique was an extensive use of the rear brake with the throttle open, to control wheelspin and angle of slide. Mick Doohan later refined this still further; after injuring his right leg in 1992, he fit a thumboperated rear brake. that was widely imitated - to his surprise. But they were still pretty evil. The first two-stroke champion was Giacomo Agostini, whose fluid skills on the MV Agusta obviously translated well enough to take a classic title win by eight points in 1975, riding the newfangled four-cylinder Yamaha against Phil Read on the four-stroke MV. And that was that for four-strokes - but for Honda's ill-fated oval-piston "quasiV-eight" NR500 of the early Seventies, which never even scored a single point. Until the manufacturers stepped in a couple of years ago, and steered the rule-makers toward the new arrangement of oversized fourstrokes in 2002. Soon enough, early two-stroke competition forced the pace on power, and it wasn't long before the four-cylinder 500s became truly c U a • e n • _. • APRIL 11. 2001 27

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